The Defilers/The Scum of the Earth (1965) Review

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(More customer reviews)I just picked this up recently and it's quickly become one of my favorite SW DVDs. The two films are quite different: Scum of the Earth, David Friedman/H. G. Lewis's final nudie as partners (with virtually no nudity!) comes across like a high school play about pornographers, while The Defilers has the look and feel of an early-1960s B&W TV drama punctuated with ... unsettling violence. Both movies feature several cast members from Blood Feast and the other Blood Trilogy movies.
Scum of the Earth's world-weary, boozing photographer Harmon (William Kerwin [Blood Feast]) snaps photos of pert blonde cheescake model Sandy, who's anxiously awaiting "retirement." (All her shots are taken with a scarf covering her chest.) She's also forced to pose in (implied) B&D shots ("Remember, I'm not double-jointed!") with hulking, violent misogynist brute Ajax. The chief smut peddler, Lang, smokes a big cigar, quotes Mozart, and plays with head-nodder dolls and a wind-up mechanical monkey. Harmon and Sandy recruit Kim (Adults Only regular Vicki Miles [Allison Louise Downe], one of the worst actresses of all time) to be groomed as her replacement. Mal Arnold (Blood Feast's mad caterer Fuad) plays surly, menacing, violent Larry, one of Lang's salesmen and apparently world's oldest teenager ("Don't forget, I'm a minor"). Harmon convinces Kim to show "the upper half" for $500 badly-needed tuition money, and she freaks out at another shoot when they photograph her face! Kim pleads with Lang to let her out of the deal in the hilarious "straight talk" scene: he excoriates her at length ("Deep down inside you're dirty. Do you hear me, dirty! You're damaged goods, and this is a fire sale."), working up a literal lather as the camera cuts in closer and closer on his sweaty, contorted mouth. Blackmail, (implied) violence, and more G-rated porn shoots ensue before the finale, which includes a baseball bat murder, shooting, police chase, suicide, and surprise wedding engagement between Harmon and Sandy! It all sounds quite lurid on paper, but it's actually rather quaint; you really expect Wally and the Beave to stroll around the corner any second. Scum of the Earth does share a rather, um, deliberate pace and minimalist production values with Friedman/Lewis's gore movies, but delivers plenty of entertainment value for aficionados of this sort of thing. Similar to Ed Wood's Sinister Urge, but with even funnier, highly quotable dialogue.
In The Defilers (directed, photographed, and edited by Lee Frost [Love Camp 7, Chrome and Hot Leather, Incredible Two Headed Transplant, etc.]), Carl Walker Jr. and Jameison "Jim" Marsh, two bored, jaded hipster hedonists, cruise their convertible to cool jazz and neck with their big-haired, ponytailed girlfriends (four of them) on the way to the beach, where they drink, skinny-dip, make out, and frolic in the sand (lyrical EZ-listening interlude here). Sadistic misogynist Carl (Byron Mabe, director of She Freak, The Acid Eaters, etc.) demonstrates his theories about women ...by variously pinching, spanking, and cigarette-burning his girlfriend Joanie. He further elucidates, "There is only one thing in this whole crummy, square, infested life that counts. Kicks! Kicks! Kicks! You dig me?", but his rich daddy (also obviously played by Mabe in glasses and mustache) is threatening to cut him off financially if he doesn't start showing up at the office. Meanwhile, virginal blonde aspiring actress Jane Collins ("introducing Mai Jansson") arrives in Hollywood from Minnesota on a Greyhound Scenicruiser and rents a room from degenerate Mrs. Olson. In a dingy "dungeon" love nest at his father's factory, Carl spanks frosty Kathy into submission ("Don't! Stop! . . . Don't stop!"), while Jim seduces Ellen in the car ("You wanna feel my muscle? Start the countdown.") While copping from creepy Mrs. Olson, Carl and Jim meet Jane, and later, after Jim reels off a list of possible kick-producing activities ...She's kidnapped, terrorized, and assaulted, mostly by Carl, mostly off screen. Eventually the more sensitive Jim rebels, and Carl meets a gruesome end straight out of one of Friedman's gore films. Defilers plays kind of like a really kinky episode of Surfside Six or Perry Mason, Mabe is really over the top (better as an actor than director), and Jerome Eden (Blood Trilogy) as Jim occasionally bears an uncanny resemblance to Ben Stiller (!!). The violence is sporadic and not very graphic by today's standards, but still packs a bit of a jolt; gorehounds will find it very mild, while sensitive fuzzy-sweater types will probably be appropriately shocked and sickened. I found The Defilers mildly disturbing at times, but for the most part campy and entertaining, with rich early-'60s atmosphere, some screamingly funny dialogue, and Frost's crisp, moody B&W cinematography major assets.
Extras include an entertaining and informative commentary by David Friedman and Mike Vraney (apparently distributors were disappointed in Miss Jansson's "charms"); a wild trailer collection, some fun and campy (All Women Are Bad, Confessions of a Psycho Cat, Banned, Curse of Her Flesh), some REALLY sick-looking (The Pick-Up, Ultimate Degenerate), some just stupid (Sex Killer, Sock It To Me); two OK shorts, "Intimate Diary of Artist's Models" (4:00, color) featuring "Ajax" and "Sandy" from 'Scum' in standard nudie-cutie photo hijinks (see what's under Sandy's scarf!), and Naked Fury (10:00, color) wherein a photographer shoots photos of twin girls wrestling in their undies; and another 8-minute Trash-O-Rama exploitation art gallery. Prints of both features exhibit the usual light speckling and blemishing, but are otherwise plenty sharp with excellent tonal values and detail. A must-have for exploitation and Adults Only fans!

