Sunday, July 29, 2012

Messiah of Evil (Full Film with Text Introduction)

The problem again and again with doing this site, as I’ve complained about at length on here lately, is that it tends to be only reviews of the more extreme kinds of horror films- Human Centipede 2, The Bunny Game, A Serbian Film, Men Behind the Sun- films that deal with torture, snuff films, rape- that get   many hits. As such I am forced to write on those to keep the audience expanding.  I did in all honesty enjoy many of those films, but it is frustrating that that must become the focus in order to keep the readership numbers high.  A film like Messiah of Evil is a good example of why I find this all very stifling. Even when it comes to horror cinema as the central topic, an extreme horror film like The Bunny Game of Human Centipede 2 does not represent by any stretch of the imagination the full scope of engaging horror films.  I kind of like this film Messiah of Evil from the 70’s that I saw last night at the Sci-Fi center in Vegas. No, this film only has flesh eating zombies, it does not involve prolonged sexual torture, rape and impregnation of human woman by aliens or monsters, or snuff films in anyway.  It was never banned in any country.  Messiah of Evil is like a zombie movie made by people on seven hits of acid or something.  I’d never heard of it but apparently a lot of people view it as a kind of a lost classic.  A good example of one such individual is Brad Jones “the Cinema Snob” (whose snuff-flick themed movie Cheap I reviewed on here).  Brad Jones has the whole shtick that he never likes anything, but he loves Messiah of Evil.  The general plot synopsis is a woman who has lost contact with her father, a painter- (and the paintings of his shown in the film are all tripped out, of course) goes to a small town in Northern California, where she meets up with some weird traveling bohemian types.  Her father’s notes suggest that something very bad is happening in this town, and then, you guessed it- flesh eating zombies.  There’s a kind of Antichrist figure that appears, as the title would suggest, but he’s a weird old west Antichrist, an Anti-Joseph Smith almost- it involves the Donner Party.  The film also includes some very nice early electronic soundtrack work akin to the soundtrack work of Can or Goblin from the same time period.  This film is more the sort of thing that I myself am into, weird zombie films from the 70’s and the like- but unfortunately on-line audiences seem focused on digging up images of sexual violation.   That is truly a shame in my book. 

Saturday, July 28, 2012

The M Lady Tapes

Many of the people who have reached my site have used the search words “M Lady Tapes”.  I will make some brief notes here about what they are and some information about them.  This is not a subject I find that interesting myself, so I won’t go into that much detail about it.   Serial killers Leonard Lake and his accomplice Charles Ng in California tortured, raped and murdered a number of women up at their cabin where they lived.  Some of the sexual abuse and torture was captured on video.  I have seen some clips from these tapes which appear in the documentary Snuff: A Documentary About Killing on Camera which I reviewed on here.  Apparently, this M Lady Tape footage is in some form available on-line but I have never had enough curiosity about it to try and get a hold of the footage.   This footage doesn’t constitute snuff footage because there’s no evidence they made the tapes for purpose of profit, a vital element in the definition of snuff.  The Luka Magnotta video which surfaced more recently is not authentic snuff footage for much the same reason.  Yeah, these M Lady Tapes are real unfortunately, and supposedly you can get a hold of them.   I can’t imagine why you  would want to, but apparently they’re around. 

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Extreme Horror Video Review! Night of the Seagulls

I’ve had to discontinue music reviews because of a general lack of public interest, but this is a little bit of musical trivia that I think merits mention.  Two bands have different songs entitled “Night of the Seagulls” that are inspired by the same Spanish zombie film from the 70’s of the same name.  One is by the band Templars (sometimes called The Templars), a skinhead (not the Nazi kind) “oi” punk band from the New York area in the 90’s.  The other is by the British doom metal band Cathedral. The band Templars I’ve known about for a little over ten years. Every so often I meet someone who is a Templars fan not often.  I sort of feel that of all the “punk” bands I’ve ever heard, they stand out as being the best.  I’ve been listening to them a lot lately.   They are a real underrated treasure I think.  I really like “Night of the Seagulls” by Templars.  The funny thing is that the really almost just as good and also underrated is the Cathedral song “Night of the Seagulls” is also really great.  I used to reference doom metal on this blog frequently, but by and large I’ve gotten sort of sick of metal.  Cathedral is good, I’ve always sort of overlooked them.  I have these very specific, almost OCD like compulsions about what music I listen to.  I have very narrow tastes that a lot of people find quite strange.  One of those is listening to some very odd music made as soundtracks for European horror/b-films from the 70’s such as the Vampyre Lesbos soundtrack and of course the work the Italian “progressive rock” band Goblin did for Dario Argento and others.  I’ve taken a tiny break from being obsessed with music from such films and listening to music inspired and about a European horror film from the 70’s in the form of both “Night of The Seagulls” by Templars and “Night of the Seagulls” by Cathedral.  
How is the film?  The film I would say is decent.  I have a real taste for campy horror cinema like this. It’s actually the last of the Blind Dead film series by Amando de Ossorio. Ossorio has a little bit of a perverted side.  He’s a little bit of a sleaze director.  However, people who are into extreme Asian torture videos, movies in which women are raped and impregnated by monsters, Spongebob Squarepants Porn, and trying to locate real snuff footage will find this film tame most likely.  That’s too bad.   There is, however, a good bit of breast exposure in this film.  Previous movies of the Blind Dead series I saw I found to have pacing problems, Night of the Seagulls less so.  The general plotline is that a doctor and his wife show up in this coastal village where the natives sacrifice young women to these undead knights without eyes.   In the other Blind Dead movies it is made clear that these are supposed to be Knights Templar.  I kind of like it.  It’s an okay film.     

