Sunday, April 29, 2012

Real Snuff Footage


Snuff (Michael Findlay, 1976) - Fake Murder Scene by Franzdrago "Boy that's a really gory scene it really turned me on"...wow, that should be my new pick-up line. What the hell does that mean? People actually believed that was real snuff footage back in the 70's. That's from the movie Snuff from 1976. It was tacked on the end of another film shot in South America in 1971 called "Slaughter" which was then released under the name Snuff to capitalize on the supposed urban legend of the snuff films that started with Ed Saunder's book on the Manson family. Snuff actually did very well at the box office at the time. The DVD of Snuff should be in the mail this week or next about. I'll do a full review then, because I do reviews of anything and everything related to snuff films I can get my hands on, probably just short of real snuff films if they exist. I will tell you what I've learned: if there's no supply of real snuff films it's not because there's no demand.

Friday, April 27, 2012

More Hardcore Snuff Film Action with Emanuelle in America

It was inevitable that I would have to review this film based on the degree of success I've had with films that have plot-lines involving snuff flicks- this one is sort of the 70's European soft-core "erotica" type film on the list. This is a film by Joe D'amato who has a couple of films on the "video nasties" list of films banned in the UK back in the 80's, but I think D'amato mostly did soft-core. For a while he had this pretty Indonesian actress Laura Gemser doing films with him. Indonesian? A good chunk of this film, oddly enough given the title, doesn't even take place in America. I should warn you, this film includes, at one point, what appears to be footage of real bestiality involving a horse. There is an incredible soundtrack by Nico Fidenco if you are a fan of music like Goblin the soundtrack will be right up your alley. Without going into a full plot synopsis on it because I find doing it boring. The general story line is about a woman photo-journalist who goes undercover to investigate prostitution, orgies and eventually it gets into snuff films. The movie is more than half over by the time the snuff flick issue comes up, and there's a whole lot of footage of the woman journalist, Emanuelle, using a secret camera to take pictures of people at orgies and engaged in prostitution of various kinds. The film certainly has a storyline but the sex scenes are really explicit. I guess real bestiality footage is a little much for most audiences, it was a little much for me even though that scene is quite brief. The woman journalist gets around through sex in pretty much all situations. There's a corrupt, sexually perverted Washington politician at the end, so I guess though this is a European film it was clearly made by a European with a good understanding of U.S. politics, that's for sure- not that Italian politics have been that much different in recent years. By the end the Emanuelle seems to get off on the snuff flick stuff. There's also an LSD sequence at the end. I haven't used LSD in many years and years but the LSD sequence is in no way reminiscent of LSD. The ending of the film makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I've seen this film listed as among the most disturbing films ever made in on-line lists. That's not nearly the case, although I could have done without the horse footage. The soundtrack is the film's one real saving grace, but then again, I am very specifically a fan of that kind of thing. I recall once reading somewhere that Joe D'amato's wife said she divorced him because he was throwing orgies in the same house that children were living in, but I can't for the life of me recall where I read that, and wouldn't know if it was true or not even if I could remember where I'd seen that detail.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

