gregoodsell Reviews

4 Dead Girls: The Soul Taker (I) (2012)

Horror, from a female perspective

[3/10 · 16 October 2013]

Hi everyone! It has been brought to my attention that horror film criticism is definitely missing a feminine voice, what with Lianne Spiderbaby and Michelle Clifford in hiding – and for very good reasons – and to this end, I have offered my good friend BAMBI HERSHBERGER to review the new, female-oriented horror film 4 DEAD GIRLS, aka 4 DEAD GIRLS: THE Soul Taker. Take it away, Bambi! Okay, so like there are these four girls, these four college students, they luck into buying this really cool three-bedroom house for cheap off campus. They are: insufferable goody two-shoes Lily (Katherine Browning), her sleep-around friend Bianca (Tiffany S. Walker), Lily's lesbian sister Lori (Ashley Love) and Lori's lesbian lover Pam (Leah Verrill). It's a really cute house – they have a candelabra from Bed, Bath & Beyond that costs a cool $59.99 in the living room – and they move in. Oh, yeah, there's this guy (Mike Campbell) who is the landlord, a real, creepy guy who probably hangs out at parks and pays little boys to pull their pants down – yeah, he's that creepy, who is this "Soul Taker," a Naluso Chito – who really is a figure in Choctaw mythology, I looked it up on Google so it must be true – who has lured girls to the house before and has taken their souls. He wears this Grim Reaper outfit that you can get at Partytime! Stores with the skull cut out that you can get for $40. He says stuff, "I must have your soul," and stuff like that and then he sucks them out of the poor girls with video effects.

So the gals move in, and the first thing you know, they start bitching at each other. Lily is a religious pain-in-the-ass who gives Bianca a hard time for having sex with men and gives her sister Lori a hard time for having sex with women. What do you expect, Lily? The rest of the world will conform to your expectations and not have sex? Hey, I don't sleep around with every guy I see, but come on! It's really just as well as Lori and Pam make "hot lesbian love" with their tops on! Come on, people! I don't know a lot about THAT world but I KNOW that stuff doesn't happen in real life! So anyway. They're all bitching at each other about how Bianca sleeps around with men older than she – but hey, what's the point? The actress who plays Bianca is well over 40, hanging out with girls just out of high school – she can do with her life as she wishes! And Lily is down on Lori for leading a lesbian lifestyle and how their parents wouldn't approve – part of growing up is making your own decisions, Lily! What's going to happen? Mom and dad are going to cut you off of their Christmas card list? Well, anyway, the Soul Taker guy comes and strangles Bianca after her latest college professor conquest. NO ONE NOTICES. The walls are paper thin and the gals don't hear Bianca getting STRANGLED in the next room. The next day they notice Bianca didn't go to school. Her bedroom door has remained slammed shut since the night before and no one noticed. What are these girls studying in college? ROCKET SCIENCE? Well, they open the door and Bianca is DEAD. Pam, the only funny one says "She looks really dead!" HA! Well they all scream and go OH MY GOD and try to leave the house but all the doors are locked and somebody slams shutters over the windows, plunging them into darkness. I guess this means they're trapped in another dimension now. Pam says "I'm hungry, let's eat before all the food in the fridge goes bad." A few minutes later, Lily says, "Why don't we knock out some of the windows?' Pam gets all huffy and says "What with?" Pam are you the STUPID ONE, NOW? DUH! What about the candelabra in the living room? Well, they try to break out a window with a chair and the chair breaks into pieces! Oh, we're done for! And so the Soul Taker person comes and says YOU ALL MUST DIE! Aaaaah! People get stuck with knives and then pull them out slowly and the Soul Taker chases Lily around the house but since it's not that big a house, it gets really really boring. I mean, the hallway is only three feet wide and what fun is it being chased down a hallway that's only a few feet long …..

You want me to spoil it for you? Seriously, do want me to spoil it for you? Lily is the only one left alive because she's innocent and the Soul Taker guy wants her to become his real estate agent and lure more stupid college girls to the house. She goes NO NO NO and he chases her around the teeny tiny hose and hallway and she says YOU WIN! I'LL DO IT! And the film ends with her showing the house to another stupid college coed with the Soul Taker guy smirking in the background. The end.

Oh, the film was also known as THE RENTAL while it was in production.

D'Agostino (2012)

Looking for WTF? Look no further!

[8/10 · 23 September 2013]

The films of Jorge Ameer always entertain. They're not always good, but they always entertain. His early feature THE SINGING FOREST (2003)was notable for a reincarnation plot involving Nazi concentration camp victims, featuring well-fed prisoners and very uneven, hand-drawn Swastikas on armbands. In the supernatural drama THE HOUSE OF ADAM (2006), the characters freak out if a front door unexpectedly swings open but remain calm and collected when encountering a man tied to a chair for torture.

