*NOTE* Sleaze helped Paul out a little this week. He might next week too, who knows. He's shifty.

PG: Michael Toland will be enjoying the blood-soaked, acid-drenched pleasures of Dario Argento’s Mother of Tears (Dimension Extreme) this week – that’s because he sent his name and address to our weekly DVD giveaway contest drawing.

Honestly, that’s all you gotta do. You can practice next week when we give away Feast II: Sloppy Seconds (Dimension Extreme), starring every living relative of John Gulager and the midget from Pirates of the Caribbean. Honest.

SG: So hey, Iron Man (Paramount) is out this week! You can choose from 8 – count 'em – different DVD versions, including the Target version, which comes encased in an Iron Man mask, the Costco version, which includes a mini-bust, and the Borders version, which comes with a sketch-book. I guess it all depends on a) how nerdy you are; and b) how many nerd-dollars you have. Personally, I could go another ten years without seeing it again; despite Downey Jr.'s inherent awesomeness, at the end of the day, it's still a pretty hollow and clunky movie. I do appreciate the commercial overkill in a capitalist-pornographic sorta way, though.

Ozzy and Sharon are still counting the dough they reaped for leasing the Sabbath tune to Iron Man’s trailer:

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Universal) was probably the funniest movie of 2008, which is not saying all that much, as it was not a particularly funny year. But it does have at least two boner-inducing leads in bikinis (Kristin Bell and Mila Kunis) and a hilarious-for-real semi-cameo from Paul Rudd as a stoned-immaculate surf instructor. Bonus points for Jonah Hill's creepy homo-erotic stalker dude. Anyway, it's out this week in the three versions, all of which are 'unrated', which probably means even meatier shots of Jason Segel's junk. There's standard-def version, Blu-ray, and a three-disc overkill edition that I am assuming has a buncha improvised goofing-off that did not make it into the theatrical version. Seems worth it to me.

PG: All I have to say about the three-disc overkill edition is that for its sticker price, we oughta at least see Mila Kunis’ real boobs and not that fakey photoshop job featured in the movie.

Last House on the Beach (Severin) is high-gloss Italo-sleaze from Franco Prosperi, one-half of the directorial duo who invented the mondo movie with such ethically irresponsible films as Mondo Cane, Africa Blood and Guts and Farewell Uncle Tom. As the Americanized title indicates, it’s a knockoff of Last House on the Left, with Ray Lovelock (Living Dead at Manchester Morgue) in the David Hess role and Florinda Bolkan as both the doomed girls and the avenging parents (there are a couple of other teens on hand for Lovelock and his two retarded cronies to abuse). To Prosperi’s credit, the on-screen ugliness is fairly restrained (when compared to the cavalcade of nasty perpetrated in the other best-known Last House Euro carbon, Night Train Murders), tho maybe that’s not what you want to hear. Either way, LHotB satisfies as both ‘70s Continental exploitation and gritty revenge pic; the Severin DVD includes both the Italian and German trailers (see below) and a recent interview with Lovelock.

For patient perverts, Severin also has two arthouse-minded features from French director Patrice Leconte – The Perfume of Yvonne is a 1994 French effort about a draft dodger who falls for a mysterious actress while hiding out in Geneva, and The Hairdresser’s Husband, from 1990, concerns the meeting between an elderly gent with a pronounced hairdresser fetish and the young shampoo jockey he comes to love. Both tilt more towards the “erotic” than the down-and-dirty, but hey, would it hurt for you to class it up once in a while?

For those who like their sleaze straight up and proudly American, there’s the Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers 20^th Anniversary Edition (Retromedia). Time has been fairly kind to Fred Olen Ray’s best known feature – it’s still a dopey but fun mix of cheapo splatter and knucklehead comedy, and Linnea Quigley still looks good performing the Virgin Dance of the Double Chainsaws while wearing nothing but body paint and a thong. Oh, and Gunnar (Leatherface) Hansen is still pretty awkward as the high priestess of the chainsaw cult. But did you expect anything more? The DVD includes commentary by Fred and his co-writer T.L. Lankford, as well as an odd “making-of” documentary that consists largely of FOL standing in front of a curtain and telling us about the shoot. An episode of Nite Owl Theater, with Fred’s missus Kimberly Ray in her Morella get-up rounds out the DVD. Oh, and speaking of Kim as Morella, the latest edition of her direct-to-video creature feature series, Morella’s Blood Vision, is also out from Retromedia. This edition offers a triple feature of the old black-and-white voodoo pic Zombies, which was revived in the ‘70s under the title I Eat Your Skin to play on a bill with I Drink Your Blood; a Filipino vampire pic called The Blood Seekers; and the real rarity of the set, Blood Stalkers, a sporadically suspenseful, Florida-lensed indie about man-eating Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) by Robert W. Morgan, who was a real-life Bigfoot researcher.

