WINNERS AND SINNERS DEPARTMENT:

After posting that we had received a grand total of zero entries in our Killer Snakes DVD giveaway last week, the Sleazegrinder mailbox was… well, it probably sounds better to say that we were inundated with contest hopefuls, but in reality, three guys sent in their names and addresses. And from that batch, we picked a winner – longtime Sleazegrinder support D’Electrique, who echoed what so many other creeps and weirdos have said in recent months: “People really do win at Sleazegrinder.com.”

And to prove that, we’ve got another DVD contest for you! We received DVDs of The Johnny Cash Christmas Special from the fine folks at Shout! Factory back in December, but I never got around to posting them at the appropriate time (I was on vacation – sue me). But hey, Johnny Cash is cool all year long, and these discs prove that he could make even “Frosty The Snow Man” sound badass. Two lucky sleaze beasts will have their choice of either the 1976 special, which features The Man in Black with wife June, Roy Clark and, uh, Tony Orlando and Dawn, or the 1977 special, which features a Sun Records reunion with Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and Jerry Lee Lewis, who pay tribute to the recently departed Elvis Presley. Want a shot at either of these? Send your name and address to sleazegrinder@gmail.com and put It’s a Johnny Cash Christmas in January in the subject line – oh, and make sure to tell us which of the two specials you want (first come, first serve). Contest ends in 10 days (or whenever someone sends in an entry).

Johnny and friends frolic at Xmas:

LATE ADDITIONS (OR, I FUCKED UP) DEPARTMENT:

Speaking of stuff from December, the elegant perverts at Severin Films released an uncut version of Lucio Fulci’s The Psychic (a.k.a. Seven Notes in Black; you heard a snippet of its soundtrack in Kill Bill) on December 18, and I, ever the thorough journalist, completely forgot to mention it. Fulci fans should know that the movie hews a lot closer to his ‘70s thrillers than the full-on gorefests of the ‘80s like Zombie and The Beyond; the story hinges around American actress Jennifer O’Neil as a woman who uses her powers of premonition to uncover the identity of a woman found walled up in her husband’s home. It’s not particularly bloody, but as whodunits go, it’s certainly watchable and atmospheric. The DVD includes the original English-language trailer and audio interviews with screenwriter Dardano Sachetti (who, despite working with Fulci on several occasions, had little love for him), editor Bruno Micheli, and costume designer Massimo Lentini.

Another title we forgot to mention was Jimmy and Judy, which was released by Anchor Bay on January 1^st. Starring a chubby and way-way-gone Edward Furlong and a jumpy Rachael Bella as the star-crossed lovers of the title, this is a harrowing, balls-to-the-wall road movie from hell that comes on like True Romance meets Natural Born Killers meets those two ugly kids from down the road who chopped up their grampa and burned down his house. It has it’s moments of pitch-black humor, but it’s mostly a jittery shockfest that will rattle your nerves and maybe make you puke.

Highly recommended, obviously.

-Sleaze

Jimmy and Judy trailer:

ALSO:

It’s another light week for sleaze – the “big” release is Saw IV (Lionsgate), one of the most depressing and nihilistic movies I’ve watched in a long, long time (and the ugliest in terms of color schemes – the whole fucking thing looks like it was shot through a brownish-green filter). But I trust you have better (or worse) taste than to pick up that one. You’re probably better served with either of the Rarescore releases from BCI-Eclipse – the loonier of the two is a double feature with Chinese Godfather (a.k.a. The Chinese Mack!), a ‘70s brawler starring “friend of Bruce Lee” Wai-Man Chan and Betty Ting Pei, Lee’s alleged girlfriend at the time of his death. The disc includes a short featurette titled “The Last Days of Bruce Lee",which features footage from his funeral and cheap shots from Betty (or her English-dubbed voice) about other girlfriends. Sheesh. Duel of Karate is the B feature, and it’s about twin fighters – one raised by Chinese, the other Japanese – who face off. The other Rarescope release is Kings of Fists and Dollars, an early ‘80s title from the Shaw Brothers.  Also in the kung fu department: Fatal Contact (Dragon Dynasty), with martial arts champ Wu Jing as a kickboxing champ who joins an underground fighting circuit. Hot stuff from director Dennis Lim (Triad Election); the two-disc DVD includes interviews with Wu, Lim and co-star Miki Yeung, as well as a behind-the-scenes featurette and commentary by Lim.