In D'AGOSTINO, Ameer raises the bar very high. Dissatisfied American yuppie Allan Dawson (Keith Roenke) lives with his fiancé Sylvia (Torie Tyson) in London. She is quite a bit older than he, which may explain his sudden outburst heard at the film's beginning – "What do fat and ugly people think they look like?" Things are mundane and boring until Sylvia says, "Your grandmother left you some property." Did his grandmother die? She doesn't say. "Your grandmother left you some property in Greece." So Allan jets over to Greece. The "property" is a very nice candle-lit apartment. Allan takes some time to sight-see, and then returns to the apartment that night. Looking behind a heavy oaken door, Alan discovers a disgusting human male (Michael Angels) covered in feces tied up in a tiled room. Slamming the door behind him, Allan takes a hot shower … goes back to sleep … wakes up the next day … does some more sight-seeing … has some lunch … Yes, none of it makes any sense, but perhaps it's not supposed to. Allan doesn't TELL anyone about the horror lurking in his apartment, in what amounts to a twisted agenda. Later that night, Allan showers his new-found friend off, notes a dog collar that lists his name as D'Agostino and checks his trusty laptop. "I see that you're a secret clone bred for organ harvesting," the smug Allan says – as if this would be posted online – from a dog tag that has no URL address. The barking, yelping D'Agostino has the mentality of a newborn baby trapped in the body of a young man, and Allan seizes the opportunity to put him on a leash and teach him a few, uh, "tricks." It's exactly what you think it is.

Very little, other than nonstop mental and sexual degradation of the title character continues for the rest of D'AGOSTINO's two-plus hour running time. Other than a pushy landlord (played by director Ameer himself) seems to interrupt the two mens' sadistic idyll. The viewer continues to watch the film as if to ask themselves, "why am I watching this?" Why ineptly told, D'AGOSTINO hammers home a classic fable of all the horrible things that happen when a human being considers another human being as being less than such.

It falls apart at the end when D'Agostino symbolically eats from "the tree of knowledge," i.e. Allan's laptop for an ending straight out of an EC horror comic book. Allan gets his comeuppance, but its not what the ending COULD have been.

D'AGOSTINO calls to mind such favorites as SALO: 120 DAYS OF SODOM (1975). It also recalls, with its minimal cast, single setting, Greek locale and sadomasochistic games the cult favorite SINGAPORE SLING (1991) and art house favorite DOGTOOTH (2009). In either case, D'AGOSTINO is the rare kind of movie that I wholeheartedly recommend to everyone – knowing full well that lots of them will ABSOLUTELY hate it. See it – it's not a good film, but remains a highly unique viewing experience.

Golok Setan (1984)

Why many attend movies --

[23 September 2002]

Berry Prima. Witches and warlocks. Monsters. Lush jungle locales. In-camera special effects. Pastel parasols that kill people. "The story of THE DEVIL'S SWORD makes absolutely no sense, the acting is often appalling and the special effects a re a no-budget riot." Pete Tombs, Mondo Macabro. No argument there, pal, but this film aside from MYSTICS IN BALI is what I love about Indo films in the first place. Nonstop, colorful nonsense that recalls Italian muscleman peplum at its most indulgent. A one-eyed Cyclops whose eye is a very obvious car headlight is just one of the many bizarre delights offered. The dismal musical score that sounds like the backdrop of an outdated video game just adds to the appeal.

Production note: Why are we treated to a male swimmer's anus in one shot?

Bottom line: "Movies are so rarely fine art, that unless we cultivate an appreciation for great trash, there really is no reason in going." -- Pauline Kael

The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance (1975)

No bloodsuckers here --

[28 January 2001]

-- it just plain sucks. Set in turn-of-the-century Ireland, said film could have BEEN MADE at the turn-of-the-century, what with it's bright, ugly, flat lighting, plot so-old it creaks and gore scenes that would shame a Sunday School spook house! Rich man invites theatrical troupe to his isolated island mansion and the women all start turning up beheaded. Many who like bad movies will find nothing of interest. Read a book instead!

Surgikill (1989)

Milligan mania!

[26 January 2001]

Director Andy Milligan's last film before he died of AIDS in 1992, "Surgikill" proves he was no more adept at "Police Academy"-style comedy than he was with Grand Guignol horror. What a mess! A drag queen nurse whose makeup changes from shot to shot, a hospital administrator less hygenic than your typical bag lady, orderlies on speed doing third-rate comedy club celebrity impersonations are all shoveled all vie for scenery chewing time. No one will confuse this with a good film.

A mad killer goes around bumping off the staff of a hospital set to be closed for development. That's the wafer-thin plot for a series of gags and no-budget special effects with that "Milligan touch."

Reportedly filmed while the director was in the final throes of his disease, this "horror comedy" can be seen as his very jaundiced comment on the medical profession.

