SAVAGE STREETS (1984) 2-Disc Special Edition

I saw SAVAGE STREETS when it came out back in 1984, and for no good reason I've held it in considerable esteem ever since. It's a pretty much by-the-numbers revenge exploitation flick about a bunch of overage-looking high school "bad" girls led by Linda "cross up the snatch" Blair who run afoul of a cheesy gang of thugs called the Scars. This bunch of meatheaded dudes drive around and antagonize the general public for kicks while influencing a nebbishy nice kid (Johnny Venocur) who joins their ranks in an attempt at becoming "cool," but the young man's journey takes a disturbing turn when his Alpha male cohorts decide to revenge themselves upon Blair and her girlfriends by kidnapping her adorable and innocent deaf younger sister (scream queen Linnea Quigley) and violently gang-raping and beating her on a grungy high school bathroom floor (not a sequence for the faint of heart or easily offended). Once Linda finds out what's happened to her sister (to say nothing of the sadistic murder of her soon-to-be-married best friend), she gears up in a black jumpsuit, gets her hands on a crossbow and goes a-huntin' for the testosterone-drenched gang scum. Needless to say, their fate ain't pretty.

SAVAGE STREETS is a garden variety and ever-so-'80's revenge opus made notable by its ludicrous dialogue, flagrantly too-old "teenagers," an incredibly bleak and nasty tone, and the presences of a slumming Linda Blair and John "Dean Wormer" Vernon, and while I find it fun for its sheer crassness value, there are certainly much better examples of the revenge flick genre to be had (the original DEATH WISH comes to mind). So why put it out in a 2-disc special edition? I have no idea, and the extra material is in no way worthy of a second disc. There's a so-so "making of" segment that has some fun insight from Blair (commenting on what I believe was her first topless scene) and Quigley (whose character endures one of the worst rape scenes this side of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE , a sequence that had to be considerably trimmed to garner an R rather than an X rating), but the commentaries are pretty uninteresting, particularly the one featuring the incredibly annoying wishes-he-were-as-amusing-as-he-thinks-he-is Johnny Venocur.

So if you do decide to pick up SAVAGE STREETS, skip the second disc and watch it the way it was meant to be seen: in a dank basement, surrounded by a gaggle of liquored-up and like-minded sleaze junkies. You could do a lot better, but you could also do a hell of a lot worse. And unless she's made of very stern stuff, DO NOT convince your girlfriend to sit through this one. That rape scene's a potential relationship-ender, and if you ask me the revenge doesn't even come close to being severe enough for the damage done to a cutesy-sweet girl who looks like she should be a regular on SESAME STREET.

WASTED ON THE YOUNG (2010)

 Taking the concept of "mean girls" to a new and particularly loathsome low.

It's dawn and pretty teenager Xandrie (Adelaide Clemens) is seen passed out on an Australian beach, possibly left for dead by a trio of her private school classmates consisting of amateur videographer Jono (Tom Stokes), 'roid-rager Brookie (T.J. Power), and uber-wealthy, handsome alpha male Zack (Alex Russell), who all drive away. It's clear from the nervous glances exchanged among the boys that something bad has taken place and the narrative flashes back a few days to provide the preamble.

Zack, Brookie, and Jono are the popular golden boys of their posh private school, star athletes on the swim team, and essentially a pack of male "Heathers" who control the school's social scene. Complete and utter dicks and bullies, the entitled trio are secure in the knowledge that they can get away with pretty much anything and fuck everyone and everything else. The odd man out in their group is Darren (Oliver Ackland), a quiet, nerdy computer whiz whose mother remarried to Zack's gazillionaire father, so Zack and Darren are mismatched at best, with Zack lording it over Darren while the latter pretty much has to endure his step-sib's shit (and the shit of Zack's friends, especially bully boy Brookie) as they live under the same roof.