Otherwise, there’s Sex and Breakfast (First Look), a more chatty-than-sexy indie drama about two couples who decide to experiment with group sex as a means of kickstarting their love lives. Eliza Dushku is the main attraction here (and no, she doesn’t take off her clothes), but the presence of Macaulay Culkin as one of the fellas in the fourway is pretty much a joykill. Liberty in Restraint (Sensory Image) is a documentary about fetish photographer Noel Graydon’s attempt to juggle his career, a drug habit, and a family, while When Evil Calls (Lionsgate) apparently started life as a series of short films you could watch on your phone, and has now been turned into a feature about a text message that grants its recipient their fondest desires, and in turn wreaks havoc on their lives. Novel, I suppose.

Oh, and lastly, I’m usually in support of bootleg companies like Jef Films, but their release of The Bushwhacker, a completely insane early ‘70s sexploitation/horror film about a survivalist who butchers and molests the passengers of a downed flight, smacks of the scummiest sort of opportunism. That’s because Something Weird Video literally just released the film last month after a decade-plus of searching for a print. If you wanna see this film (and its mix of softcore sex and gore might warrant that you do), get the SWV version.

Two other maybes to load up the old Netflix que: Sydney White (Universal), a fun, Mean Girls-lite slice of teensploitation starring ever chirpy lollipop head Amanda Bynes, and Confessions of a Superhero, a tragi-comic documentary from the Morgan Sperlock fun-factory about those dudes that dress up like comic book superheroes and walk around Hollywood, trolling for tourist bucks. Could be good, right? Whaddya want, it’s a slow week. Here; check out the trailers. – Sleaze

Sydney White:

Confessions of a Superhero

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Winners and Sinners Department:

Attention, weirdoes: the winner of the Killer Snakes DVD giveaway is… absolutely no one. That’s right, nobody picked up this free DVD. Are you people trying to say that this movie is TOO sick for you? I find that hard to believe. I’ll keep it in play until the end of the week (January 18) – you want it, be the first to send your name and address to sleazegrinder@gmail.com. Subject Heading: Just Gimme the Fucking Killer Snakes DVD. Nuff said.

PICKS TO CLICK:

If you wasted as much time in front of the TV as I did when you were a kid, chances are you caught The Naked Prey (Criterion) on your version of the Saturday Afternoon Movie at 4 – and never forgot it. A completely unique and harrowing adventure picture, The Naked Prey stars former matinee idol Cornel Wilde (who also wrote and directed the film) as a 19^th-century hunting guide whose party of wealthy white colonials is waylaid by a tribe after brushing off their request for a peace offering. The hunters are horribly tortured (one guy is covered in feathers and stabbed to death by the women of the tribe, while another poor bastard is covered in clay and cooked alive on a spit), and Wilde is set free – minus his clothes and gear – to try and evade the tribe’s best hunters in a footrace to the death. Almost no dialogue is uttered after the first fifteen minutes of The Naked Prey, which allows Wilde’s camera to focus on the African landscape in all its beauty and ferocity; the relative silence also amps up the suspense to white-knuckle levels, especially in the film’s final moments. For exploitation fans, the casual brutality of the opening should evoke the au natural ugliness of mondo movies and the Italian cannibal cycle (which borrowed heavily from this movie), though without the geekish voyeur factor. The Criterion DVD includes a new digital transfer of the movie, commentary and essays on the film, and the original trailer; a selection of the original music cues created by Wilde and ethnomusicologist Andrew Tracey are also included, as well as a reading by actor Paul Giamatti of an account of the 1919 escape from Blackfoot Indians by trapper John Colter that served as the film’s inspiration.

