Slaughtered Vomit Dolls (2006, Lucifer Valentine)

It comes off like a cheap music video for a cheesy EBM band, except there’s no music and it lasts 70 minutes. I really enjoyed the trailer but if you’ve seen that you’ve basically seen the whole movie. All the gore lacks impact because we are not led to care about any of the characters minutely, to the extent that we can’t even say the film has any characters except the attractive and brilliantly sleazy Ameara LaVey (who is not related to Anton) as a self loathing call girl. She spends the film saying things like ‘It costs a lot of money to fuck me. Do you have it? Yea I’m a pretty expensive whore.’ For me she was the only ok thing about the movie. Everyone has thrown up at some point in their life. It’s really not shocking or interesting to watch. There are copious amounts of nudity including a 5 minute scene of stripping by LaVey. There is a complete lack of ideas in this film. In a world of Saw and Final Destination the gore is really uncreative. Completely devoid of scares, the film is boring and occasionally gross but compared to 2 Girls one Cup, Goatsee, Tubgirl, BME video, Mr Hands etc its not even interestingly disgusting, except maybe the bit with a guy throwing up blood onto a head that’s had its top part sawed off, but even that was carried on for far too long. It will probably appeal to fans of August Underground and other such shit. Unfortunately there is a similarly themed sequel also starring LaVey, ReGOREgitated Sacrifice.
0/5

Orgies of Edo (1969, Teruo Ishii)

The first of three stories involves a woman forced into prostitution, the next a woman turned on by unattractive men who has threesomes with dwarves. Her admirer disfigures himself so she will like him. The third features a sadistic and powerful man who has bulls with flaming horns charge into a courtyard of women wearing red who are forced to strip to avoid being gored. This one ends in a very graphic way which I will not ruin. Other than pink eiga/pinky violence films it is comparable Salo in its mixture of high production values, decent acting, well written dialogue and sadistic beauty. The most creatively perverse film I have seen in a long time.
4/5
Torrent with fansub by glopglop and lordretsudo (who did an awesome job)

Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (1966, Ray Dennis Steckler)

Like most Ray Dennis Steckler films it starts off as one genre, in this case a straight crime drama and ends up as something completely different. Lonnie Lord (Vin Saxon) is a rock & roll star whose girlfriend, Cee Bee Beaumont (Carolyn Brandt) gets kidnapped. Lonnie and his sidekick, Titus Twimbly (Titus Moede) step into a closet and emerge as Rat Pfink and Boo-Boo, two costumed crime fighters who look a lot like Batman and Robin, and go about rescuing Cee Bee. It’s very low budget and stars the director’s friends and family. Its silliness is fun for a while but its obvious slapstick comedy seems more appropriate for 5 year olds and just isn’t very funny. It does however have a great rockabilly soundtrack.
2/5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFbhf9mjPO0

Chappaqua (1966, Conrad Rooks)

Features William Burroughs, and reminiscent of his life and writing, though based on that of the director. A young man is both and alcoholic and drug addict. We see him stumbling around and lying in bed in a drug clinic. There is no further storyline and the film spends the rest of its time trying to summon up a drug trip alternating from black and white to colour with some dated 60s visual effects like a really lame version of Natural Born Killers. For a film that tries so hard to be weird, psychedelic and dream like there is little interesting imagery and the cinematography is rather bad. A great soundtrack and counter-cultural cameos (Allen Ginsberg, Moondog, Ravi Shankar, Ornette Coleman, The Fugs) are the only redeeming features.
1/5

The Bed You Sleep In (1993, Jon Jost)

The main characters are Ray Weiss (Tom Blair), who operates a lumber mill battling against the recession in a small town, and his wife Jean (Ellen McLaughlin). A letter from his daughter, who is away at university, to her step mother accuses him of incest. He denies it and the wife does not know who to trust out of the two people she is closest to. With the most slack editing of all time, about a quarter of the film consists of footage of streams, roads, hedges and the timber mill in self indulgent lingering minute-plus takes in which nothing happens, the calm contrasting with the emotional turmoil. Tragic, mysterious, well acted and exceptionally dull. For people that thought Last Days was a good film. Similar to the far superior Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.
1/5

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987, Todd Haynes)

The thought of watching a film made with Barbie dolls did not appeal to me, even if it is only 40 minutes long. This is, however, entirely deserving of its cult status. The voice acting, miniature sets and perfect dialogue meant I almost forgot I was watching (creepy) dolls rather than actors. It gives the film a somewhat unique and disconcerting aesthetic. The true story of Karen is simple, she got famous, developed anorexia, and eventually died, but it is perfectly rendered. The soundtrack is made up of Carpenters beautiful music and some incredibly creepy sound design. One of the most haunting, and yet campishly funny biopics ever made. While it is the music that caused the legal injunction, it is probably the fact that he is portrayed as both a closeted homosexual and a selfish jerk that led to her brother Richard taking legal action.
5/5
You can watch it on google video

Angst A.K.A Fear (1983, Gerald Kargl)

The very minimal and obvious storyline involves an ineffectual man (Erwin Leder of Das Boot) who has just been released from jail, where he had served ten years for murder. He immediately finds a house and kills the inhabitants. For the brief hour and 15 minutes runtime little else happens. However, it is implemented with a beautiful yet realistic style with brilliant cinematography by Academy Award winner Zbigniew Rybczynski and is intensely creepy to a nightmarish degree. The dark ambient music by Klaus Schulze of Tangerine Dream is also effective. Throughout the film the murderer narrates, telling us how he became so completely fucked up. It’s too sadistic for some viewers but not overly gory. I heard of this film through recommendations from Gasper Noe and this film was clearly an influence on I Stand Alone, which utilizes voiceover in a similar way. The film also reminded me slightly of Schramm and Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer. Given a good storyline the group of people involved in this film could have made a horror classic. Unfortunately by the end of the film my interest waned and things were being dragged out for too long. It is still essential viewing for horror fans.
4/5
Unreleased on DVD. Available as bootleg or torrent only