Trash Menagerie

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...

aka Terminator II, Alienators, Contaminator Dir. Bruno Mattei An Aliens (1986) rip-off marketed as a sequel to The Terminator (1984), Shocking Dark is a mostly dull slice of Italian schlock hell from the tail end of the 80’s. And when I say Aliens rip-off, I mean Bruno Mattei (Vincent Dawn) and Claudio Fragasso (Clayde [not Clyde] Anderson) may as well have gone into a theater playing Aliens, filmed it, and sold a bootleg with new cover art. Obviously I’ve come to expect Italian trash cinema to be shameless; that’s no surprise. But I was taken aback at how bold this movie is in the almost beat-for-beat mimicry on display. Still there’s enough trashy charm to warrant a mild recommendation provided you’ve got a few friends and some potent potables on hand.   Sometime in the future, Venice has become uninhabitable due to water and air pollution. A group of researches from the (totally) Tubular Corporation, living in the tunnels under Venice to find a solution, send a...

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...