At school, Xandrie seriously crushes on Darren and the feeling is most definitely mutual, so Xandrie gives her number to Darren and the pair agree to meet later at a huge party thrown by Zack at his father's house. (Zack and Darren's parents are never present; they are always away, apparently jet-setting, leaving the boys completely unsupervised for extended periods of time and with approved  access to Zack's dad's cash.) Observing the obvious attraction between Xandrie and Darren, Zack and his pals — including a couple of mean girls, one of whom fancies Zack and notices Zack's interest in Xandrie — decide to ruin the innocent romance before it even begins, simply because they can and also because Zack is a greedy, self-absorbed turd. At the massive party, drugs and booze flow freely and the alpha teens make sure Darren's path does not intersect with that of Xandrie. The mean girls find Xandrie and her friend Ella (Geraldine Hakewill), and feign kindness while giving the unknowing friends drinks dosed with ketamine, stating "Let's have some fun!" As the drug takes effect, Ella wanders off as Xandrie is corralled downstairs to a private space where the swim team jocks await. As the party dies down and guests depart, Xandrie passes out on the couch and the trio take turns raping her, which they capture on video. (The filmmakers had the good taste to strongly imply the event in such a way that leaves no doubt as to what occurred, but no nudity or graphic depiction of the rape is shown, thank god.) While this foul deed is done, a dejected Darren, who was physically prevented from going downstairs by the thuggish Brookie, drifts off to sleep.

The narrative then skips past the opening scene of Xandrie being left on the beach and focuses on Darren's growing concern when she does not show up to school for about a week. No one knows where she is and Xandrie does not answer the door when Darren shows up at her house. Not being an idiot, Darren realizes Zack and his goons raped Xandrie, so he sets out to find out exactly what happened despite repeated warnings from Zack and crew. The entire school takes note of Xandrie's sudden mysterious absence and all manner of rumors and theories are shared by the student body's social media, which shapes the public perception to paint Xandrie as an unstable "trash bag" who willingly serviced the boys, couldn't hold her liquor, was unable to face the humiliation of being a "slut," and consequently switched schools. Then Xandrie suddenly shows up again, seemingly as chipper as ever, which puts the alpha males and the mean girls on edge. But what is really going through Xandrie's head? What does Darren make of all of this? And can Zack really not care one whit about what he and his friends have done?

WASTED ON THE YOUNG takes what would easily be grindhouse material and handles it with an intelligent, classy arthouse approach that utterly drags the viewer into its sordid world of morality-free privilege and keeps us riveted with its ever-mountng tension. Zack is a monster of the lowest order, a casual sociopath whose lack of concern for anyone other than himself is simply appalling. He's one of the most hateful cinematic villains I've ever come across and I especially despise him because he very much reminds me of some of the worst examples of the privileged youth I grew up amongst in southern Connecticut, only writ heinously large for the screen.

Definitely not for all tastes but featuring fine performances, a taut and intelligent script by writer/director Ben E. Lucas, and a level of intensity that is at times blood pressure-raising, WASTED ON THE YOUNG never cops out, remaining unrelentingly bleak from start to finish and wrapping up the proceedings in ways that I genuinely did not expect. A simple garden variety revenge film it ain't, and I strongly recommend it for those who can handle a story that's so nasty that it doesn't need graphic nudity, violence, or gore to make it stick uncomfortably in one's memory. Upon absorbing the film, I was amazed that it didn't receive a wide theatrical release here in the States, but when taking into account America's track record regarding high school bullying, the misuse of social media, and the ever-present spectre of armed reprisals in our schools, perhaps I shouldn't be...

Oh, and sometimes the dialogue is delivered sotto voce and can thus be hard to hear, so I recommend watching the film with the subtitles turned on so you don't miss any plot particulars.

Poster from the Australian theatrical release.

VIGILANTE (1983)

A minor classic of the "NYC violence/revenge" exploitation sub-genre, VIGILANTE is a film that greatly disturbed me when it came out, so once it finally became available on DVD, I decided to revisit it after nearly thirty years and see if it could possibly still affect me in such a way after all the nasty, nasty shit I've seen in movies since I was eighteen.

My man Fred Williamson as Nick, the very definition of the well-intentioned sociopath.

