“The Murderer Left The Knife… There.” — What Have You Done To Solange?

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE? (1972)
d. Massimo Dallamano 

This lurid giallo serves up the sexy and the suspense in a well-balanced manner, making for an above-average, if misogynistic thriller about the murders of attractive young women.

Do Not Try This At Home

Set in England, a teacher ,who is cheating on his wife with one of his students, becomes the prime suspect of a series of murders of students at the school where he works. All the victims are attractive, nubile young women; all of them are usually stabbed viciously in their vaginas. One in particular is run through the bikini-area by a scythe. Yikes!

When Magic Goes Black, It Never Goes Back: The Shaw Brothers’ Seeding of a Ghost

SEEDING OF A GHOST (1983)
d. Chuan Yang 

After surviving the visual onslaught of Boxer’s Omen, I expected the notorious Seeding of a Ghost to fulfill the same promises of black magic insanity. On some levels it does live up to my expectations, but on most levels it mainly fails.

Classy Love Scenes Like This Make It Worthwhile

This Movie Stinks… Of Beauty: Street Trash

STREET TRASH (1987)
d. Jim Muro

You gotta love those trashy independent horror films from the 80s — The Toxic Avenger, Re-Animator, and Street Trash (among many more). Films such as these pushed the envelope of taste and humour as they stretched the boundaries of what was allowable on-screen — insane gore effects despite the low budgets, and, more often than not, full frontal nekkid chicks (and a couple of penis shots for fair balance).

You Know It’s the 80s When It’s Neon-Colored

This cult movie, long consigned to the back wall of video stores, finally made its DVD debut a couple of years back in a souped up two-disc “meltdown” edition released by Synapse Films. It tells the story of a community of bums living out of a automobile wrecking yard in Flatbush, Brooklyn, and what happens when a 60 year-old hooch, Viper, hits that community and starts melting bums from the inside out.

“She Went To A Party With Eight Dead Murderers!” — The Sentinel

THE SENTINEL (1977)
d. Michael Winner 

First of all, this movie is all kinds of awesome, I don’t know where to begin. Mega-spoilers exist within, and at least one screen-cap is so NSFW, so proceed with caution!

There may be those critics who will dismiss this as a poor man’s Rosemary’s Baby due to some similarities of creepy neighbors and religious themes, but that’s where the similarities end. This movie deserves to be judged on its own merits, and it is quite an amazing film that surprised me with its strong cast, its well-crafted mystery, and its absolute bug-nuts ending revelation.

No Wonder The Rent’s So Cheap

Basically, this movie tells the story of a young model, Alison Parker (Cristina Raines), who, having recovered from a suicide attempt, moves out of her boyfriend’s (Chris Sarandon) place to a posh apartment in Brooklyn Heights (at the end of Montague Street overlooking the River Walk) for the plum price of $400 a month with a $50 deposit! Dream place, right? That is, until the weird shit starts happening, then you know it was too good to be true.

“What? We Were Twins In Our Past Lives?” — The Boxer’s Omen

THE BOXER’S OMEN (1983)
d. Chih-Hung Kwei

This film is absolutely bug-nuts. It’s wall-to-wall craziness like the bastard offspring of Jodorowsky and early Sam Raimi.

But I Look Nothing Like You!

The first thing to catch me off guard when watching this film is that it is a Shaw Brothers film. The same Shaw Brothers that made Saturday afternoons so much fun to stay home and who gave us many excellent kung-fu flicks Shaw Brothers. It seems that in the 80s they turned their attention to the fantasy/horror genre and would occasionally spice things up with, oh, full frontal female nudity.

Much like a Jodorowsky film, Boxer’s Omen is such a grab-bag narrative that you trying to make sense of it all is an exercise in futility. It also treats Buddhism and religious themes rather seriously if in a fantastical manner. Finally, like Jodorowsky, this film is packed with intense visuals many of which are truly memorable.

What I could gather is that the Hung, brother of a boxer whose neck is broken during a match attempts to gain revenge on the Thai mobsters responsible; enter the monk. Yep, his revenge quest takes a major sidetrack when a ghostly monk appears urging Hung to seek him out. Hung ends up traveling to a Buddhist temple where he discovers that he was the twin brother of a mummified monk in a previous life (!). And that’s just a taste of the craziness to come. The mummified monk tasks Hung with defeating the evil sorceror that has prevented him (the monk) from achieving immortality. Hung, of course, doesn’t believe him until he pukes up an eel into his sink.