I have no idea why colorized movies are still being released – only the most dyed-in-the-wool hayseed thought this was a good idea when these candy-colored do-overs were first released in the late ‘80s, and even though the technology has supposedly improved, there still doesn’t seem to be a good reason to apply it to black-and-white movies. So I’m giving a nominal gas face to the two-disc Special Editions of Earth vs. The Flying Saucers and It Came From Beneath the Sea, because neither of these great ‘50s sci-fi titles featuring the early stop-motion effects of Ray Harryhausen need colorization to be entertaining. Does it matter if the giant octopus in Beneath is grey or green? Not to me, brother, ‘cause it STILL takes apart the Golden Gate Bridge, among other eye-popping set pieces. But I will recommend the special features on each set, which include commentary by Harryhausen, making-of featurettes which cover the film’s marketing, score, and special effects, as well as previews of upcoming comic book adaptations. And both include the original B&W versions, so you can just pretend the colorized versions don’t exist.

HORROR BUSINESS

Slim pickins this week – your choices are The Attic (Allumination), a mediocre evil twin ghost story from Pet Sematary director Mary Lambert, or the slightly better Red Eye (Tartan), a 2005 Korean chiller about ghosts aboard an overnight train. There’s also The Matrimony (Tartan), a period ghost story from Korea about a new bride who discovers that her husband’s attachment to his previous fiancé hasn’t ended, despite her being dead. Or you could go with The Robert Quarry Collection (Retromedia), a double bill featuring the former Count Yorga in The Deathmaster (hippie vampire cults!) and Teenage Exorcist (retarded comedy with Eddie Deezen and Michael Berryman!). Totally your call.

BOOTLEGS

I cannot vouch for the quality of any of these titles, but if you’re feeling adventurous (or have a burn hole in your pocket from too much long green), you can check out Monstroid, a knuckleheaded 1979 creature feature about a mustachioed lake monster preying on Colombian villagers, and starring John Carradine and Jim Mitchum. There’s also Autopsy, which is really an Italian thriller called Tarot and stars Sue (Lolita) Lyon as a gold digger who discovers that her scheme to marry a wealthy old coot conflicts with his servants’ plan to murder him for the insurance. And lastly, there’s Track of the Moon Beast, which I recall from numerous showings on Saturday afternoons, and concerns a young man who turns into a monster during the full moon due to a meteor fragment that’s lodged in his body. All three are from Jef Films, whose titles can be found in better Pic-N-Sav and 99 Cent Stores near you.

Hey! It's an action-packed scene from Track of the Moon Beast!

ALSO

Rollins: Live in the Conversation Pit (Image) has Hammerin’ Hank doing his stand-up/spoken word schtick for Australian audiences, while Teenape Goes to Camp (Splatter Rampage) revives the foul-mouthed monkey boy from Destruction Kings for more gory gross-out humor.

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WINNERS AND SINNERS DEPARTMENT:

Happy New Year, weirdos! First things first: the winner of our Sexploiters DVD giveaway from Retro-Seduction Ciinema Studios is Jason Sheats from the great open spaces of Westminster, Colorado. Actually, I have no idea if Westminster is either great or open, but I imagine that everything in Colorado looks like a John Ford movie. I’m probably wrong, tho.

And if you’re kicking yourself because you didn’t pick up this fine slab of filth, fret not, freakshow, because we’ve got another giveaway this week! And oh, it’s a doozy: as mentioned on this week’s My Kick-Ass Life podcast (didja listen?), one lucky loser will claim a copy of the Shaw Brothers’ notorious Killer Snakes, which makes its legit American DVD debut from Image. If you’re not familiar with this ‘70s-era sicko from Hong Kong, I’ve got three words for ya: sex and serpents. Let that rattle around in your brain pan for a little while, and then send your name and address to sleazegrinder@gmail.com. Subject heading: Ssssend Me Killer Snakes! Oh, and you’ll get extra special consideration if you tell us your favorite use for a killer snake. Contest ends in 10 days.