With VIGILANTE, director William Lustig — he of MANIAC (1980) infamy — crafts an '80's-to-the-core take on the established DEATH WISH scenario that opens with a pre-credits introduction to a group of citizens receiving a pep talk from a stogie-chomping Nick (my man Fred Williamson), the leader of the local "neighborhood watch," a cadre of toughs who handle what the police can't (or won't). This sequence sets the tone for the film's tense and dour attitude as Nick makes plain just how fucking sick he is of seeing the city become a morass of muggings, rape, drug dealing and all that kind of mess, with his speech serving to simultaneously rouse the territorially protective sentiments of the locals and possibly put the film's audience into a like mindset. That intro swiftly segues into the story proper, which begins with a woman entering the elevator in her tenement building, only to be abducted by a knife-wielding creep who hauls her up to the roof and rapes her (which we thankfully only see the preamble to). One of the building's residents, an elderly woman who was taking out her trash, witnesses the rapist making his escape, so none of the locals cooperate with the cops during their investigation because thanks to the old lady the vigilantes are on the case...

Contrasting Nick's no-nonsense eye-for-an-eye-ism is Eddie Marino, played by Robert Forster (who was excellent in JACKIE BROWN), an average Joe who's a mellow factory worker and doting family man who's also one of Nick's co-workers. When Eddie, Nick and some of their co-workers — who are also vigilantes — stop by a bar for some after work beers, one of the neighborhood cops drops in to cryptically warn that he and his fellow cops don't take kindly to citizens taking the law into their own hands and beating the living piss out of deserving scum. This exchange leads Eddie to ask Nick what it was all about, so Nick fills Eddie in on the whole vigilante posse thing. Since he's an optimist who sees a bright future for his family, Eddie isn't down with it and even asks Nick how he knows if he's any better than the vermin he opposes. Nick tellingly responds with how that's up to the individual to decide...

Once those opposing viewpoints are established, it's only moments until Eddie's wife runs afoul of Rico (Willie Colón), the vile leader of the equally-scabrous Headhunters street gang, whom she slaps in the face for dousing a gas station attendant with fuel when the attendant objects to the punk refusing to pay for a just-pumped tankful of gas. Followed home by Rico and his gang of scurvy thugs, she immediately finds herself on the receiving end of a home invasion that results in her toddler son being blown out of the third story window by a blast from a sawed-off shotgun and her barely surviving crippling injuries thanks to a stabbing just after witnessing her son's savage murder.

Prago (Don Blakely), all smiles a moment before blowing a toddler out a third-story window with a sawed-off shotgun.

When Rico, who has a rap sheet a mile long, is hauled in as the child's killer and receives a suspended sentence of two years from the corrupt judge, Eddie goes berserk in the court room and is himself sent up the river to Riker's Island for thirty days on a contempt of court charge. The rub here is that the actual killer of the child is gang member Prago (Don Blakely), but that plot point does not get addressed until the film's final act.

Once Eddie's in the slammer, legendary cinema badass Woody Strode protects him from being raped by a dude who looks like the sepia version of the Incredible Hulk, and during his stay we are led to believe that Eddie becomes hardened enough to willingly join Nick's vigilante force in order to exact even a measure of justice for his family.

"Thanks for the save from the shower room bufu, awesome nameless old dude!"

Meanwhile, during Eddie's absence, Nick and his posse have crossed the line from merely roughing-up creeps to outright murder, even killing folks who are not directly involved in the street messes the vigilantes seek to avenge, such as a crooked politician's driver and Rico's girlfriend. So it's a case of justifiable rage escalating into the realm of irredeemable, and once his court-mandated month in the slammer is up, Eddie's right there with Nick and friends in the thick of the lethal vengeance. Eddie even goes so far as to murder Prago — whose fall from a great height results in a graphic image of his body laying on the pavement with its brains splattered out — and he also suddenly gains expertise with rigging remote-controlled explosives that he uses to assassinate the corrupt judge who sent him to jail. The film then very abruptly ends with Eddie and the rest of the vigilantes still roaming the streets, presumably to continue killing at will.

The film goes out of its way to state that it's not an endorsement of vigilantism and depicts its well-meaning neighborhood patrol as every bit as savage as the scum they forcibly remove from the streets in their none-too-subtle black van and I suppose the ending was meant to be some sort of mordant commentary, but it left me deeply saddened and in need of something to cleanse my palate of the bleakness piled on during the film's running time. When I first saw VIGILANTE, I had just arrived at college and had yet to undergo the considerable corruption and jading that my college years afforded me, so I was still not as de-sensitized by the excesses of certain types of exploitation fare as I would eventually become. I love urban vengeance films, having been a fan of the genre since seeing the original DEATH WISH (1974), but VIGILANTE goes into darker areas that are rendered pitch black by the grimy exploitation-style filmmaking (which is not to say that the film is not well-made) and the result is one of the biggest downers in the sub-genre. We see Eddie go from a loving family man to being a stone-faced killer in short order — we're talking just over a month, plus however long it takes for the presumed killer to go to trial — and unlike a number of other urban vengeance films I can name, there is no sense of triumph or audience catharsis at the open-ended climax of his journey. I'm assuming that was the point, but still...