It’s double the ‘80s celebrity skin from Linnea Quigley and Michelle Bauer in this trailer for Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers:

SG: While we're on the Apatow-train, Knocked Up and the 40 Year Old Virgin make their Blu-ray debuts this week. If you were a sucker like I was last year, you already have the HD-DVD versions rotting away in your basement with the HD-DVD player. I don't know why I'm keeping it. I'll be dead before it even has the kitsch appeal of Beta. Anyway, if you like buying things over and over – especially movies that are on cable TV every five seconds – than throw some more dollars Judd's way this week. He's almost saved up enough to buy the moon.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Dark Sky) and Dawn of the Dead (Universal) are both debuting on Blu-ray today, but if you think they're actually going to look like they're in high-definition, than you are definitely high. Doesn't work that way. But hey, maybe you've never seen them before, and want to buy the most expensive versions available. If so, welcome to sucker-town.

PG: Sleaze is right – and it’s not even the original Dawn of the Dead, but the Zach Snyder remake. You can also burn your cash in a big pile over Blu-ray editions of Land of the Dead (Universal) the lamest of the five Romero zombie pics, John Carpenter’s The Thing (Universal), the Pang Brothers’ looney-tunes Re-Cycle (Image), and Season 1 of Masters of Horror (Anchor Bay). That show isn’t gonna get any scarier in super-high definition.

SG: I saw a bootleg version of Redneck Zombies (Troma) back in '87 or so, ripped right from the editing deck, and it was splattery camcorder garbage. I am sure it still is, but now it's post-ironic camcorder garbage, which lends its some gravitas. That's the idea, anyway. The 20th anniversary edition comes packed with tons of interviews, BTS stuff and commentaries. If you like lipstick on a pig, you are in fucking luck, Jack.

PG: There is no lipstick on a pig in Possession (Blue Underground), but you do get to enjoy the sight of foxy Isabella Adjani giving birth to some slimy, tentacled horror in the middle of a Polish subway. Later, her monstrous offspring – all grown up and ready to party – returns to get it on with Mommy, much to the dismay of husband Sam Neill. Oh, and World War III breaks out. Yeah, it’s one of those movies. BU’s DVD includes commentary by director Andrezj Zulawski, which will undoubtedly NOT make matters clearer for you.

And if Possession leaves you feeling like your bells have been rung, by all means, don’t follow it with Black Magic Rites (Redemption). This early ‘70s Italian head-spinner stars the late, great Mickey Hargitay as an American who inherits a spooky castle (the same one Mickey ran amuck in a decade before in Bloody Pit of Horror!) and discovers that a Satanic cult is attempting to raise their high priestess from the beyond in the dungeons. That plot description is really just the slimmest of thumbnails in regard to what actually happens in this certifiably psychedelic freakout, which was previously released on DVD and VHS by Redemption as The Reincarnation of Isabel. It’s mostly scene after scene of naked girls running from one room to another, Mickey looking confused, and booga-booga rituals in what appears to be a claustrophobic set. When I interviewed Mickey back in 2001, he told me the picture was probably made in between takes of his other collaboration with director Renato Polselli, the equally unhinged Delirium. That qualified Reincarnation as the world’s greatest backyard horror movie, and therefore is worth your undivided attention.

Oh, and if you REALLY wanna make your synapses go nuclear, finish off that double bill with The Mask (Cheezy Flicks Entertainment), a 1961 weirdie from Canada about a scientist who experiences insane visions after acquiring an ancient tribal mask. Said visions, rendered in 3-D (and reproduced on this disc), are among the most bizarre you’re likely to see from an ultra-low-budget feature – here, get a gander from this trailer:

Also from BU: Harry Kumel’s elegant vampire movie Daughters of Darkness, with Delphine Seyrig and the knockout Andrea Rau preying on hot-to-trot newlyweds John Karlen and Daniele Ouimet, and The Blood-Spattered Bride, a Spanish horror pic involving a newly married woman who falls under the spell of a lesbian vampire and in doing so, ends up bringing the title’s sentiment to vivid life.

And from Dark Sky’s always-welcome Drive-In Double Feature series comes the unbeatable two-fer of Barracuda and Island Fury. The former is a sluggish Jaws/Piranha knockoff about chemically juiced-up barracudas munching on swimmers, and featuring a host of Florida exploitation vets, including Wayne Crawford (Jake Speed!), William Kerwin (Blood Feast), and Jason (Herb) Evers from The Brain that Wouldn’t Die! Island Fury, on the other hand, is a nutzoid take on backwoods psycho family horror courtesy Mardi Rustam, who made many moviegoers’ brains ache with Eaten Alive and Evils of the Night. This one’s no better, since it’s told almost entirely in flashback and isn’t sure if it’s a horror movie or a kidnap drama or… I don’t know. You might figure it out, but don’t say we didn’t warn you. Oh, you might see reference to this one as Please Don’t Eat the Babies, but no babies, eaten or otherwise, are featured in the film.