Watch the Trailer!

PICKS TO CLICK:

I’ve never been a big fan of David Fincher’s movies, but his thriller Zodiac (Paramount) knocked me out with its attention to the details surrounding the real-life murder spree that plagued Northern California in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, as well as the detrimental effect it had on the police and reporters who attempted to uncover the true identity of the gun-toting, letter-writing killer. That it was one of the creepiest suspense pics of the last few years certainly helped its standing among critics (though not with audiences, who pretty much gave it the gas face); now, as Zodiac resurfaces on countless Movie of the Year lists, Paramount makes up for its lackluster 2007 DVD release with The Director’s Cut, a double-disc set that extends Fincher’s obsessive examination of the case. Included among its wealth of extras are two commentaries, one by Fincher and another by stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr. (astonishing as San Francisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery, whose coverage of the case ends his career), as well as feature-length documentaries on the history of the case (including interviews with the police and reporters who covered it), the man most likely to have committed the crimes, Arthur Leigh Allen, and the film’s terrific special effects. And if that’s not enough endorsement for you, Fincher also manages to make songs by Donovan and Three Dog Night seem more disturbing than anything to come out of the black metal scene.

I’m gonna go on record as saying that James (Saw) Wan’s Death Sentence was the best exploitation-style shoot-em-up since Roberta Findlay’s Tenement – derivative to the core (it was based on Brian Garfield’s 1975 sequel novel to Death Wish) and profoundly stupid in almost every frame, it also delivered some of the most over-the-top-violent set pieces this side of Hong Kong, most notably a parking garage chase and shootout that unfurled in a nearly unbroken take and ended with a car launching itself off the roof of a building. There were a few non-lunkheaded moments along the way – John Goodman was solid as a scummy drug dealer/mechanic, and Kevin Bacon, as the upstanding architect who turns killing machine after a multi-ethnic gang kills his son, works hard to keep things grounded in something resembling reality – but really, this is an intensely – and proudly – retarded ammo dump that speaks loudly to the armchair vigilante in all of us. The unrated DVD includes some superfluous making-of bits, but that’s not why you’re renting it.

I saw this in the theater and was amazed at how 70’s drive-in hate-fuck gritty it was. There is one exact moment when it tips into black comedy – you’ll know it when you see it – but regardless, it’s a white-knuckle pulse-pounder with some of the most outrageous shotgun violence you’ll ever see. Unless you live in Detroit or somewhere. Anyway, Death Sentence fuckin’ rocks.  - Sleaze

I haven’t seen Gregg Araki’s Smiley Face, which was unceremoniously dumped onto DVD via First Look after a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it theatrical run, but Sleazegrinder did and liked it, so maybe he’ll tell you about it. Sleaze?

Smiley Face was one of my favorite movies of the year. A memorably loony day in the life of part-time actress/full-time stoner (Anna Faris, the chick from the Scary Movie series), this breezy, often hilarious film is filled with likable characters and memorable set-pieces. It’s actually very charming, which is interesting, since the director, Greg Araki (Doom Generation) seems like a creep.
-Sleaze

Hey, here’s the trailer!

Sleaze and I both saw Dragon Wars: D-War (Sony), a monster movie from Korea that wants you to believe that Robert Forster is the reincarnation of a 1000-year-old kung fu master who holds the secret to preventing an ancient dragon from taking over the world. You won’t, of course, nor will you believe half the shit that happens in the movie (including a demon army that rolls down the main drag of downtown Los Angeles and a sky fight between Army helicopters and flying lizards), but the special effects are boss, and I firmly believe that any picture with Robert Forster is worth a look-see – even this one, which is nuttier than the Planters World Headquarters.