So for the next half an hour, we are treated to Hung’s training montage as he becomes a monk in order to duel a wacked out sorceror in glam pajamas who commands fake bats that emerge from the skulls of crocodiles. Oh, yeah! And the best part is when the glam magician decapitates himself so his head can attack Hung with its veins! Yeahbuhwha!! The filmmakers must have seen The Thing, it’s eerily reminiscent.

Black Magicians Always Up On Latest Styles

After a psychedelic battle ensues, Hung returns to Hong Kong only to immediately break his Buddhist vows by getting it on with his hot girlfriend, and picking up the boxer/mobster storyline which climaxes in a harrowing fight that is almost ruined by the resurrection of the glam sorceror.

And this is no ordinary resurrection. Three other fashion-victim sorcerors (whose symbols echo the Deadly Venoms (Spider, Centipede and Lizard) — wink wink ) enact the grossest ritual ever committed to film.

First they gut a crocodile (pretty sure it’s fake) and then sew a corpse into its empty gut. Then one guy chomps into chicken entrails covered with squirming maggots and then chases it down with gobs of Durian, that crap-smelling fruit. He then regurgitates it for the next guy to chow down on and add a ripe banana rind to. Who then regurgitates that for the next guy until all three leave a putrid looking mess onto a platter. They then cut the corpse out of the crocodile and wash the worms off to reveal a fully nekkid lady that they then proceed to force feed their masticated dinner. Yowza!

Needless to say, Hung, in a weakened state from breaking his vows, now has to travel to Nepal to retrieve the Golden Ashes in order to save himself and help his mummified twin brother become immortal. It is during this attempt that he has a final confrontation with the lady sorceror and her detachable claw hands.

So yeah, this film has to be seen to be believed, it is beyond out there; and I get the feeling that this film may have been typical for its genre. (The more contemporary Art of the Devil 2 deals with similar supernatural/horror themes so it most certainly is also a cultural thing.) The gore looks cheap and fake, but the ideas are extremely effective and imaginative, and being a supernatural film of the 80s, you can expect a lot of neon colored laser lights.

**1/2 stars for the sheer audacious nature of this film. It’s not great at all, but it is mesmerizing.

So while I still wait for the arrival of Patrick, I will most likely have Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride up next for review.

Pay It Forward

CASHBACK
d. Sean Ellis

Despite the clunky voice-over narration that emulates Fight Club’s style (even cribbing the protagonist’s insomnia) and despite the seams showing from padding the original short film to feature length, I enjoyed the story of night-shift employee Ben Willis finding love again while pursuing his dream of being a painter. This enjoyment rests mainly in the developing relationship between Ben and fellow employee Sharon (the beautiful Emilia Fox who looks like Sarah Polly), a relationship further developed in the feature vs. the short.

In pursuit of his artistic dream, Ben develops time-stopping abilities and uses it to undress the female clientele of the supermarket in which he works (in order to sketch them, yeah — that’s the ticket!). This magic realism almost doesn’t work because the explanation is hardly satisfying, and it strays a little too close to being creepy, but it’s for Arts sake, people! Full-frontal female nudity is beautiful!

The ability to stop time is used for better dramatic effect as the narrative develops and the relationship between Sharon and Ben grows. Ultimately, it is the filmic literal of the metaphor of time stopping in a shared moment that points towards the future as opposed to figuratively stopping time by living in the past.

The cinematography is incredible; colors are vivid and crisp; and camera movement underscores the emotion. The few things that I found less successful was the balance between the goofy Sainsbury employee bits (especially the “Kung-Fu” character) and the relationship drama, which I found more interesting and emotionally rich. The goofy bits just felt like bits from other movies (Trainspotting mainly (there’s even a football game halfway through the flick)), though I did appreciate that they kept the film from being monotone.

In any case, Cashback has its rewards and is a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon. I give it 2 3/4 stars out of 5.

Next up, I should have Ridley Scott’s Matchstick Men.