William Gallery

"William is a contemporary art gallery located in a garbage can on the 5th floor of 179 Canal street, New York, in a building where Dan Graham helps run a gallery, only 20 minutes in a cab from Michael Werner Gallery, which since the 1980's has exhibited the estate of artists such as Georg Baselitz, Markus Luepertz, Sigmar Polke, James Lee Byars, Francis Picabia, and others. …William is named after a blogger who was recently fired in New York." So says the webpage associated with William Gallery in New York. The word I've heard is that the blogger in question is myself, and that this William Gallery inside a trash can according to Art in America is connected to Art Observations with Jerry Magoo where I used to post material, the only blogger named William connected to the site. I think the notion that I was "fired" from Jerry Magoo is cute in so far as the word fired suggest that I was ever paid. I never got the e-mail on being "fired" which doesn't mean there wasn't one and I had sort of decided around the holidays not to post on Jerry Magoo again because they had switched to a layout that made the text illegible. Also, and this is key, I was never in New York when I was writing for Jerry Magoo, I was in Bucks County, Pennsylvania for part of the time and then towards the end moved back to Las Vegas. I wouldn't say I ever knew the other people involved with Jerry Magoo well and was not part of their "scene" directly. The only well-known visual artist in New York I was good friends with in recent years is Paul Richard, which brings up another point. I've repeated this joke of Paul's in different context a few times but it bares repeating here, which was that because the right-wing radio show host Michael Savage was banned from entering the UK and the film Human Centipede 2 was for a while also banned in the UK, Paul suggested that a little Michael Savage and Human Centipede 2 would make for a great first date. I don't know about a first date, but this joke proved very prophetic for me. What I've done which has gotten the most attention on-line has for the most part has been- a). reviews of extreme and banned horror films like Human Centipede 2 and b.) a libertarian political internet radio show. People that have read my work consistently may have noticed that I stopped running music reviews entirely. That's because it is so very overwhelmingly clear that the most public interest is in either my horror film reviews or in the internet radio show. Nothing I posted on Jerry Magoo ever got hits like the pilot of the internet radio show, and the number of hits I've gotten on the horror reviews far surpass the number of hits I've gotten on Jerry Magoo. So if I was "fired" I really benefited from being "fired" and doing something else. In fact, I kind of doubt even this post will get many hits because I don't know how many people truly care about William Gallery. Certainly no one here in Las Vegas has ever heard of it. So being "fired" from Jerry Magoo or having a trash can named after me is pretty close to totally irrelevant. I suppose it is sort of an interesting anecdote. I think those Jerry Magoo guys are connected to Occupy who just keep getting weirder and weirder. So my response is somewhere between annoyance and indifference. It doesn't have much practical fall out for me either way, because I'm based in Las Vegas and not New York and I actually get more attention for doing other things. This is vital but I can't go into too much detail about it here: Las Vegas is radically unlike New York, and what little of an "art world" exists here is nothing like the New York art world at all. Well, I wish the Jerry Magoo crew good luck in voting for Obama for a second time. To return the favor I've named a used tube of anal lube, a broken Psychic TV CD and stack of MFA brochures and Chelsea gallery invites,"Jerry Magoo". Update 5/25: This video is of some related interest. Because this particular post has something resembling a trickle of interest (though not compared to other things I've work on lately) I'll repost it here:

Friday, April 20, 2012

Extreme Asian Torture Film! Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre (a.k.a Men Behind the Sun 4)

Not long ago, I reviewed Men Behind the Sun on here, an extremely violent film by Hong Kong director T.F Mou about experiments with biological and chemical weapons conducted by the Japanese on prisoners of war at the end of World War 2. Men Behind the Sun was banned in Australia when it came out. In the mid 90's, Mou made a follow up film about war atrocities conducted by the Japanese at Nanking, Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre which is also sold as Men Behind the Sun 4. T.F Mou was not involved with Men Behind the Sun 2 and 3. Black Sun is the film that has a solider cut a woman's fetus from her belly and have it hanging on a bayonet. It is a hyper-violent war movie with very little in the way of plot. There's a lot of Chinese women being attacked by Japanese soldiers in it, there's a good bit of people being burned alive in it. I had read that it is not nearly as extreme as the original Men Behind The Sun, in which real cadavers were said to be used. in Black Sun a grandmother gets raped, so I'm not so sure if it is much less extreme. There's a whole lot of rape and killing in this film, and not a lot or "character development" or "narrative". It is what it is, the Men Behind the Sun films are extreme Asian exploration films based on World War 2 atrocities, big on violence and not real big on storyline as we conventionally understand it. While surely this kind of film is not for everyone, a clear market exists for this kind of thing- this review exists because my review of Men Behind the Sun did relatively well in terms of hits. Is Black Sun good though? Well, this week I also reviewed the fake snuff footage work of Dr. Don which got him into big legal trouble in Canada. While I was looking at that material I really felt that I was scrapping the absolute bottom of the barrel on the subject of extreme horror film material or horror film material that had been banned. I didn't have that feeling quite as much from watching Black Sun or the original Men Behind the Sun film. I'll give Mou that much at least.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Dr. Don's Snuff Film Action- Banned in Canada!