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The House on the Edge of the Park (1985) Review

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(More customer reviews)"The House at the Edge of the Park" comes to us from the twisted mind of Ruggero Deodato. If you're not familiar with his work (and if you're not, what are you doing reading this review?), he's the man responsible for some of the most horrific exploitation films in the history of horror cinema. Deodato lensed the downright nauseating "Cannibal Holocaust," a movie so repulsive in its depictions of human and animal death that only the most jaded viewers need sit down with it for a watch. "Holocaust" tried to cash in on the whole Italian "cannibals run amok" genre of the 1970s and early 1980s, and ended up defining it. Another jewel in Deodato's crown of stomach churning madness is 1985's "The House on the Edge of the Park." Fortunately, no cannibals go on a rampage in this picture, at least not of the type that live in the jungle in a remote corner of the globe. Instead, Deodato gives us a nihilistic revenge film that would make even Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood blanche in horror. Yep, forget about the Death Wish films and Dirty Harry; what we've got here goes far beyond the borders established by those "tepid" thrillers.
Deodato's film establishes its credentials right from the start, as we see Alex (David Hess) run a young woman off the road and then proceed to have his way with her. For good measure, he then bumps her off. Obviously, "The House on the Edge of the Park" is not going to be a nice film. Flash forward some time to a couple of rich types, Lisa (Annie Belle) and Tom (Christian Borromeo), driving through New York City on their way to a party. Car trouble leads Tom to a local garage where--surprise--Alex works with his simpleminded pal Ricky (John Morghen). The two men use the garage as a front for a stolen car racket, as well as providing a protective base of operations for Alex's other extracurricular activities. When Tom and Lisa roll in looking for assistance, our two boys are just about to head out for a night of partying. Improbably, Tom invites the two men to accompany him and Lisa to the aforementioned gathering. Off the four go to the suburbs, to a house full of wealthy and sleek people. We meet Gloria (Lorraine De Selle), the host of the evening's activities, and several of her snobby friends. These are unpleasant people, the sort of people who make themselves feel better by lording their looks and wealth over everyone else. Sure enough, they soon set to work on Alex and Ricky.
Making Ricky dance for kicks isn't too bad, but when a card game with high stakes cleans out his intellectually challenged pal, Alex has had enough. Out comes a folding razor, and the horror begins. Hess's character delivers beatings to anyone who challenges him, and his lascivious eye for the ladies virtually ensures certain other entertainments will soon follow. Oddly enough, Lisa seems to encourage this negative attention. She takes great pleasure in teasing Alex, in some cases in no uncertain terms, and even enjoys the humiliation Tom suffers as he must sit idly by and watch this ruffian paw his woman. In the few cases where one of the guys tries to make a stand, Alex viciously beats them down. Whether it's knocking someone's head against a pool table or having fun in the swimming pool, Hess's character manages to keep everything on a somewhat even keel. Until a visitor shows up, that is, a very cute visitor who draws out the worst in Alex's disposition. From this point forward, the situation rapidly falls apart. Deodato, who has managed to keep his cards firmly held to his vest up to this point, finally reveals the movie's purpose in a conclusion that, regardless of your opinion of the shenanigans seen in the preceding hour and half, will stay with you long after the credits roll.
"The House on the Edge of the Park" works wonders as an exploitation film. In fact, I'd go so far as to call it an archetype of the exploitation field. It's not the gore that does the trick, surprisingly. Although a bit of the red stuff flows from time to time, don't expect the sort of heavy carnage Deodato trotted out for us in "Cannibal Holocaust." No, what we see here is a more insidious form of exploitation, one of social class and expected perceptions. The conclusion to the film works so well because most of us--I would say all of us--go into the film "knowing" who is good and who is bad. When Deodato throws a wrench into the whole film, he's exploiting our preconceived notions about how humanity structures itself and works in a civilized society. It's a good job all around, but that's not the only thing going for the film. David Hess, the four hundred pound gorilla of cinematic heavies, hits warp drive here. He's sleazy, nasty, and violent as all get out. In other words, he's exactly what we've come to expect of him after watching him tear up the scenery in Craven's "The Last House on the Left."
"The House on the Edge of the Park" is a monument to Deodato's ability to film truly cringe inducing stories. Shriek Show, a label of Media Blasters put in charge of releasing the disc, does an excellent job with the extras. Expect the usual mess of trailers--"Eaten Alive," "Zombie 3," Zombie 4," and "Seven Blood-Stained Orchids"--as well a trailer for Deodato's film, liner notes, and a still gallery. Three interviews, with Hess, Morghen, and Deodato, are fascinating--especially the one with Hess, which runs on for something like forty minutes. So if you like exploitation, you could do far worse than "The House on the Edge of the Park." You can't do much better, though.