Both during my original viewing and during when I recently watched it, the thing that most turned me off about this film was the bit where Prago blows the toddler out the window with a sawed-off shotgun. It's truly horrible and while I don't think the deaths of children should be verboten in movies — especially not in films of this nature — the way it was handled here is truly horrible to a Stygian degree. It's not as gory as I remembered it being, but the blanks that the mind fills in as opposed to what is actually depicted are absolutely horrifying and it's something I really could have done without. I remembered it as being a moment where the report of the gun is heard and immediately followed by what looked like weighty, bloody hunks of meat propelled through the window and seen from the mother's point of view in the backyard, but what's actually seen is simply a gout of stage blood and no body. Nonetheless, it remains too nasty even for me.

The rest of the film is not an action flick, despite it being described as such in several online reviews, but rather a fairly serious look at vigilantism and how it can get out of hand. It's much more low key and thoughtful than a film of this ilk is supposed to be, and maybe that's why it hasn't vanished into the ether along with many other grindhouse efforts from its era. Oh, and among the film's highlights are:

• The film taking place in the cinema-verse's New York that's a veritable jungle of sociopaths, ranging from roving, fetishized multi-ethnic street gangs to appointed government officials. This is one of those New Yorks where the police exist for no real purpose other than to be completely impotent, pay lip service to investigating, and openly state that they don't condone vigilantism.
• Fred Williamson as Nick turns in what may be his very best performance.
• A moment that only people from the Tri-State Area at the time would find both true and hilarious: As Eddie pursues Prago with the intent to kill him, Prago steals a car and peels out, immediately turning the car's radio to WBLS.
• Even with the considerable amount of suspension of disbelief required for the exploitation genre in general and revenge pics in particular, proficiency with an RC toy airplane does not automatically translate to expertise with radio-controlled high explosives. Eddie's dispatching of the crooked judge would have been more believable in the context of a film like THE MECHANIC (1972).

Depressing though it may be, VIGILANTE is '80's to the core and is worth a look for vengeance cinema completists. Just don't expect to feel like life is worth living after sitting through it.

CONAN THE BARBARIAN (2011)

 

It's nearly three decades since Robert E Howard's seminal barbarian protagonist — he can hardly be considered a hero — first graced the big screen, and since that time there have been many sword-slinging warriors to follow in his footsteps, most recently and to much popular and box office appreciation being J.R.R. Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS gang. Unless you've been living under a rock somewhere in the tiny republic of Togo for the last ten years or so, you know the LOTR fantasy epics made a shitload of cash, so it was inevitable that Hollywood would try to mine the audience's hunger for fantasy in some way, and it would seem that now would be a good time to dust off Conan and his Hyborian Age wanderings. After all, Howard's Conan stories more or less defined the genre, if not outright inventing it, so why not bring back that genre's single most well-known and popular character? The audience was already built-in after three decades of fans who enjoyed the first Conan flick, released in 1982 and starring as it did Arnold Schwarzenegger in what is arguably the film that first put him on the map as perhaps the epitome of the 1980's action hero. (THE TERMINATOR didn't happen until two years later, by which time most of America knew who Ah-nuld was thanks to Conan.) And, yeah, there was a sequel, the inexplicably PG-13-rated CONAN THE DESTROYER (1984), but that film sucked and brought what looked to be a promising franchise to a screeching halt.

As the first film's cult reputation grew, in its wake followed a terrible Saturday morning cartoon wherein Conan was the bodyguard/escort for some royal kids and each week taught them important life lessons like "don't judge people because they're different from you" — I swear to god I'm not making this up — and there was also a live-action show, CONAN THE ADVENTURER, that sought to cash in on the popularity of HERCULES: THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS and XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS, but that watered-down mess died a swift death at the end of its sole season. Now, in the current climate of reboots/re-imaginings, I suppose it was only a matter of time until someone had the bright idea of making a Conan movie for the 2000's, with what I'm sure was the intention of kickstarting another cash cow along the lines of LOTR or the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN flicks. Well, I'm here to tell all of you fellow lovers of the 1982 CONAN THE BARBARIAN that that film's status as a cult classic and textbook example of how to make a mythic "warrior's journey" film has absolutely nothing to worry about.