And lastly, there’s Boss (VCI), a ‘70s-era Western starring Fred Williamson and D’Urville Martin (that “baaadd Willie Green” from Dolemite) as bounty hunters on the trail of big William Smith. The Hammer later winds up as the sheriff of a town full of very dumb white folks. Boss is actually the truncated version of the film’s original title, which you can find out by viewing this theatrical trailer:

Sensing that the need to ogle naked teenage German girls has never lost its appeal to creeps and weirdos, Impulse has released the third and fourth entries in the Fatherland’s 13-part Schoolgirl Report series from the 1970s. Volume 3, subtitled What Parents Find Unthinkable is spurred by the release of a sex education guide from the Hamburg chapter of the faux “Christian Young Men’s Association,” which triggers the usual barrage of man-on-the-street interviews (or in this case, fraulein on the street) and recreations of various salacious situations. The vignettes are again of the tease-and-please variety, though there are a couple of unsettling bits involving rape and one eye-roller featuring a very young looking boy in the altogether with a teenaged girl. Volume 4 (subtitled What Drives Parents to Despair) has some equally icky moments, including a skeevy doctor who molests his teen patients on the examining table and a totally out-of-its-skull number involving the forever foxy Christina Lindberg as a repressed young thing whose fantasies about her older brother go, well, let’s say haywire and leave it at that. Easily offended types will probably want to avoid this series, but honestly, if you’re easily offended, what the hell are you doing at this site?

Way back in the ‘80s, millionaire Meshulam Riklis spent an ungodly amount of money trying to convince the world that his bride, former child star Pia Zadora, was not only a star, but a really sexy one to boot – which was creepy, because Riklis was in his 60s and Pia was somewhere in her early 20s. Riklis grossed out the general population even further by sinking a ton of dough into Butterfly, a 1981 potboiler about a scheming teen (Pia) who seduces her stinky miner dad (Stacy Keach) and later goes to trial before judge Orson Welles for “improper conduct.” The movie tanked miserably, but Pia still won the fucking Golden Globe for it (the fact that Riklis flew the Hollywood Foreign Press to Las Vegas for a private screening may have had something to do with it). A punchline for lame comics for most of the ‘80s, Butterfly has been out of circulation until the release of the DVD, which reunites Pia, Riklis (now her ex), Stacy Keach and director Matt Cimber (The Candy Tangerine Man) to recount their experiences on the film. Amazingly, everyone involved with this DVD regards the picture with absolute seriousness. Hollywood is nuts and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Equally deranged and boner-killing is Linda Lovelace for President (Dark Sky), a deeply moronic comedy which imagines the Deep Throat star’s ascendancy to the Oval Office based on her ability to turn on the voting public. I imagine that some sort of parallel could be drawn between Linda and Sarah Palin’s rise in the current political scene – neither is qualified for the job, and are wildly popular based on reasons that have nothing to do with politics – but frankly, I’m too fucking scared of Palin to make any jokes about her. So instead, let’s simply note the presence of Mickey Dolenz, Joe E. (“Ooh! Ooh!”) Ross and Scatman Crothers in the cast of Linda Lovelace for President and wonder why they had nothing better to do on that particular day of shooting. The DVD includes some dismissive comments about the film by producer Arthur Marks. I’d also suggest steering clear of Bad Girls Dormitory (Media Blasters), a lousy women-in-prison grinder from ’85 that allows its untalented cast to yap for far too long. Director Tim Kincaid (better known as influential gay porn director Joe Gage) later made life worse for VHS renters with Robot Holocaust, Breeders and Mutant Hunt.

Dark Sky also has Games Girls Play, a lightweight time-waster with sultry Christina Hart as one of four randy schoolgirls whose hobby of randomly nailing strangers leads somehow to an international situation involving disarmament talks between the United States and China. Best not to think too deeply about this one – or to get your hopes up for very hot softcore sex, since there isn’t any (and thankfully, because most of the guys chosen by the girls are dudes your dad’s age) – but there is a lot of ‘70s skin on display, and that’s never a bad thing. Jack Arnold, director of such legendary ‘50s science fiction films as The Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Incredible Shrinking Man, made this film shortly before signing on to direct… Fred Williamson in Boss! We have officially brought this column full circle.

Weirdo and the Oddballs, which handily clinches this week’s Best Title Ever award, is one of two truly strange XXX titles from little-known director Eduardo Cemano that are compiled on After Hours Cinema's three-disc set Weirdo and the Oddballs/Millie’s Homecoming. Cemano’s films sound something like ‘70s hardcore with Multiple Maniacs-era John Waters behind the camera (or, more accurately, like Curt McDowell’s eccentric indie porn effort Thundercrack!) – Weirdo concerns a pair of bored headcases who pretend to be sex therapists in order to score with swingers, while Millie’s Homecoming details the sex lives of a trio of demented royals who discover the joys of incest. The three-disc set includes both features as well as several loops and shorts by Cemano (some featuring Harry Reems and Tina Russell), as well as interviews with Cemano and actor/director Fred Lincoln.