So bad, I actually cried halfway through. Worst movie of 2007, easy. Well, not that easy, it had some competition with I Know Who Killed Me, but otherwise, the absolute bottom of the barrel. If you ask me.  – Sleaze

HORROR BUSINESS

Is it just me, or is there an absurdly large number of unremarkable low-budget horror movies streeting every week on DVD? Most of them seem to come from Lionsgate, and concern either perverts who kidnap and torture stupid teenagers, or animals that eat people. This week’s batch seems to be no exception – there’s torture porn slop like Slaughtered (York) and Scarred (Sub Rosa), nature-gone-wild pics like Maneater (Lionsgate; it’s a tiger on the loose, and Gary Busey’s after it) and Mammoth (Anchor Bay), foreign arthouse weirdness like Visions of Suffering (Unearthed), knockoffs of other hit movies (The Expedition, from New Blood, which is a Blair Witch Project steal) and zombie/infection chillers like The Veil (Chance Encounters) and Days of Darkness (Lionsgate). In short, it’s the same old song and dance, repackaged and revamped to feed the most non-discerning of horror appetites. If anything stands out this week, it’s Joshua (Fox), a little-seen thriller from 2007 about a child prodigy and budding sociopath who seeks to unravel his pleasant little family after the arrival of a new baby sister. Again, it doesn’t add much to the evil child subgenre, but the cast, which includes Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga, is good, and there are some moments that require neither man-eating zoo fugitives nor cellar-dwelling deviates to generate a shiver or two. Nice to see that for a change.

PERV

I can’t say I love everything that comes out of the Pop Cinema factory, but I am inordinately fond of their retro exploitation releases. They have two on deck this week – the first is Volume Two of their Skin in the Fifties series (Secret Key), which compiles some 20 postwar nudie loops with a restored and extended version of The Flesh Merchant (1956), a cautionary tale about the big-city modeling racket from W. Merle Connell, who had a hand in such eye-popping sleaze shows from the ‘40s and ‘50s as Test Tube Babies, Not Tonight Henry, Tijuana After Midnight, and Dance Hall Racket (with Lenny Bruce!). The other is Trailer Trash! (Camp Motion Pictures), a double-disc set of trailers from Pop Cinema’s vast catalog. The new breed of sleaze beasts will appreciate the yards of Misty Mundae flesh on display in spots for Play-Mate of the Apes and the like, while vintage junk lovers will dig previews for Women’s Prison Massacre, Swedish Wildcats, and plenty more. There are five hours of sex, sweat and guts on these two discs, so don’t attempt to absorb them all in one sitting.

Oh, and Personal Best is out this week from Warner Bros. It’s not exactly sleazy, but it’s about lesbian Olympic athletes, and I imagine more than a few of you can find something to feel grimy about with that premise.

ALSO:

Big Bang Love, Juvenile A (Animeigo) is an arthouse drama from Takashi Miike that should throw fans of Ichi the Killer and Audition for a king-size loop with its story of doomed prison love between a tattooed hothead and his fragile cellmate/lover. Visually, it’s as bizarre as anything that Miike’s ever turned out, with its stripped-down sets and experimental dance numbers, but those expecting wall-to-wall violence will find a quieter, more somber and reflective story behind all the avant-garde touches. The double-disc set includes program notes, a behind-the-scenes featurette, and an interview with Miike (I imagine his most ardent fanboys will wanna see what he has to say for himself about this one).

Meanwhile BCI/Eclipse has Happy Tree Friends: The Complete Series, which compiles all four seasons of the cuddly and gore-soaked animated program on a four-disc set, while Rob Halford’s Metal God Entertainment has the documentary War with Words, which profiles his side project Fight’s rehearsals and eventual concert tour in 1993 and 1994, with thirteen live performances and a remastered CD of the album of the same name. And finally, there’s American Carny: True Tales from the Circus Sideshow (Koch Entertainment), a 2005 documentary about sideshow performers at a small theater in Coney Island. Those looking for classic sideshow footage and acts may be disappointed by the project’s focus on newer (though still impressive) talent, though there’s a nice cameo by legendary Human Blockhead Melvin Burkhart.

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