The current iteration opens with a new version of our sullen protagonist's origin, cribbing much of its initial thrust from the 1982 film. We first meet Conan when he is literally still within his mother's womb, and the oft-stated "he was born on a battlefield" takes on new meaning as his ready-to-pop mom is seen in leathers and armor in the middle of some random battle in which her tribe of Cimmerian warriors are dealing out death like it was Halloween candy. As the extremely pregnant woman fights with sword in hand, she is critically wounded, so Conan's dad (Ron Perlman) performs an impromptu C-section and brings his son into the world. Oh, and before that happens, the voice of Morgan Freeman tells the tale of an ancient mask of great power that was crafted from the bones of dead kings, an item so rife with evil magic that it had to be broken down into several components and hidden for a thousand years lest its possessor take over the world.

We then skip ahead by about twelve years or so and find Conan (Leo Howard) yearning to become a full-fledged warrior of his tribe, and during the trial of young men that will determine who earns that coveted position, Conan and the other lads on the trial encounter several animalistic raiders. While his fellows pussy out and hightail it back home, Conan takes on and spectacularly slays the raiders. returning to his village with their severed heads as trophies. At that point I said to myself, "This has promise," but those hopes were dashed as the remainder of the film degenerated into a rote and eventually boring trope-fest that offered little to keep me interested.

Young Conan and his dad (who looks like some kind of heavy metal orangutan by way of Snorri Sturluson) bond over some father-son arts and crafts.

Anyway, Conan's people are wiped out by Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang), a conqueror who seeks the last piece of the mask — that just so happens to be in the care of the tribe's leader, Conan's pop — which he obtains with the help of his witchy and bone china-white-complected daughter (Rose McGowan, who was by far my favorite thing in the film). As the bad guys ride off with their prize and the sword that Conan's dad had forged for him, presuming Conan dead after they torched the building he and his now-dead father were in, Conan swears vengeance and the story jumps ahead by about ten or twelve years.

The ferocious Jason Momoa as Conan.

We then meet the adult Conan (Jason Momoa), who has spent the past decade or so wandering as a a thief and pirate, now living among a band of pirates and robbers who take the time to rescue a large group of peasants and very attractive topless women from slavers, thus establishing Conan and his pirate pals as decent folk who just say "No!" to slavery. (Which is a load of P.C. bullshit, because anyone who's every read any Conan story will tell you that slavery is very much an accepted part of Conan's world, with even Conan himself not being against it as a practice. If you ended up as a slave, that meant that was just your tough luck, so to avoid ending up in chains you had to be a badass.) It's during the post-rescue revelry when Conan comes face-to-face with one of the warriors who killed his people years earlier (a warrior whom Conan incidentally happened to deprive of his nose, thus making him easy to identify) and after brutally gathering info, he makes a beeline to Zym (minus the offered aid of his pirate cronies, because it's a personal vendetta). It turns out that Zym has spent years searching for "the pure-blood," a holy woman named Tamara (Rachel Nichols) whose blood is instrumental to a ritual that, using the evil mask, will resurrect Zym's burned-at-the-stake sorceress wife and, via her magic superpowers, render him a god who will rule the world. Needless to say, Conan ain't havin' it.

 

Rose McGowan as freaky witch Marique, stealing every scene she's in.

What ensues after that is a pretty-to-look-at hodgepodge of elements shamelessly cribbed from THE LORD OF THE RINGS, the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movies, and even bits from THE MUMMY series, all of which add up to form a generic "adult" fantasy fim that's somehow replete with gore, some very nice nekkid titties and one semi-graphic sex scene, but nonetheless feels like a kids' adventure movie. Several of the set-pieces — a few of which were flat-out idiotic and laugh-out-loud stupid — evoke other films or fantasy/quest video games, and at no point did this Conan story feel like its own thing. This film bears even less of the flavor of creator Howard's visceral and testosterone-laden works than the 1982 film did, but the '82 flick at least defied its own genre by crafting a Campbell-esque warrior's journey tale with a surprisingly sweeping and epic feel. (The sword and sandal genre had become something of a moribund joke after the onslaught of Hercules and gladiator films released by the truckload during the heyday of the "peplum" craze, so the '82 film was a welcome surprise.) That sweep and sense of grandeur, plus a narrative that involved its viewers in Conan's vendetta and made us genuinely care about him succeeding is nowhere to be found here. When not aping other popular properties, this CONAN THE BARBARIAN stands as the most generic fantasy film to come down the pike in ages, and while not flat-out terrible, it is a sad squandering of a great opportunity. Jason Momoa was a decent and very ferocious Conan, and Rose McGowan as the uber-creepy sorceress Marique steals whatever scene she's in, but their considerable efforts couldn't elevate a film that in the end smacks of nothing more than "Conan by committee."

BOTTOM LINE: If you absolutely have to see this film — an urge that I understand, what with having been an avid Conan fan since 1974 and all — don't get ripped off by shelling out the extra cash for 3D. I saw it in 2D and there are only a couple of segments that were obviously composed with 3D in mind. Otherwise, wait for cable and have your intoxicant of choice on hand to liven up the proceedings. I was totally straight as I sat through it and I found myself rather bored about halfway through. I've certainly seen far worse films, especially in this particular genre, but this was a big disappointment. To sum up, this entire film was essentially a Manowar album cover brought to life at the cost of a reported $80 million.

The basic feel of this movie, summed up in one album cover illustration.

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE-UNRATED (2010)

When it was announced there would be a remake of the Mier Zarchi's infamous 1978 rape/revenge grindhouse classic — which, for better or worse, it definitely qualifies as — the first thing to come to my mind was "Why?!!?" There was little that could be done to top the original in terms of depicting the very personal horrors of a backwoods gang rape and the vengeance it spurs other than to shoot it with a decent budget, quality camerawork/cinematography, and better performances from the cast, so what was the point? I know that practically every film under the sun has been remade or is in the works for such treatment, but again I ask, why remake a film that's a veritable Chernobyl of negative energy? The only ready answer that I had before seeing it was that the filmmaker's sought to cash in on the name recognition of the original, but there's considerably more going on here than I initially assumed. I wrote on the original I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE a few years back and I ask you to go here to read it. And before we proceed any further, be advised: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

Southern anti-hospitality at its very worst.

The basic story is the same as the original: Jennifer Hills (Sarah Butler), a writer from The Big City, rents a place in the backwoods — apparently Upstate New York in the original, Louisiana this time around — runs afoul of some incredibly vile lowlifes, gets agonizingly gang raped by said lowlifes, survives her ordeal and unleashes gruesome vengeance against her assailants. This time, however, the quality of the filmmaking is very far removed from the rather Paleolithic (though well-intentioned) results displayed in the 1978 version. The remake is quite obviously the work of real cinematic craftsmen and displays a level of polish and style totally absent in Zarchi’s dire classic, which makes the shattering events depicted in it more agreeable to sit through. (While any depiction of gang rape is going to be hard to sit through simply by default, the original’s bargain basement qualities imbued it with an unwashed and squalid look and tone that at times felt to me like some scabrous hobo was forcibly shoving his dirtiest, most callused finger straight down my throat.) The visual style is somehow lush in presenting the stark isolation of the story’s Louisiana backwoods setting, and the desolation helps to plant the viewer firmly into its lonely reality.

And speaking of reality, there were several elements in the original that would not have allowed for willing suspension of disbelief in the 2000’s, and they are addressed quite deftly. We currently live in an age of cheap and very conveniently portable mass communication technology, which simply did not exist back in 1978, so our heroine would be equipped with a cell phone that would allow her to call for help. Or rather that would be the case if she were not seen accidentally dropping her cell phone into her cottage’s toilet early in the film. Also, if a crime of the kind that Jennifer endures and survives after being pretty much presumed dead (despite the considerable efforts of her filthy assailants) occurred in this manner, today there would be any number of ways for law enforcement officers to bring Jennifer’s violators to justice (if justice could truly be provided by our justice system in the wake of the severity of the acts perpetrated), with DNA evidence matching immediately springing to mind. Thus it was necessary to add a fifth rapist to the scenario, namely the unspeakable Sheriff Storch (played with horrifically creepy gusto by Welsh actor Andrew Howard).