Nashville Pussy Live In Hollywood (MVD) features the hell raisers and beer drinkers on stage at the Key Club in Los Angeles circa 2007; there’s also a dogpile of extras, including Blaine Cartwright making out with Marianne Faithfull on French TV, an interview with Lemmy, studio sessions and an alternate intro for Aqua Teen Hunger Force. That right there is your next Saturday night, I’d say.

Nashville Pussy will give you the time of day, as seen in this clip from Live in Hollywood:

As that creepy guy you know with the true crime obsession will tell you, the Beach Boys’ connection to Charles Manson was through drummer Dennis Wilson, who enjoyed the rotten charms of the Manson Girls as Charlie’s way of gaining access to a major label record deal. The bribe never took with Dennis, who gave the Family the gas face shortly before the Tate-LaBianca killings in 1969. This curious period in pop culture history is covered in detail in the documentary The Beach Boys and The Satan (MVD), which is finally seeing the light of day after its initial release in 1997. It’s a sober and thoughtful project which attempts to view the Manson-Wilson connection as indicative of the ‘60s counterculture movement’s descent into the anarchy and bad vibrations of the 1970s; interviews with head Beach Boy Brian Wilson, feral scenester Kim Fowley and Don Was, among others, help to shed a black light on the whole unpleasant scene.

Here’s Denny singing “Never Learn Not to Love,” the 1968 Beach Boys tune borrowed wholesale from Manson’s “Cease To Exist,” on The Mike Douglas Show:

Speaking of musical bummers, Lou Reed: Berlin (Genius Products) is Julian Schnabel’s concert film of a 2006 performance by Reed of his 1973 album Berlin in its entirety at St. Ann’s Warehouse in New York. You can accuse the film of being self-consciously arty whenever Schnabel trots out French actress Emmanuelle Seigneur to visually illustrate the decline of Berlin’s heroine, the ill-fated Caroline, but honestly, what about Lou Reed HASN’T been self-conscious or arty for the last thirty-some-odd years? If anything, this approach, which comes complete with an orchestra and child’s chorus, is exactly what Berlin needs – over-the-top staging and slavish devotion to Reed’s beautifully glum words. His band, which includes longtime collaborators Fernando Saunders, Steve Hunter and Rob Wasserman, as well as Sharon Jones and Antony (who performs a chilling “Candy Says”), is on the money, and I think Lou even smiles for a second during “Oh Jim.” Fall is just around the corner, and what better time to sink into the lovely gloom of Berlin?

Greetins, cretins! First of all, let’s give a big hand to the mighty Sleazegrinder himself for his manful takeover of The Week in Sleaze while I was away. The Zulu King had a tough coupla weeks to cover – I mean, what the fuck can you say about Juiced or Never Cry Werewolf? – but he handled it with typical panache. They didn’t name this site after him for nothing, ya know.

Second, I know The Week in Sleaze has been on semi-permanent vacation since (ulp!) mid-July due to wedding and honeymoon craziness on my part. Rest assured, however, that I plan to make up for lost time by including coverage of titles released over the past few months in upcoming columns. A lot of great trash titles streeted this summer, and I’d hate to think that you missed out on the opportunity to waste your hard-earned dough on them.

I’m also hoping to get more discs to give away to you crackpots in the coming months. The last contest we had here was back in – what? June? – for Steel Trap, and our man Jan Bruun hasn’t even received that disc yet (sorry, Jan). But again, rest assured that more ginchy garbage will be up for grabs – starting now, in fact, with Dario Argento’s completely berserk Mother of Tears (Dimension). It’s the final chapter in his “Three Mothers” trilogy, about a trio of super-witches who scheme to rule the world; the first witch, the Mother of Sighs, was discovered in a German ballet school in Suspiria, while the Mother of Darkness haunted New York in Inferno. The final mother, the Mother of Tears, is freed from centuries of imprisonment by an art student (Argento’s daughter Asia) and wreaks havoc across Rome; Argento regulars Daria Nicolodi and Udo Kier meet unpleasant ends before our girl Asia is forced to face off with the Mother (sexy Israeli model Moran Atias). With so many mediocre credits to his name in recent years, the idea of Argento tackling such an ambitious and long-hoped-for project as this made a lot of fans cringe when considering the possible outcome; thankfully, Mother of Tears is not the disaster many imagined. It’s not Suspiria by a long shot, and to an extent, it’s not even the odd and icy Inferno. The best way I can describe it is Satanic pop art explosion, with Argento’s eye for outrageous color run amuck and his camera trained on the sweatiest, goopiest mix of naked bodies and splattery blood since the heyday of Italian exploitation in the ‘70s. Purists who swear by the giallo-era Argento will roll their eyes and reach for their copies of Cat O’Nine Tails; all others will appreciate his most energetic and insane work since his production duties on Demons.

Get a look-see at the trailer for Mother of Tears here:

So, ya want a copy? Here’s what you gotta do: send your name and address to paul.gaita@gmail.com and put A Real Mother For Me! in the subject heading. First e-mail to cross my desk takes it home. It’s as simple as that.