Monday, July 23, 2012

More Whacky Fun with Snuff Flicks: Thesis(Tesis) and Mute Witness!


The funny thing is, I know exactly who is to blame for this whole thing.   It’s a dirty hippy named Ed Saunders.  He was the singer in a 60’s band called The Fugs, but this is not his work with the Fugs which I’m talking about.  Ed Saunders wrote a book on the Manson Family killings called The Family that was full of factual errors for which his publisher was sued successfully.  But there is one enduring contribution to our culture that is still at work.  That is far as I’ve ever heard or read of, The Family is the first place in which the unconfirmed rumor of the “snuff flick” originated.  Blogging about the subject and the numerous films that have incorporated the myth as a plot device has become a dull chore for me but it is a necessary evil because of the huge number of hits such reviews get.  I’ve gone through a lot of these silly movies.  Emanuelle in America is the one that’s kind of a European soft core film, A Serbian Film is the really extreme one,  Cheap is the one where the guy had good idea but no money, The Last House on Dead End Street is the one that is impossible to find, etc.   Then now, I’m down two these last two that I’ve run across which are better described as thrillers than horror movies from back in the 90’s.  One is the Spanish film Thesis or Tesis the other is a film called Mute Witness which is a US film shot in Russia.  These films are both good but not great.  I found them both for about ten bucks combined, so no great loss or win on that one.  They both have film geek types as characters and are semi self-referential, i.e. sort of films about film.   Thesis is about a film student who uncovers a snuff film operation on campus.  I don’t feel like giving a full plot synopsis because I’m lazy and sick of these films.    If you’re looking for hardcore degenerate kind of material or real snuff films, I’m sure Thesis will bore you.   It’s like the Saved by the Bell of the snuff film mythology.  There is some attempt to comment or observe about society and medias fixation with violence in it, but it is sort of just thrown out there in a very superficial manner.  I prefer Mute Witness which is about a mute woman working on a low budget horror film in Moscow who witnesses some Russian mob stuff involving snuff flicks.  This is not because Mute Witness is a brilliant film, but rather because the actress that plays the mute woman looked pretty sexy getting into a bath in the film.
Actually, Mute Witness is a little on the cutesy side.  That’s kind of like Saved by the Bell snuff flick action to!

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Extreme Torture Snuff Video Action




I lied.  This blog post does not contain hardcore snuff flick action or extreme torture video action.  Posts get more hits when I give them titles like that though, which is why I did it.   These are two other videos that are probably just as disturbing as a real snuff flick if you actually thought about them.  In the one the actor Robert Blake flips out while he’s being interviewed about being tried for killing his wife.  The other one two politicians from Jordan are arguing on TV and one pulls out a gun. 

 http://www.youtube.com/embed/-rcyZmuuVV0

http://www.youtube.com/embed/-0YMNFXPAKE






Sunday, July 8, 2012

More Extreme Hardcore Snuff Flick Action! A Further Meditation on the Nature of Snuff Flicks...

Snuff flicks are an urban legend from the 70’s with very little concrete evidence to support their existence. However, I have successfully used this legend to become famous, because thousands of people are looking for them. The clearest explanation is simply that there are a lot of people who get off on watching something die. One might think that snuff flicks exist somewhere, simply because the human race is too sick for them not to. The thing is it would be easier and probably cheaper to make a fake snuff flick. Certainly, huge snuff flick rings do not exist which is part of the urban legend as we’ve never seen a snuff flick trial ever, for example. So the snuff flick thing is also as much about the gullibility of mankind as anything else. I have at least one more review of some films that have used snuff films as a plot device slatted ahead.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Extreme Death Caught on Camera Video Action for Hardcore Snuff Film Fans! Guest Staring Tom Cruise!

Yes, the endless snuff film thing: not only do I get sick of writing about them but people never stop looking them up on-line for reasons I don’t fully understand, but now I’m even tired of repeating that I’m bored of writing about the subject and don’t get the fascination. For those looking for snuff films, I can say that there are more than enough videos of people dying caught on camera to look at. This one is from a courtroom in Arizona where a man named Michael Marin was found guilty of arson of his own home because he couldn’t afford the mortgage anymore. He appears to have consumed a poison in court upon hearing the verdict. It is not footage of murder set up on camera for the deliberate purpose of sales, but hey, if you want to watch someone die, I have provided this video right here, which was shown on mainstream news in many places and is widely available on-line. I think it was probably only the tenth most interesting thing in the news this week, but here it is for you. I think the whole thing with Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes getting divorced is even a lot more interesting, personally. I wrote a short story about the topic years ago. Rupert Murdoch over at Fox tweeted this morning that he thought this story was going to reveal a lot more and that Scientologist are “creepy, maybe evil” and one of the publications he owns, Murdoch owns, the New York Post ran a story today suggesting that the marriage was essentially arranged and staged. To be honest I don’t know how much will come out about Scientology and all that. In my mind there is still at this point the distinct possibility that Katie Holmes divorced Tom Cruise purely because he wasn’t an especially good husband, and not over his being gay as he is rumored to be or weirdness involving the church. Rupert Murdoch’s been in the news business a good long while though, so when he smells a little smoke there may be a little bit of fire. Of course, much larger audiences will be drawn to this post for use of the words “extreme”, “snuff film”, and “hardcore” in the title.