Nothing spells class quite like Dr.Don. The fact that I am reviewing this excrement indicates that I am running out of "snuff film" related materials or horror films that have been banned to review- which should already be obvious to anyone who reads this blog with any regularity. Dr. Don isn't even well known, particularly. The Complete Works of Dr. Don Volume 1 isn't even on Amazon. Dr. Don Smith is this Canadian filmmaker who made very realistic fake "snuff" type images demonstrating gun and knife wounds using CGI that he circulated on-line to advertise special effects services.There is a video of Dr. Don's work available that comes with a brief documentary about his legal problems called The Complete Works of Dr. Don Volume .1 1998-2000. He got hit with some fairly serious obscenities charges fines, and legal fees. His effects where okay in so far as he got it right that the fat on a woman's body would ripple if shot. The acting in said videos, however, is particularly bad. I wouldn't call it wholesome, but I don't really see why Canada would make this material illegal. They really handed it to Dr. Don. His videos are much the same thing over and over- nude and semi-nude women being shot. There is little if any narrative to these films at all. The purpose of these videos I think was more to get commercial work for films than as something to watch hours and hours of straight. I can only be so impressed by the fact that he had a few details related to shooting right that other effects people overlooked. I doubt I'll ever get through all these videos in one sitting- and I am both a big firearms enthusiast and a horror film enthusiast, to be honest.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Murder Caught on Camera Action with Special Effects from 1984!

Yes folks, here at my blog I am trapped in really unfortunate confines. With a few notable exceptions, I can get over a 100 hits on horror reviews, and over at Blog Talk Radio i can get a 100 + hits discussing politics from the position of a gun owner and libertarian. However, if I try to do much of anything else, like run a short story, I generally don't get many hits. So this is another film that relates somewhat to the notion of the "snuff film". Reviews of films related to the notion of snuff films ( such as A Serbian Film, for example) have down very well on here (as have films that have been banned), so I try to get to them if I can. Special Effects from 1984 sort of belongs in this category of films. Technically, a snuff flick is supposed to be a murder caught on camera with the intent of being sold for commerce. In Special Effects the sleaze bag director is attempting to secretly film a woman he is trying to seduce and then she says something about how his career is failing, he flips out, and strangles her. So it does and does not belong technically belong to the category of films based around the plot device of the making of snuff films. The plot line of the film is extremely convoluted. The husband of the woman who the film director kills is cast by the director in a kind of film re-construction of the murder. Than a woman who looks just like the woman killed by director turns up. It's an odd exploration film about making exploration films. Does it work? Probably it really does not, but I like to escape from reality into cheesy films like this one. Also it features a cool 80's electronic soundtrack- very cheesy. I continue to get a lot of hits from people looking around trying to locate real snuff film footage. People with such fixations will be disappointed with this film though- it is fairly tame by today's standards. I'm not sure it would even be R if released today.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Spongebob Squarepants Porn Excitement with the Family that a Spongebob Squarepants Porn Fan Murdered!