The real gotta-have for sleaze beasts this week is Savage Streets (BCI), a down and dirty revenge pic starring Linda Blair (knee deep in her tenure as an exploitation poster girl) as a tough high schooler who hunts down the scumbags who raped her deaf-mute sister (Linnea Quigley!) and murdered her best friend. Director Danny Steinmann (Friday the 13^th Part V) submerges Savage Streets up to its greasy neck in ugly behavior and people but adds a layer of grit to the proceedings that makes Blair’s transformation from hot pants chicklet to street hunter a lot easier to swallow than similar scenarios in, say, Angel. And anyone who doesn’t derive a hot dose of cheap thrills from seeing LB stalking her shitbird prey in skintight leggings and a crossbow is just… I dunno, someone I don’t want to meet. The two-disc DVD from Code Red includes three separate commentaries, including Steinmann, members of his cast (but not Blair or Quigley) and the producers. The female stars turn up in interviews on the second disc, which also includes the original trailer.

You can smell the grindhouse sweat and stale Olde English in every frame of this trailer for Savage Streets:

BCI is also releasing Final Exam through its Deimos label – it’s an agreeably dumb 1981 stalk-and-slash effort about a knife-toting killer who takes advantage of a prank to whittle down the student body at a small college. Best enjoyed as harmless retro fun by those whose teenaged horror diet ran towards every Halloween and Friday the 13^th clone imaginable.

 
If you do end up taking on Final Exam, might I suggest Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (Lions Gate) as a palate cleanser? It’s a very clever horror-comedy from 1990 about a scientist couple who discover that the weirdbeard locals in their small Southwestern town are actually vampires under the control of head bloodsucker David Carradine. Matters are complicated significantly by the arrival of Bruce Campbell as a descendent of Professor Van Helsing who shares a similar attitude towards vampires. A smart, well acted mix of Westerns and horror satire from Anthony Hickox (Waxwork), Sundown got plenty of advance press in the late ‘80s but disappeared without a trace due to distributor problems, only to surface on VHS in a messy pan-and-scan version. The Lions Gate DVD restores the film’s original scope with a widescreen presentation that includes interviews with Carradine, Campbell, and commentary by Hickox.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros. has finally released Nicholas Meyer’s fine 1979 science fiction thriller Time After Time, which operates on the most delirious premise: author H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) not only wrote The Time Machine, but actually owned one, which is stolen by Jack the Ripper (David Warner) and piloted into the future. Wells, ever the upstanding Victorian gentleman, gives pursuit and with the help of a 20^th century gal (Mary Steenburgen, McDowell’s future spouse), attempts to stop the Ripper from carrying out a new killing spree. Nuts, right? But it works thanks to the three terrific leads, especially McDowell (playing against type as the stuffy Wells), and some finely tuned suspense amidst the fish-out-of-water laughs.

This smells like the VHS trailer for Time After Time, but you get the idea:

And lastly, Dragon Dynasty ushers Fist of Legend, one of Jet Li’s best (if not his very best) films onto its first complete Stateside DVD. It’s essentially a remake of the Bruce Lee classic Fist of Fury, with Li as the Chinese martial arts student who returns home to seek revenge on the Japanese who poisoned his master, and like that film, it’s a highly influential picture in regard to martial arts choreography (coordinator Yuen Woo-Ping’s work here got him The Matrix). If Li’s recent work has left you craving for the jaw-dropping skills he exhibited in his early features, here’s the best place to revisit just how talented he was, especially in the final showdown with king-sized Billy Chau. Want a look-see? Check this out:

The DVD includes interviews with director Gordon Chan and co-star Kurata Yasuaki, as well as a look into his training school for martial arts actors. Commentary by Bey Logan, opinions by Brett Ratner (pretty lame) and critic Elvis Mitchell (typically on the money) and deleted scenes round out this must-have set for serious kung fu heads.

Well, business is as usual here, which is to say that it’s pretty lame. I’m of the mind to not even bother listing most new horror releases, but I’m sure there’s someone who’s interested in reading about them – I mean, they wouldn’t keep cranking out this crap if no one was buying them, right?

Here’s the rundown: Pathology (MGM) is mainstream bullstuff with Heroes’ Milo Ventimiglia as a medical intern who runs afoul of snot-nosed fellow docs committing murders for their friends to solve. Lame, and its sole selling point – nude Alyssa Milano – is ruined by having said scene take place while she’s laying dead on a slab. Sheesh. At least Vipers (Rhi) cops to being crap – it’s nature gone wild junk with Tara Reid on the receiving end of killer snakes. Copycat (Lions Gate) is not the miserable Holly Hunter/Sigourney Weaver serial killer movie from a decade ago, but newer jive about a psycho who apes such “established” human hunters as John Wayne Gacy and Richard Ramirez. Right.