Mandragora (1997)

Entertaining sexploitation dreck

[26 January 2001]

A friend pressed the DVD to this film in my hands and said, "laugh it up! This is an old-time exploitation movie, like 'Reefer Madness.'" Slogging through the relentlessly depressing story, I have to agree.

Blonde boy protagonist leaves his small Czechoslovakian town to become a boy prostitute. Nothing goes right, and he winds up a drug-addled, AIDS-infected suicide in a matter of days! Like the exploitation films of yore, it graphically depicts the Wages of Sin while simultaneously filling the screen with Sin, glorious Sin. It's too bad it's such a downer, best viewed in 20-minute increments.

Frightmare (1974)

Bleak, grim and nasty

[26 January 2001]

Director Peter Walker's and screenwriter David McGillivray's shining hour, the British contribution to the "all families are bad" horror genre.

Walker's technique, handled quite well, is that he knows the audience comes to a horror film for jolts and unpleasantness. The audience waits in rapt attention -- bang, wallop, and it really is jolting and unpleasant.

Many things are addressed in this film: neglect of the old, the callousness of the young, and how in the end the acorn never, ever falls too far from the tree. This is the Pete Walker film to see.

Torture Dungeon (1969)

When knights were bold

[26 January 2001]

In your reviewer's humble opinion, schlock director Andy Milligan's most entertaining film. Plotless jumble about a power struggle for the throne of England, this has double-crosses, torture, murder, hippie-dippie Renaissance costumes and an abandoned greenhouse for the main set!

Check out this immortal dialogue from the evil prince: "I am not a heterosexual, I am not a homosexual, I am not a bisexual, I am a trisexual -- I will try anything sexual!" This before a hot three-way with a maid and hunchback.

This film is worth seeing for Magda the Marriage Counselor alone.

Cecil B. Demented (2000)

Muddy Waters

[25 January 2001]

A big disappointment to the hardcore Waters fan, who misses the days when his own little movie serfdom provided an alternative to Hollywood in lieu of trying to assimilate. Divorced from his usual coterie of colorful eccentrics, his deficiencies as a director begin to stand out. He can't direct action scenes, he can't get his actors to perform in concert, pacing is all off, jokes fall flat -- I waited in vain for Troma's Toxic Avenger to appear.

I Stand Alone (1998)

Soul shredder

[25 January 2001]

Whoo! Is this flick intense! The film opens up with the narrator brutally attacking his pregnant mistress and assaulting her mother before he heads back to Paris in search of his brain-fried daughter. This shocker is highly unique in that it begins with some horrifying, don't-go-there violence and has the audience wait in abject dread for the protagonist to strike again.

The butcher IS finally reunited with his daughter -- this is one ending the viewer has to see to believe. Mind-bending triple twists ensue, and the moral of the story appears to be the most evil acts arise not out of hate and anger, but in the glow of familial love.

Horror fans in demand of meaty fare should check this one out.

Eyes Without a Face (1960)

Intriguing mix

[25 January 2001]

"Eyes Without a Face" is a delicious mixture that puts folds in many disparate elements. The plot is pure pulp magazine, with a mad doctor abducting women to supply a face for his disfigured daughter. (And why were horror films of this period so obsessed with female facial mutilation?) The photography is glacial and beautiful, giving the story elements a beautiful veneer. The gore and violence, even by today's standards, is shocking and just a bit revolting. Contemporary audiences will be put off by it's s-l-o-w pace, but the film, although imitated, is clearly one of a kind.

Liquid Sky (1982)

Me and my rhythm box

[24 January 2001]

Just as "Bucket of Blood" sent teen-agers rushing to the beatnik coffee houses of Long Beach and "Easy Rider" made many a man drop his obligations and hit the road on a hog, I'm sure "Liquid Sky" sent quite a few impressionable young people scurrying to New York City in search of coolness and aesexuality. The comparison to those other two films is intentional: skewed, somewhat downbeat views of a counter culture that is still fascinating and seems to whisper in the viewer's ear: "Dangerous, but worth the risk."

The clothes, colors and visuals were out-of-date when they hit movie screens back in '82; why is it that any attempt by filmmakers to show "punk" culture invariably show idiots in face paint? Today, they're just dressing on an exotic salad. The rude, English-as-a-second language dialogue has quite a few choice one-liners: "What 'cha lookin' at, big cock?" Like all true cult films, it has as many detractors as fans. SEE IT!

Dark Star (1974)

In space, no one can hear you belch

[24 January 2001]

I love this movie, one of my favorites. It is the summation of the adage that no matter how man progresses technologically -- we remain human. It's bleak, sad conclusion becomes exhilarating in an existential sort-of way. This is the perfect chaser after an evening spent in front of high-tech, big-budget space opera DRECK (and no, I won't mention any names).