Yeah, well, writing about the Josh Powell case, I get so many hits from people looking for Spongebob Squarepants porn, I just have to keep writing about it to get publicity. Hey, they have a whole bunch of Spongebob Squarepants porn out there: I've got something a little different. See this sicko Josh Powell, he used to look at and doubtlessly masturbate to Spongebob Squarepants porn, he killed himself and his two sons and most likely his wife. Here's some images of the family that Josh Powell murdered. I am of the opinion that it is unfortunate that Josh Powell was not SHOT IN THE HEAD a long time ago, but that's just me. Wait, do you perverts get off on that last sentence,too?
Pretty wife. I've never had a wife, and certainly not a lovely wife like that...
*** UPDATES! Because this case is still in motion, and because this is the one post that is getting a lot of hits on this, I will just put case updates on here. This will be the new home for all things Josh Powell. 4/23: Update I hate this news story, but it is the writing I do that gets the most hits right now, so I'm going to keep up on this excrement. For those who've tuned in late and haven't followed the case, Josh Powell killed his two young sons and himself back in February. It's been seriously speculated that Josh Powell also killed his wife before that. Of course, authorities found hundreds of images of cartoon characters performing sexual acts. This included Spongebob Squarepants. Here's another interesting little bit from the Associated Press Monday, this dealing with Josh Powell's father Steve Powell. "An attorney for Steve Powell said Monday that investigators frustrated by their unsuccessful quest to find his missing daughter-in-law pursued an "illegal" warrant that eventually led to voyeurism charges…Authorities said the warrant uncovered thousands of images of females being videotaped without their knowledge, including Susan Powell. Some of the girls were as young as 8." Charming! Steve and Josh Powell, we are talking about some high class people here! Boy, I would never suspect that those boys were sexually abused or that some freaky incest was going on in that household…NOT AT ALL! Steve Powell speaks for himself… 4/24 Update: video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player and here's some 9-1-1 tapes from the fire I came across. 4/25 Update: The sister of Josh Powell, Jennifer Graves was saying in the news today that Steve Powell used to supply Josh Powell with pornography when he was a kid, and that Steve Powell abused the mother in the home. Wow, freaky incest type stuff and abuse was going on in this household? That's one well adjusted family! 4/29 This came out Yesterday: these are apparently e-mails from Susan Cox Powell before her disappearance describing her husbands mental health issues, there marital problems, and addresses issues involving her being a Mormon. I suppose she had no way to understand exactly how far things were going to deteriorate. E-mails Susan Powell wrote to friends 5/7 Steve Powell is now on trial for voyeurism. Here's the latest details from AP: "TACOMA, Wash. — A judge dismissed a child pornography charge against Steve Powell, the father-in-law of missing Utah mother Susan Powell, as his trial began with jury selection Monday. Pierce County Superior Court Judge Ronald Culpepper agreed with defense attorneys who argued that the crime of possessing child pornography requires that the depictions include sexually explicit behavior or that the defendant have some control over the behavior of the children photographed. Steve Powell was accused of secretly recording more than 2,000 images of two young, neighbor girls in their home as they took baths and used the toilet."- Wow, this was one well-adjusted family! Well, don't run cheering for joy on this one, pedophiles. He still has fourteen counts of voyeurism to face, each of which he could face five years in prison for.
"2,000 images of young girls taking baths and using the toilet." That's quite a statement. 5/8 More Spongebob Squarepants video fun- with Denise Cox, sister of Susan Powell, commenting on the Steve Powell voyeurism trial! 5/10 Found this quote from the Bellingham Herald on-line: This is from Steve Powell's voyeurism trial.. "For 30 minutes Wednesday, a Pierce County sheriff’s detective narrated for a jury a series of digital images as they flashed across a video screen in Superior Court. The shots – apparently still photos clipped from video recordings – showed two sisters, ages 10 and 8, in various stages of undress, taking baths, using the toilet. One showed one of the girls in Care Bear pajamas getting ready for bed. Several of the shots focused on the girls’ private parts." 5/15 http://sites.google.com/site/westvalleymalfeasance/false-claims-about-susan-and-steve This turned up just as Steve Powell's voyeurism trial ends. This is a site full of strange material posted by the Powell family. It's got some very strange stuff on it. It tries to use a few videos of Susan and Steve Powell interacting in normal ways with the two boys to suggest that Susan and Steve Powell had a normal relationship. It has some recordings of Steve Powell and Susan Powell singing tougher. To my mind it doesn't prove much of anything, except that as abnormal as the Powell family appear, they are even more abnormal. 5/16 I think this is probably the last note on Josh Powell for awhile. Steve Powell was convicted by jury of voyeurism today. This is for the majority of people drawn to this site who are in search of Spongebob Squarepants pornography. Josh Powell is a suicide who burned alive and Steve Powell is going to prison. The whole getting-an-erection-thinking-about-Care-Bear pajamas-and/or looking-at-Spongebob-Squarepants porn thing did not end well here. My stake in this was predominantly only that I could make a name for myself when I realized I could do that by posting the term "Spongebob Squarepants" porn. But this is not a story with a happy ending, certainly not for Josh or Steve Powell. 5/20 I wanted to be done with this case, but nothing else I do gets the same kind of attention. This is sort of interesting, it's a video created by the Powell family. They've gone the road of odd conspiracy theories and blaming anyone but Josh Powell for his murder of his own sons and his own suicide. They fail to prove much of anything in my eyes. Once again, I hate this news story and don't find it deeply fascinating or anything like that. It is simply that I am willing to do what needs to be done to make a name for myself.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Occupy and the Sovereign Citizens Part 3: Ya'll Need to Calm Down!

People I went to college with are now sucked into Occupy, becoming radicalized on the far left. People I've met in Vegas have become radicalized into whacky far right militia/sovereign citizen type stuff. I tend more towards the gun toting right myself, but, excuse my french, both sides need to calm the fuck down. Yeah, I've been writing about those Sovereign Citizens guys on here, but i hadn't ever met one, which seemed odd to me because I'm a gun owner,a libertarian, and a resident of Nevada. However, I believe I have now met one of these guys. Almost given the context of my meeting him, I was really disappointed. He got 86'd from the bar attached to the hotel where I live, more or less for stalker type behavior towards one of the women bartenders,including, unbelievably, offering to buy her some chickens from the feed store. However, he was a general head case. I said something about liking Las Vegas and Las Vegas having a high quality of life and he would start ranting about the lack of water and how screwed I would be if society collapsed. It came up though that I had a nice little Glock 19 with some ammo, and his guns (unregistered, he bragged) were stashed away in Oregon. He was a very heavy drinker and gambler clearly, and was clearly fixated on the much younger woman working the bar. The reason I think he was specifically a sovereign citizen is that I asked him if he knew anything about the Sovereign Citizens. He said "I don't know anything about that". I said "the F.B.I' s been flipping out about the Sovereign Citizens" and then he said "that's why I don't know anything about that". That pretty much translates to "I am a Sovereign Citizen." I was in the bar the next day, and I stood up and left as he entered to avoid speaking to him. I found out later from the bartender that she'd 86'd him. There is validity to the general criticism that the government is too large and has too intrusive a role in the lives of Americans. This is not the same as believing you are above the law. This guy's life was clearly a mess, he blamed his problems on the government (even though no one in the government forced him to drink or gamble) and clearly believed he was above the law. He was also a real braggart with poor social skills. What I'd like urge people like that to do is to calm down,vote libertarian, we'll see what we can do within the system... My opinion is that the strategy of the Sovereign Citizens makes more sense then that of the Occupiers- be completely invisible, then when a cop stops you for so much as a a traffic ticket, all hell breaks lose. However, the Occupy movement and in particular the "Black Bloc" faction within Occupy have been the subject of an article on the Homeland Security trade webpage HS today. Here's a link to the article, I highly recommend it. I actually learned quite a bit from this article. http://www.hstoday.us/blogs/guest-commentaries/blog/the-occupy-movement-rising-anarchy/3a87bb57b44e5779f7d087472df92af2.html I wonder if that thing about buying the woman chickens ever works….

Sunday, April 1, 2012

911 Tape of a Man who Attempted Suicide by Gun and Lived (Contains VERY graphic material)

Thinking of committing suicide? Thinking of using that old pistol you've got stashed away to make it all go away? Well, you might want to give this recording a listen because of the dangerous possibility it addresses. That is the possibility you may survive the gunshot wound to the head. This is Daniel Von Bargen who was an actor on Seinfeld, I don't even remember his character at all. This should also be something of note for people who send me physical threats on-line, which happens periodically. I don't want to have to shoot anyone in the head. I really don't. But I am a gun owner and a decent shot, so you might not want to force me to defend myself...

The Complete List of "Video Nasties"

Well, do not ask me why the British are so obsessed with banning horror films, but I got a whole lot of milage out of the Human Centipede 2 thing. This YouTube video is like some strange aesthetic nirvana dawning. The video nasties were 39 films made illegal in the U.K. in 1984. A number of them I'd never heard of, a number of them I've already by chance reviewed on here. Some of them are likely difficult to find at this point. Some of them I would say seem fairly tame by today's standards. A bunch of these films I've wanted to see anyway. I think I can probably get through a number of these films, although I'm not really sure I can waste an hour and a half re-watching Faces of Death and some of those European cannibal movies are unwatchable less for the gore involved as because they are excrement. I'll try to get some reviews for these films up, I doubt even I could be lame enough to get through the whole list.I don't know that reviewing these films would get the same attention that recently banned films like The Bunny Game and Human Centipede 2 got. However, my review of Inseminoid from the same era (surprisingly not on this list) is still my most popular post.