Here’s the trailer for Pathology – try not to get too scared:

I don’t think the awkwardly titled Skeleton Key 2: 667 The Neighbor of the Beast (Brain Damage) has anything to do with the Kate Hudson movie, especially considering that it starts Ed Wood’s pal Conrad Brooks and big tit queen Syn DeVil. I think it’s also a horror-comedy, which is never a good thing. Undoubtedly more interesting is Re-Cycle (Image), an imaginative fantasy from the Pang Brothers (who recently remade their Bangkok Dangerous to nil effect in the States) about a writer who discovers a mysterious land which contains all the people and things that have been forgotten by others – many of which are none too pleased about their status. It’s more thoughtful than scary, but worth a look-see for fans of the directors.

Also available to eat up hours of your time is Bryan Loves You (Anchor Bay), a ludicrous docudrama sort of thing about a small town overrun by cultists. Not even the presence of Tiffany Shepis can save this one, and that’s saying a lot. AB also has more of the “can you endure THIS?” brand of horror with Breathing Room (people must escape from a lunatic’s trap, blah blah blah) and Five Across the Eyes (schoolgirls stalked by backwoods crazy, yeah yeah yeah). Do I have to go into detail about Bachelor Party in the Bungalow of the Damned (Mea Culpa)? No, I don’t.

Having spent considerable time around an awful lot of Germans recently, I can tell you that they do enjoy a good laugh every once in a while, but you wouldn’t get that from their movie comedies. Thankfully, The Bavarian Sex Comedy Collection (After Hours) doesn’t hinge your interest on its “funny” parts, of which there are few, and those are largely nullified by the presence of lots and lots of naked girls. Four movies are included in the two-disc set – I Like the Girls Who Do (great title), Run Virgin Run (ditto), Inn of 1000 Sins (likewise) and Bottoms Up – all of which are chock full of audacious ‘70s fashions, A-cup beauties, broad comic performances, and even some agreeable groove-heavy Euro-lounge music. Essential for fans of old-school Cinemax late-night.

AH also has the Sex Education Double Feature, which partners two early and notable sexploitation “documentaries” from exploitation producer/director John Lamb (Mermaids of Tiburon, Mondo Keyhole) – Sexual Freedom in Denmark, which neatly skirted its then-illegal incorporation of hardcore footage by claiming to be about pornography in Europe, and its quickie sequel, Sexual Freedom Now! Both have the classic hodgepodge approach of pre-Deep Throat porn – a constantly flickering kaleidoscope of fuck footage, talking heads, pseudo scientific babble and endless reams of stock clips. Not really useful as stroke material, but for collector types, ‘70s XXX enthusiasts and your randy grandpa, pretty essential.

And finally, from your pal and mine, Fred Olen Ray, comes Tarzeena: Jiggle in the Jungle and Super Ninja Doll (both Retromedia), two more of his amusingly dopey tributes to ‘60s era sexploitation. Tarzeena is jungle girl smut (his phrase, not mine, unfortunately) with porn vets Nicole Sheridan, Evan Stone and Voodoo, while Super Ninja Doll is apparently a sequel to Super Ninja Bikini Babes and featuring much of the same cast. Lotsa T&A and groaner gags – seriously, your brain could use a rest for 80 minutes.

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Special Sleazegrinder Edition!  (part 2)

Hi. Paul is still away. Will he ever come back? Who knows. If you’ve ever seen Island of Death, then you know things can get weird when you’re traipsing around the Greek Isles. I have my fingers crossed though because, frankly, this is a tough job. 532 (!) new DVDs were released this week. And it’s a slow week, too. That’s a lot of bullshit to wade through. Here’s the best, or at least the most notable, or at least the most notably ridiculous, of this week’s bullshit.

So, say you found this notebook, and when you write somebody’s name in it, they fucking die 40 seconds later. Who would you put on the list? Personally, I’ve been fired from every job I’ve ever had, so…there’d be a rash of mysteriously snuffed assistant managers out there. Anyway, that’s the plot of Death Note (Viz), a live action J-horror film based on the wildly popular manga. Light Yagami (Battle Royale 2’s Tasuya Fujiwara) is the dude-with-the-notebook who uses it to kill nefarious types all over the world, becoming a sort of death-dealing superhero in the process. And then, as always, things go awry. Death Note is firmly aimed at the teen market (a Tim Burton-y cartoon death figure follows Light around wherever he goes), but it’s well-executed and quite twisty, so… whatever. Maybe you’ll dig it.

 The pen is mightier then...well, you know.

There’s nothing remotely sleazy about it, but earlier this year I saw a great documentary called  Young at Heart (Fox), about a chorus group in upstate Massachusetts who are all in their 70’s and 80’s. The guy that runs the group is sort of a nutjob, and he gets them to ‘interpret’ Sonic Youth, Clash, and Ramones songs in spectacularly elderly ways. The interaction between the oldsters and their struggle to…well, just to survive and make it to the big show at the end is everything these sorta docs are supposed to be, i.e. funny, sad, enthralling, hopeful. Half of ‘em are dead by movie’s end, but what do you expect from 92 year olds? Anyway, Paul would have the sense not to mention this – like I said, it’s pretty far away from sleaze – but I think it’s great, and the DVD is out this week. So there.

Old is the new Punk!

Originally released in 1974, hot on the heels of The Exorcist, Italian possession flick Beyond the Door is a frequently scary Friedkin rip-off about a pregnant woman in San Francisco (English lass Juliet Mills) who gets possessed by some demon-or-other and spends most of the film puking up green slime and growling out future Venom lyrics like “Come on, you filthy pig-lick the vile whore's vomit!” It’s pretty dumb, but laced with effective shocks, and has a suitably grubby 70’s drive-in look to it. Code Red’s release has a smattering of decent bonus features, including an audio commentary with Mills and director Ovidio G Assonitis (who also made the beyond-awful Tentacles), a 35 minute making-of featurette, a video interview with co-star Richard Johnson (Zombie) and more.

Whooo are you???

BCI has changed the name of its Grindhouse double-feature series (I’m guessing the Weinsteins grumbled about it, although you’d think they’d take any help they can get) to Exploitation Cinema, but otherwise, same deal: two mostly-forgotten bottom-feeders from the glory daze of grindhouse cinema reborn as a budget-priced DVD. Nice. This week’s offerings? Cemetery Girls/Vampire Hookers, which I always thought were the same movie, and Satan’s Slave/Terror.  Vampire Hookers stars John Carradine, a very fat and flatulent Vic Diaz, and a trio of groovy vampire chicks in a Philippines-shot romp that very much resembles a Scooby Doo episode, only with a mind-numbing ten-minute psychedelic sex-scene inserted halfway through. Cemetery Girls is some Paul Naschy bullshit. I can’t sit through that guy’s movies. As far as the other two go, there’s several Satan’s Slaves out there and a billion Terrors, so…let’s just hope they’re the good ones. These DVDs retail for like, $8.00 anyway, so just buy them and deal with it.

possibly correct trailer for Satan's Slave:

In the “I Don’t Know Whether to Laugh or Puke or What Dept”, you remember a few years back when some opportunistic fuck commissioned noted scot-free wife killer OJ Simpson to do a Punk’d-style pranks show? Originally, I believe it was planned to be a pay-per-view special but the chorus of “Boos!” were too loud, so they backed off. Maybe they think the coast is finally clear, because out this week is Juiced (X-treme), the mythical OJ-pops-out-of-the-bushes extravaganza. Here’s some of the exclamation-abusing hyperbole from the promo-sheet:

“You will experience O.J. Simpson performing insanely hilarious practical jokes and shocking hidden-camera stunts on unsuspecting real-life people all across America!!! This surreal event is a rousing extravaganza that showcases unbelievable, jaw-dropping, side-splitting segments, including O.J. in: "ESCAPABILITY" -- O.J. as a used car salesman attempting to peddle an infamous white Ford Bronco (with a bullet-hole on the driver's side autographed by O.J. Simpson himself) that you will have to see to believe!! "SPECIAL DELIVERY" -- O.J. as a drunken pizza delivery man that steals his customer's money and food!! "DON'T TOUCH MY BALLS" -- O.J. as a celebrity golfer attempting to escape a menacing Paparazzi that nearly gets decapitated with a nine iron!! "SURREAL ESTATE" -- O.J. as a real estate buyer who sabotages a public open house gone completely wild, including an eye-popping topless female guest!!”

Ick. If that’s up your alley, then Juiced is unloosed as we speak. Probably serial killer nerds will like it.

Ahem. A clip:

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains is a pretty great low-budget trainwreck  from 1982 about an all-girl rock band on the road to ruin. It stars a 15-year old Diane Lane in a see-through top, Laura Dern, Tubes front-freak Fee Waybill, and “The Looters”, a grisly ‘punk’ band made up of half the Sex Pistols and Paul Simenon from the Clash. The story makes no sense  and it appears they just made shit up as they went along, but it’s a remarkable early 80’s punk-rock time capsule. Considered ‘lost’ for many years and previously available only on eyeball-abusing nth generation bootlegs, this welcome ‘official’ release from Rhino arrives in a newly mastered print with audio commentary from Lane, Dern, and director Lou Adler. Awesome.

They're fabulous! They're stained!

It’s another soul-sucking week of emptiness for horror fans. Desperate types may want to hold out hope for Never Cry Werewolf (Grodfilm), about a teenage girl (Nina Dobrev), who fears her next door neighbor may be the wolfman, or Death Racers, Asylum’s Death Race rip-off, starring Insane Clown Posse and some wrestling chick named Raven, or They Wait, a so-so Asian/American ghost/murder mystery starring Jaime King, or even  Monster Movie (Tempe), a Coverfield/Blair Witch shaky-cam fest about a group of friends battling prehistoric lizards. Or, you can just double-dip your way through the week with re-releases of 1408 (Blu-ray), The Mist (ditto), or Beetlejuice (20^th Anniversary edition). Either way, you’re fucked. Sorry.