Quicksand (1950)

"The darkest moment in a man's life --

[24 January 2001]

" -- begins the day he sits down to devise ways to get money without earning it." This is the foundation for "Quicksand," and like the title implies, it's about how financially strapped auto mechanic Mickey Rooney goes about trying to impress a chippie in-between paydays.

Very fast-paced and entertaining, things go from bad to worse. From sticking his finger in the till to (perhaps) murder, things spiral out of control, and the admittedly morally challenged Rooney quickly runs out of options.

The one thing holding "Quicksand" from classic noir status is its ending. See it, and you'll see why we hold Edgar G. Ulmer's similar "Detour" in much higher regard.

Chuck & Buck (2000)

Hysterical black comedy with heart of gold

[21 January 2001]

Pity poor Buck (Mike White). A young man approaching 30, his emotional development has seemingly ceased at the age of 11. Wearing Charlie Brown T-shirts and continually sucking on Blow Pops, his world turns a corner after his domineering mother dies. Summoning his boyhood friend Chuck for the funeral, Buck seeks to rekindle the long-ago relationship -- to the point of following him home to Los Angeles, disrupting his career as a music executive and spying on him making love to his fiancee! Buck "has a secret," and is willing to carry it to its logical extreme, mounting a confessional play (anyone who's endured a fledgling playwright's attempts at amateur theater will be howling throughout this part) -- all ending where the viewer least expects it.

"Chuck and Buck" offers the opportunity for audiences to laugh cruelly at a character's expense, but all the while maintaining a logic that rings true. We grow to care about Buck, and understand the skewed reasoning behind his actions. The audience waits for the film to go the slasher route, but it never does. At the end -- this IS NOT A SPOILER -- we are left with the message that no matter how painful and traumatic it is to give up the innocence of childhood, it's a necessary, rewarding process. "Chuck and Buck" is a must see.

Requiem for a Dream (2000)

Just say no, no NO NO NO!

[21 January 2001]

Ellen Burstyn as the speed freak yenta is the chief reason to see this film. Sold as a horror film, "Requiem" trades in on Burstyn's role in "The Exorcist." Where that film dealt with demonic possession, "Requiem" deals with addiction; both film have Burstyn suddenly reacting to loud noises and feature venal, diabolical doctors who promise salvation to their victims.

Beyond the anti-drug hype, "Requiem" is mostly about dreams. Dreams offer visions of hope, happiness and stability but choose the wrong ones, or go about attaining them in the wrong ways and your fate will be just as hellish as the film's characters, the narrative seems to warn.

That said and done -- I seriously doubt this movie will make any bound and determined individual from popping pills and sticking a spike into their arm.

Barang Terlarang (1987)

Mind-blowing sleaze, Indo-cheese

[18 January 2001]

"I Want To Get Even" is just the way your reviewer likes them. Over-the-top, make the jaws drop, what planet did this come from? Wild and wooly Indonesian melodrama about a good, decent pregnant girl who is brutally gang-raped by some drug lords. Her fine, upstanding husband doesn't take too kindly to the situation and throws her from his speeding taxicab!

Our heroine miscarries her child (in graphic fashion) and decides to put on a headband, mounts a mini-bike armed with a bazooka, and, well, she "wants to get even."

"Even" is simultaneously a hilarious third world action picture and a bleak statement on the role of women in Southeast Asia.

Night Tide (1961)

S-l-o-w going

[18 January 2001]

"Night Tide" is an extremely slow, black-and-white character study about a sailor (Dennis Hopper) who falls in love with a sideshow performer who may -- or may not be -- descended from a race of mermaids. The film is a pleasant, low-budget exercise but doesn't really cut it as a horror film for those in search of something along the lines of "Carnival of Souls." Director Curtis Harrington is best known for his horror films such as "The Killing Kind" and "What's the Matter with Helen?" A few eyebrows will be raised when Hopper, sent away by his mysterious girlfriend apparently goes to a seedy gay bathhouse for a massage!

Go, Go Second Time Virgin (1969)

Nihilistic wrist slasher

[1 January 2001]

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** Black-and-white knuckle whitener that explores life at its darkest depths. Bespectacled, effete young man watches a young girl get gang raped on top of an apartment building. Not moving to help her, he waits for her to wake the next morning. The girl claims it's the second time she's been raped. A mysterious bond grows between them, and inviting her to his apartment, he reveals a little secret -- he's a psychotic mass murderer who's just murdered four people who forced him into an orgy!

Seeing as they are both the victims of sexual abuse, the girl's attackers return to the roof of the apartment building. The young man kills them all before the couple make a lover's leap off the building.

PHEW! The film's scorched earth despair hammers home a simple, yet powerful message: the abused go on to abuse others. This title pulls no punches and is recommended for people who like strong, horrific fare in the manner of "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer."