Trash Menagerie

Dir. Barry J. Gillis The world is a pretty terrible place and many people do many terrible things. Violence constantly plagues us and oppression is omnipresent. This is not a thesis statement, but merely an observation, and a reductively pessimistic one at that, the appropriate response to which is probably, ‘Yeah, ok. So what?’ Barry J. Gillis doesn’t seem to be interested in the ‘how’ or the ‘why’ of it all. Or maybe he is, but with all the time in the world, he could not develop the filmmaking skills to properly communicate his ideas. To try to explain the plot of Wicked World would be a futile endeavor. Even if I could, the plot is irrelevant to the experience. And Wicked World is very much an experience. The film starts out as a slasher movie, albeit one that has been filtered through the mind of some extra-dimensional alien being. Groups of young people are killed by a middle aged man in a gas mask. He is able to walk right up to these people undetected until he actually t...

Dir. David A. Prior Of Sledgehammer , Bleeding Skull’s Zack Carlson said that, “ if you survive it, you’ll never forget it ”. That’s not true. I first saw Sledgehammer a few years ago and remembered nothing of it, except that there’s a ridiculous food fight scene, and that the movie as a whole was quite enjoyable. After watching it again tonight as part of AGFA and Alamo Drafthouse’s digital Terror Tuesday, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that, for the most part, my memory did not fail me. On paper, Sledgehammer is a pretty formulaic slasher; a group of twenty-somethings played by a group of thirty-somethings head out for a weekend of debauchery to a secluded house in the country where ten years earlier, a boy brutally murdered his mother and her lover. After a hefty serving of relationship melodrama and the aforementioned food fight, the group starts getting picked off one-by-one by a sledgehammer wielding maniac. Pretty rote stuff. Notable for being the first SOV ...

Dir. Bernard Launois Trash cinema is an acquired taste. It’s not fun for everyone. What some see as singular visions from outsider artists, or happy accidents of low budget incompetence, others (most people) just see as boring or offensive or both. But occasionally there are films so uniquely batshit, so compellingly alien, so hilariously baffling, that they are accessible to trash aficionados and casual viewers alike. I like to call these films ‘face-melters’; movies so kinetically entertaining that you just can’t help love them as they strap you into a roller coaster that goes off like a bullet train to Awesometown. Films like Raw Force (1982), Death Spa (1989), Miami Connection (1987), Lady Terminator (1989), Ninja III: The Domination (1984), Chopping Mall (1986), etc. Then there are films called ‘brain-melters’; movies that are so inept, so bizarre, and so glacially paced that they feel like you’re watching someones fevered nightmare more than you’re watching an ...