Never Cry over bad horror movies: Never Cry Werewolf trailer:

There’s a few half-way decent TV on DVD sets out this week: Duckman, starring Jason Alexander’s voice as the titular fowl, a low-rent cartoon detective who almost never gets his man. Seasons 1 & 2 are out today (Paramount). I have never in my life seen an episode of Pushing Daisies (Warner) – a dramedy about a detective-type who can bring people back to life for 2 minutes, so he can ask them who killed them – but, I dunno, I get good vibes from it. I think it might be cool. It’s got great sparkly colors, at any rate, and the first season is available on Blu-ray today. If you like fake nerds and hot chicks, the first season of Chuck (Warner) is out today. S’not bad. Better, though, is Season 3 of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (Time/Life), a vintage sketch/variety show starring the warring bros and whoever else showed up that year. Who doesn’t love those guys?

Fowl-mouthed! A bit o' Duckman:

There you go. Watch hard, and see you next week!

-Sleaze

Special Sleazegrinder Edition!

Paul’s on his Honeymoon. I’m taking over for him until he gets back. So, you know, strap in.
-Sleaze

All the cool kids have one major purchase to snatch up this week, and that’s the 10^th anniversary limited edition of the Coen Bros ’98 cult comedy The Big Lebowski (Universal). The quirky caper film was a bomb in its initial theatrical run, but over the years, Jeff Bridge’s portrayal as the abiding, knit-sweatered Dude has become a slacker icon, generating a legion of hardcore Lebowski fans and they are richly rewarded today with a spanking new edition that comes packaged in – that’s right – a bowling ball. Praise Jesus. The jumpsuited bowler, I mean, not the religious guy. There’s a non-gimmick version too, for squares.

A poignant Lebowski moment:

Child’s Play is a stupid fucking movie, and arrived at a nadir in American culture. 1988 was the heyday of big-haired obnoxiousness, from Sam Kinison to flash metal to monster truck rallies, and its loony kid’s doll-as-snarky-slasher story fell right in with the prevailing idiocy of the day. It spawned an endless series of even worse sequels and a cottage industry of evil doll toys. Today, you can relive the tedium with a 20^th anniversary edition (MGM) rife with extras. What sort of extras? Does it matter? Some bullshit about the Chucky doll, surely.

A toy that kills: Child's Play trailer:

Blu-ray fans with an extra $70 or so bucks burning a hole in their pocket will probably want to splurge on the single-disc editions of Kill Bill 1 & 2 (Disney). Woulda been nice to slap them both on one disc -  I mean, the economy is tanking, Disney, how about a fuckin’ break? – and the special features are ported over from the standard DVD editions, but still, the Pussy Wagon looks even swankier in high-def, so what the hell.  And while we’re on the subject of Blu-ray, head-spinning Russian sci-fi epic Night Watch (Fox) gets the hi-def treatment today, too. If you haven’t seen this wondrous piece of film-making yet, this might be the perfect time to do it. It’s a stunner – even the subtitles rock.

The best part...Uma VS. Go Go!

I don’t know if it’s any good – all signs point to no – but fledgling Italian hack-meister Ivan Zuccon unlooses Nympha (MTI) this week, a nuns-running-amuck horror flick starring Week in Sleaze patron saint-ess Tiffany Shepis. The nonsensical synopsis on Ivan’s website mentions a convent and torture a lot, so fill in the blanks. There’s also new editions of Pumpkinhead (MGM) and Pet Semetary (Paramount) today, if you’re into buying the same fucking thing over and over again.

Sister Tiffany?! Nympha trailer:

There’s a ton of horror-related  re-releases out today from Paramount and Fox , including half a dozen budget-priced ‘triple feature’ bundles (example: Don’t Go in the House Triple Feature, which includes Amityville House, Legend of Hell House, and Poltergeist 2 & 3. Yes, I realize that’s four movies, but I’m not the guy that puts these things together), so I’m guessing it’s a good week to fill some holes in your collection. And if you’re a masochist, Lionsgate presents us with a new ‘funny’ edition of Uwe Boll’s garbagefest House of the Dead, re-edited by the pugilist movie-wrecker himself. It’s a comedy now, apparently. An intentional one. Kevin ‘Hercules’ Sorbo is an eco-warrior battling toxic waste (in the form of black goo tentacles) in Sci-Fi channel timewaster Something Beneath (Genius) and, uh…that’s about it. It’s a terrible week for horror, to be honest. Just watch some old shit this week, Blind Dead or something.

Sorbo-sploitation: Something Beneath trailer

That’s really it. I could stretch this out, but seriously, who wants to watch The Fall (Sony)? The Cell was horrible, and this one’s just going to be worse. Baby Mama (Universal) was a chore to sit through,  Deathrow Gameshow (BCI) is idiotic, the Spiderman cartoons (Spectacular Spiderman: Attack of the Lizard, Sony) suck, and if I want to watch bad Christian comedians (Apostles of Comedy, First Look), I’ll just watch that madwoman Sarah Palin’s RNC speech again.

Ahem. Paul will be back soon, promise!

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