VHS Box of the week: Project Metalbeast

We've started a new feature on the blog to draw attention to some of the better VHS covers in our collection. This week's pick is Project Metalbeast, a film that unfortunately does not live up to its cybernetic werewolf premise (especially when practical effects were still used in low budget films). Luckily, you don't have to waste an hour and a half of your life watching bad actors pretending to be scientists debating the morality of werewolf cybernetics. Instead, feast your eyes on this hulking beast of box-art cheese.

- Ryan

Goblin Spelled Backwards

During my four day sprint across the country, I found myself getting an oil change in the mountains of Utah. While there, I decided to look up the filming locations of troll 2. I remembered it had been somewhere in Utah, but I was totally unfamiliar with the area. By an odd bit of luck, I found that I was only about 30 miles away.

It is an odd experience to know you are near a location you have only observed through mediated experience. I found myself attempting to impose Nilbog on this quirky, but mostly uninteresting midwest town. After interviewing a few local people, and eventually resorting to showing around pictures on my phone, I found myself in the old commercial district. Here are a few photos of my experience.

'Kill me now' ... is Goblin spelled backwards!

'125 North' ... is Goblin spelled backwards!

I think you get the point

You crazy boy? We're all vegetarians here in Nilbog.

Nightkiller

Claudio Fragasso is an oddly important figure in Italian filmmaking. What his films represent in his country's cinematic industry in some sense overshadow his actual role in. His film Troll 2 is a cult obssession and often viewed as the pinnacle of a crisis in Italian cinema and exemplary of the accumulated gimmicks and cost cutting procedures that had been introduced by an industry barely limping forward since the early 1980s.

Nightkiller is an odd film. I have no evidence to back it up (other than general trends in Italian exploitation cinema), but it seems like the script was intended as a psychological thriller, with certain superficial elements changed so as to capitalize on the success of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. It is the only way I can explain the incongruity of a realistic (at least by Fragasso standards) story of a murdering rapist and the amnesic woman he's stalking, with the fog and expressionist shadow scenes of a Freddy Krueger look-alike ramming his claws through a series of arbitrary victims (in the same manner, every time).

Literally the Same Way...

Every Time

Granted, there are scenes showing the (night?) killer taking off his mask, but much like Friday the Thirteenth Part V this is a film that wants to have its cake and it eat it too. If the killer is simply someone in a mask, how is he able to punch through people with his (apparently rubber) claws and how is he able to summon the fog? To be fair, the "fog" I'm referring to could easily be the grain and bad compression from the vhs to DVD transfer. More on that later.

I think I would have enjoyed the film more if he had simply tried to plagiarize Nightmare on Elm Street. He is much more successful with supernatural material, and his often bizarre understanding of American film comes through in even his most derivative pictures. The Fragasso penned Hell of the Living Dead is a perfect example of the this.

I don't intend to attack his filmmaking or insult Fragasso. I actually think his work is impressive in its own odd way. Troll 2 remains one of my favorite films, and one that I can watch repeatedly. He has very odd sensibilities and I think that if he spent more of his time as a director working on horror films, he might have released a few more whacked out classics. Films like Nightkiller are perhaps not as interesting because he's working with more serious material.

Another issue with the film in its current form is that the only available copy comes from a terrible vhs dub. I personally would liked to have seen a decent dvd copy of the film, or even a vhs that looks slightly less noisy and washed out. The burnt in subtitles, do not improve the experience.

-Ryan

Cats of Giallo

Cats are prominent images in a plethora of giallo films of the 1970s. This list is not exhaustive, but there are some moments of animals acting as feline omens or scary tricksters.

There are two major trends; when cats appear at climactic moments and when cats appear at moments of quiet which allude to the horrors about to come.

Cold Eyes of Fear (1971)

This orange cat appears during a climactic moment of horror. The male protagonist is searching the premises for the killer he believes is present. A booby trap is placed at the door to catch the killer exiting a room, but this cat trips the chord instead.

The Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971)

This cat appears at the patio door of this couple's apartment at a moment of quiet when thingsjust start getting weird. The couple then stops what they are doing, goes to the door and lets the cat enter. For several moments, the camera focuses on the cat's eyes--so as to allude to the common belief that cats (or domestic animals) can sense danger.

Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye (1973)

Aside from what is given in the title, this cat plays an important interpretive role in this movie. The cat is entombed with the body of a murdered woman (supposedly an enchantress), but comes back to creep through. Voyeuristically, from its view we see the drama unfold. Not only does the cat ominously creep around in the background, but it attacks and interacts with the characters strangely.

Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974)

I previously reviewed this movie for the blog, but failed to mention the creepy leering cats. First, there is a cat that attacks Silvia (Mimsy Farmer) which belongs to an old female neighbor. Throughout the film, the old woman carries around the cat; and in a later scene repeatedly asks Silvia is she knows of the cat's whereabouts. If you remember, I mentioned that several of the people with whom Silvia associated were in on some fake "African voodoo" plan to coerce Silvia's actions. This moment further drives his paranoia.

Additionally, a male elder neighbor whom she regarded as father-like figure, feeds his cats the remains of her young friend who lives in the building. Here are these casts feasting on her fingers

Inferno (1980)

Dario Argento makes the image of a witch with her cat look scary. In this film, Mark, the male protagonist sits in a lecture hall amongst several students wearing headphones and reading sheet music. An enchanting young woman with lustful eyes and an open pandering mouth sits diagonally from him, petting her cat and staring bewitchingly in his direction. Wind and light aim themselves at her as she bewitches him in this manner. After this scene, Mark begins his discovery of the Three Sisters' legacy in a most horrifying manner.