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Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008) Review

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(More customer reviews)Now that the DVD is out, how does it differ from the film version? Even though Vivendi/ Premise won the lawsuit that Yoko Ono filed against the film for using ten seconds of John Lennon's "Imagine", the reference has been cut out of the video. I greatly respected Yoko as a performance artist and had the original records of Two Virgins and Plastic Ono Band. How very sad if a great modern artist's only interest now is gathering greenbacks. More on this in Steve Turner's excellent and revealing The Gospel According to the Beatles, which is full of absolutely unknown Beatlemania.
If anyone actually watched Expelled, they'd see that it's not "thinly disguised creationism" but rather about the freedom to challenge entrenched views. Certain sectors are always taking the church to task for supposedly limiting Galileo's freedom of inquiry and speech (in a vastly distorted account of what actually happened). Hello! Exactly the same thing is happening now, although they seem rather more silent when the shoe is on the other foot. Ben Stein is merely trying to restore the freedoms of speech and inquiry guaranteed in the US constitution to the realm of academia and the hugely controlled "Big Science" of public science foundations and those funded by philanthropic grants, including the Smithsonian Institute, National academy of Science, and the National Science Foundation.
After seeing Expelled in a theater, I wrote a long review of it elsewhere on the web. Now I see it's sparked a rather lively debate among reviewers. Actually, among those who, by their own admission, haven't seen it. One reviewer asks why people are voting against his review (which is against the film). Probably for the same reason people are voting against my review of Dawkins' book: not because the review is "not helpful" but as a way of voting for or against the book or film, as it were.
Having said that, it's probably as impossible to be neutral about this film as about Michael Moore's Farenheit 911 or an Oliver Stone fictionmentary. In my view, however, it's a fine piece of film making. Witty, irreverent, inventive, thoughtful, and Ben Stein is at his likeable, deadpan best. A friend I watched it with said just the opening titles were better than most films he'd seen recently, and I'm inclined to agree. If this film had had the opposite message, I think it would be getting an Academy Award and the New York Times wouldn't stop raving about it (instead of at it).
That's all well and good, one may be saying, but you haven't said anything about the subject. No, and I'd really rather not. If you hold a view generally called these days "Neo-Darwinism" you probably still will after seeing the film. If you incline to an idea called "Intelligent Design", you'll still incline so. If you're interested in battles between factions of the Academy in universities, however, or in free speech and press versus censorship (and this would likely be the topic of many reviews if this film had a different viewpoint), here's an engaging look at the salvos flying back and forth in a social and intellectual debate that much of the media have to date declined to cover.
One interesting thing came out of this film, and that was a test case for "fair use" in relation to copyright laws, an idea everybody knows about, but which seems generally undefined. It concerned Yoko's suing Ben Stein and the producers for using a snippet of John Lennon's song "Imagine". Hasn't everyone and their dog used that song? Yes, but here it wasn't used to sell tennis shoes, but to be considered critically. Again, if the film had the opposite viewpoint, I don't think there would have been a suit, but the outcome was to define "fair use" in its original intent, so that common Joes and Janes don't have to fear cadres of corporate lawyers merely for referring to copyrighted songs, books, films and other materials.
As the film shows, the use of Darwin's ideas to support Nazi ideology and eugenics was almost universal during and following the Victorian era, and was generally known as "social Darwinism". One may argue that these were actually Huxley's ideas, or that Darwin borrowed heavily from Alfred Wallace, but whatever their pedigree, they were pressed into service nearly at once. G.K. Chesterton wrote tirelessly against the Nazis as they were beginning to come to power, attempting to expose their plan of eugenics. In reference to another reviewer, I have read Mein Kampf (sp.) also, and Hitler's plan was entirely based on "social Darwinism". So were the ideas of Margaret Sanger and numerous other crusaders for what was known as "scientific planning". Numerous authors have pointed out the racist motivations behind the Royal Society in Britain and the ages of Victorian and Edwardian exploration, in which races were contrasted in elaborate displays during the world expositions and fairs.
This was also the motivation in the Soviet Union, which forced a famine in order to coerce farmers onto state cooperatives. When Malcolm Muggeridge exposed this plan in the 'thirties, in Chronicles of Wasted Time he was widely denounced by Soviet supporters in the media who wanted this experiment in social planning to succeed. Among these were the Fabian Socialists, Sydney and Beatrice Webb. But Beatrice Webb wrote in her diary in 1933: "(There was) another account of the famine in Russia in the Manchester Guardian (a British newspaper), which certainly bears out Malcolm's reports....Fortunately for the USSR, the attention of the capitalist countries is today concentrated on the Mad Dog of Europe-- Hitler's Germany."
This film may induce a sense of vertigo, being chocabloc full of information and history barely referenced in the media. The effect may be akin to sailing in a calm sea, only to find one has unaccountably hit an iceberg. Or rather the tip of an iceberg, and the film may spark curious viewers to explore the vast reaches submerged below.
Extras on the DVD include: a trailer for Fossil Hunter, a novel by John Olson with a "female Indiana Jones"; An Important Message from Ben Stein (in favor of free speech and inquiry); an advance notice for Expelled: The Book by David Berlinski, not yet released as of this writing; "Practical Applications", called on the DVD cover: "Using Intelligent Design for Medical Research" noting breakthroughs resulting from assuming an engineered, rather than a random process; Theatrical Trailer (Called: "Theatrical Super Trailer" on the cover); Bonus music tracks by Andy Hunter: "Stars", "Technicolour", "Out of Control". Related links include: Expelledthemovie.com and AcademicFreedomDay.com.
Expelled is written for a popular audience, and those with more interest or background may wish for more discussion of science. That comes in an interview with David Berlinski, author of A Tour of the Calculus and many other books, on a DVD called "The Incorrigible Dr. Berlinski". It's from Coldwater Media, the creators of Icons of Evolution, and may later have a general release. For now, it's available from intelligentdesign.org.

