Trash Menagerie

Dir. Herman Yau Being a fan of splatter movies, more than any other genre, seems to invite people to demand an explanation as to one’s enjoyment of them. No one will roll their eyes at you for watching a period drama, no one will think your sick or depraved for seeing the latest comic book movie, and romantic comedies seem to always squeak by as a guilty pleasure. Even more mainstream horror movies will get a pass if they’re “artsy” enough. But many people still seem to have this puritanical aversion to gore films and the people who enjoy them. I can’t really explain why I like gore movies. Maybe it helps me process my anxieties regarding death. Maybe I find it cathartic to see such extreme displays of bodily carnage. In any case, I don’t need to explain it to you. I like em’ and that’s reason enough. With that out of the way, Ebola Syndrome is a completely indefensible film. Within the first five minutes there is dick stabbing, head crushing, tongue cutting, and an attempt...

aka Sewage Baby Dir. Francis Teri The Suckling (1990) is what happens when community theater skill and Troma-esque gonzo shock sensibility meet to deliver what appears to be heavy handed Catholic propaganda packaged in a scuzzy D-Grade creature feature. It’s like the husk of an after school special lying in the gutter after a meth bender. The story begins with a Texas Chain Saw Massacre  (1974) style title crawl claiming the film is based on true events (wink, wink). Then there’s a dream within a dream, and then finally a frame story about two very small doctors discussing the sole survivor of a bloodbath weeks earlier. Finally in the story proper, we see a dude who looks like Archie Andrews leading his girlfriend, our main character, to a decrepit house that houses a brothel/abortion clinic. There’s some cringey nudity during a scene showing one of the prostitutes with a john. It’s purpose in the film seems to be to garner a few laughs via slapstick. Mostly it’s...

Dir. Ngai Choi Lam Consuming the amount of exploitation films that I do, I find there are starts and lulls in the kinds of trash I’m interested in. It generally goes that I focus on one genre and dig through it until I hit the bottom of the barrel. Zombie, Slasher, Giallo, Cannibal, Killer Kids, Post-Apocalyptic Mad Max Ripoffs. When you watch to many of one category in a row, the subgenre starts to lose its luster, especially once you’re left with only the dregs of what it has to offer. So it’s always exciting to sink teeth into a new genre, to explore some new territory. In this instance, new territory means the Hong Kong genre cinema of the 80’s and 90’s, and if The Cat is any indicator, this new territory is goddamn glorious. The Cat concerns Wisely*, an adventurer/novelist? investigating the theft of a priceless artifact (dubbed simply, The Octagon) from a museum. He soon discovers the culprits are a young woman, an old man, and a cat, from outer space. The Octagon i...

 Dir. James Cummins A small scale zombie flick that doesn’t really follow too many zombie movie mechanics, so it’s really more of a creature feature/monster movie if you care about semantics, The Boneyard is a fun romp through a mortuary if you can make it past the first half of it. The film begins with two detectives breaking into what appears to be a derelict house. The younger detective (who looks like Hoover from Animal House ) encounters a blanketed figure who smacks him with a pillow; so naturally he pulls out his gun. It’s the kind of overreaction that would be funny if policing in America weren’t what it is today. Anyways we learn that the figure, and owner of the house, is Alley, a medium the detectives want to recruit to help them solve a child murder case. Alley, having been scarred by the last child murder case, initially refuses, but later accepts after having a dream about a decrepit zombie girl giving her a hug. After we learn that prime suspect Chen ha...

aka The Farm Dir. David Keith Life is tough on the farm. And death is tougher. It’s also considerably slimier. And it takes a while. An Italian/American Co-Production produced by Ovidio G. Assonitis and “Louis” Fulci, and based on H.P. Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space , The Curse concerns a Tennessee farmhouse inhabited by young Zack Crane (a post Stand by Me , pre Big Bang Theory Wil Wheaton) and his family. While he’s not working, being pushed into literal shit by his dim-witted, bullying step brother Cyrus, he’s being abused and dismissed by his evangelical step father Nathan. Nathan is such a bible thumper in fact, that he won’t even have sex with his wife, Zach’s mother, Frances, because Jesus. Ever the thirsty neglected housewife, Frances opts to shack up with Mike the farmhand on a night that happens to coincide with the arrival of a meteor on the Crane’s property. As everyone rushes out of the house to see what’s causing all the ruckus, Nathan is immediately...