-Sana

Swamp of the Ravens

Swamp of the Ravens is a film for which my experience is clouded with nostalgia. Oddly (or perhaps not so oddly) it is not due to a previous viewing of the film itself, but rather my conception of it, along with a semi-accurate description and a few minuscule images. Before the irritating (although admittedly helpful in acquiring certain out-of-print titles) resurgence in interest in films where the dead get up and kill (the people they kill, get up and kill…), there were very few places from which one could obtain information about the more obscure films featuring the undead.

Regardless, as a thirteen-year-old embarking on yet another trail of hyper-focused interest, a now defunct website (Undeadfilms.com) became the center from which much of my cinematic and monetary activity spread. With the exception of the myriad SOV pictures released throughout the 90s, Swamp of the Ravens remained the the last film from my original investigations I had yet to watch.

The film itself is comparable to the more minor entries in the Italian exploitation cannon. Attempts to brand the picture as "no-budget" or "amateur" misrepresent the film, at least within the context of general exploitation film-making. The techical crew apparently had some experience in these pictures (the same cannot be said for the actors or scriptwriter, but to an extent this simply made the film more entertaining). To my admittedly unrefined perception the shot composition was mostly well balanced, and the lighting was far from terrible.

Other general descriptions of the film tend to describe the nonsensical aspects of the plot, and its apparent convolution. Perhaps I am jaded, but I personally found the film a fairly straightforward Reanimator rip-off with occasional endearing weirdness.

What confused me much more than the plot was the bizarre english soundtrack. Voices are rarely anywhere close to matching the lips supposedly generating them, implying (or rather directly stating, out of sync) that the film was redubbed. However, there are elements that strongly suggest the film was made in English. Most prominently this manifests itself in a song already guaranteed  a spot on the next WZ&SC mixtape. The track in question is sung to the Mad Scientist's inevitable Frankenstein bride, as the singer (involved in a love triangle with the other two) completes a world tour apparently consisting of several people standing around in a room at every show. Sample lyrics include "Don't stare at me with those eyes of horror/you've thrown out my love for you to the houndogs" "The blood flowing lifeless from your body/Wherever you find yourself I wish you were dead/My own Robot, my own my lady"

If in fact this track was added in the dubbing process it implies a more extensive translation process than one would expect this type of film to get. It also begs the question, What was he singing in the Spanish dub?

Aside from a flubbed conclusion and a rather hilarious scene where the police tracking star Ramiro Oliveros by employing an instrument used more famously by a very different Oliveros (A sine wave oscillator, and Pauline, respectively), the film isn't particularly remarkable. The mis-en-scene surrounding the mad doctor's hut is effective, and the film moves along at a glacial, but not insufferable pace. For completists and weirdos, luckily, we fit into both categories.

*Note this is a Spanish/ Ecuadorian co-production, not the usual Italian exploitation we generally cover.

**Apparently SOTR contains real autopsy footage. I honestly couldn't tell what was an effect and what wasn't, adding a degree of ambiguity/verisimilitude. Either way, you've been warned.

-Ryan

The Perfume of the Lady in Black

The Perfume of the Lady in Black is incorrectly labeled as a giallo film, though it is more of a psychological thriller a la Polanski's Apartment Trilogy (Repulsion, the Tenant, and Rosemary's Baby).

This movie took some of the more awesome elements of the Apartment Trilogy and made them more italian. The film centers around a socially and emotionally awkward pretty blond (Mimsy Farmer) who has flashbacks and hallucinations related to a lady in black—her mother.

After she encounters a black man (no, I'm not the racist one), who talks to her about “African” witchcraft in his garden (which looks exactly like a jungle), she begins her descent into madness. Not only is she really disturbed by him, but she begins to hallucinate about her past. Ultimately, it is revealed that she killed her mother, though she does nothing to recognize this act other than continue to kill people. You never see her internalize what she did, which I found interesting. She begins to regress into her childhood self, the character Alice from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. At the point of absolution in this form, she throws herself off of her building while dressed her mother's black dress—much the way she pushed her mother off of their building years ago. You see no moment of regret or pain as a result of the murder- only as a result of other incidences, like seeing a man other than her father have sex with her mother. So, when the moment of absolution happens, you don't really know what she really resolving.

What's interesting is that her paranoia was quite reasonable-unlike in Repulsion or the Tenant, when the characters' paranoia is self-inflicted and unfounded. It appears that the neighbors, acquaintances and shopkeepers are really in on this witchery that relates back to the Black Man. What strikes me is that, in the end, all of the people she killed or encountered stab and eat her lifeless body. This confuses the shit out of me, as I assumed they were all actually dead.

Best parts of the film: 
1. Seeing Mimsy Farmer's really black pubes contrasting with her really blonde hair
2. The final feast.

-Sana

WZ&SC Mixtape

This is a project I've been working on for about a year. I guess its in the same spirit of other work I create in the sense that I tend to take in a lot of media, and as a way to get around annoying the hell out of everyone around me, I often will find ways to filter these things back out (with varying degree of influence).

I'm moderately proud of this, but at some point I would love to spend more time collecting music from my dvds. I did my best to get decent versions of the songs when possible, but a few I had to nab off youtube. Some of these I took from other sites or soundtrack albums, but there are a few gems that aren't anywhere on the net.

I'm planning on doing another compilation in the future, which would go several degrees deeper into the underground. Hopefully with a few from my VHS collection. Ok. Thanks. Enjoy.

- Ryan