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The Pet (2006) Review

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(More customer reviews)This will contain some spoilers, but this information needs to be known before you spend your money on this film. The Pet could have been a nice little film about a power exchange alternative lifestyle, even as unlikely as 24/7 animal/pet play may be. It had enough budget and was shot well enough. Even the actors were good enough(some were distinctly better than others though). Pierre Dulat as Philip was quite good. Andrea Edmondson as Mary/GG was also decent enough.
My BIG problem with the film is that the makers promoted it as a "true" look into a caring, power exchange alternate lifestyle. The maker's website description is misleading as is the film's trailer. They tell you the main characters are intruded upon by international slavers. In fact, the main characters (except for Mary/GG) are all business partners and friends in a kidnapping/murdering syndicate that deals in selling body parts and slave laborers. Philip's wish that Mary/GG not be sold as such is purely his personal wish. So, once again a chance to make a film showing the beauty of a loving dominant/submissive relationship is turned into just another demonization of the BDSM community. By this depiction, you are either crazy, evil or just plain stupid to participate in such a lifestyle. Yet, the makers promote this film as being about a loving consensual relationship. Its really just an exploitation film and
when you break down the ridiculous plot, there really is not much left to
like. One example of this plot is after a couple weeks of training, having your Pet be devoid of nearly all cognitive function(they do say that clearly). So, we have people talking about murdering their Pets and selling the organs right in front of them with no reaction. Oh, come on!
Non consensual Slave Trade is a serious subject and one that deserves much better than this film to bring attention to it.
Having said that, I did give The Pet two stars. It is filmed
well enough and it does have some nice scenes in it. Mary/GG and Nicky/Taps(played by Sommer Nguyan)fetching sticks in the nude outdoors
(in real snow and cold) is a standout. If you do see it, it is clear they did it for real. The other reason is the always lovely Lydia McLane(under a pseudonym Jane Steele), as Red. She has a particularly nice scene at the beginning of the film.
This is not a film to set as an example of any BDSM power exchange lifestyle. It is a terribly flawed, shamelessly misrepresented exploitation film. If you don't care about spending the money and seeing it for the few good scenes it does contain, you might get some enjoyment. If you are looking for a decent film about alternative lifestyles, The Pet is not it.

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Grindhouse Trailer Classics Review

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(More customer reviews)Another collection of superbly trashy trailers from various exploitation movies of the 60's 70's and 80's...when HG Lewis, blaxploitation and women in prison flix ruled the drive-ins and 42nd Street. If you enjoyed the first volume, I would say that this does not quite measure up but is still a worthy purchase for any fan of cyberschizoid movies!

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