Andrew Howard as the vile Sheriff Storch.

Storch is the only police officer shown, and the area he allegedly polices is so remote that perhaps only one lawman is all it really requires. Too bad that despite him being seen to be a loving husband and father when not on duty, he’s worse than any criminal he’s likely to encounter because of his association with the pack of rapists, guys it’s made clear that he’s been friends with since they were kids, and his ability to inflict such grievous harm on an outsider reveals a sadistic sociopath who is allowed to wield lethal power by law. And by virtue of his training in the enforcement of said law, he knows all about how to cover up all trace of the crimes he and his pals commit, which makes him vital to them getting away with all of it.

And while we’re discussing rapist scum, it should be noted that the gang of redneck louts who plot the violation and (failed) murder of Jennifer includes a woman-hating Alpha male leader, a fairly nondescript follower, an overweight wielder of a video camera who fancies himself a budding cinematographer and voyeuristically captures the entire gang rape on tape, and a mentally handicapped repairman, whose virginal status is used by the Alpha male leader as an excuse to rape the city gal outsider. These guys are given a lot more in the way of developed personality than the louts found in the 1978 version, and that makes them that much more interesting and vile. The fiends in the original have little you can say about them as individuals other than that they are personification of the worst of male urges, in essence interchangeable ambulatory penises that utter dialogue. In the remake’s case we are afforded peeks into the quirks of the men as individuals and by allowing us to get to know what they’re like, an aspect that grants them an understandable (though totally evil and loathsome) humanity, it is that knowing of them as something other than largely undefined cardboard cutouts that makes us hate them all the more. Especially Sheriff Storch, whose vicious misogyny and behavior are fascinatingly contrasted against what we see of his home life. He’s a self-proclaimed god-fearing churchgoer with a loving wife who’s about eight months pregnant and looks for all the world like a fertility goddess transplanted to the early twenty-first century, and he’s also got a sweet daughter of maybe nine years old whom he clearly dotes upon. The man is a completely different person as a husband and father, and is presumably likewise as a citizen and lawman, but when in a position to commit a great evil in support of his friends and joining in on their animalistic “fun,” he’s revealed as a law-breaking predator who preys upon the weak and isolated. If Jennifer went missing in his podunk little town, it’s apparent that her disappearance would be noted by few, and the only locals who knew she was there are the sheriff, the gang of rapists, and the sweet old guy who rents her the cottage (the great Tracy Walter), so doing whatever the hell he and his buddies want to with Jennifer is as simple as pie to get away with, especially since disposing of her body would only require chucking her used and abused corpse into the alligator-infested river. Jennifer’s is the worst imaginable position to be in, and these filthy bastards know it and take full advantage of it, giving vent to their pent-up hatred of women and taking a joyous glee in doing so.

But, as was the case in the original, Jennifer does not take her assault like the whimpering victim the rapists anticipated, and when she throws herself off a bridge and into the aforementioned alligator-infested river rather than be outright blasted to kingdom come by the sheriff’s pump-action shotgun, she survives, holes up in a deserted shack for a month and lives on whatever she can catch (including rats) while she uses her writer’s imagination to plot appropriately poetic vengeance that would have done the writers of the classic E.C. horror comics proud. This time around the script wisely does away with the idea of a woman who was so brutally abused luring her attackers to their doom by fucking them. It's not just her body that's been raped by these scum; Jennifer's basic humanity has been utterly taken from her, and as a result she is reborn as what is for all intents and purposes a monster. It’s a tragic rebirth as a fury every bit as savage and implacable as the variety found in classical Greek mythology. Each and every one of the rapists gets his in a very big way and, according to the director and producer’s commentary, their just desserts were so nasty that some of the audiences were so outraged by the severity of the retribution that they stated they began to feel sorry for the rapists. That was not the case with me as a viewer because of my simple belief in the mantra of “If you abuse with the Johnson, you lose the Johnson,” or some other form or punishment involving some form of medieval justice, and I found what they received to be gruesomely satisfying in every way.

So the bottom line on what at first seemed an unnecessary remake of a cruel ‘70’s exploitationer teeming with ultra-sadistic and seemingly pointless misogyny is that the 2010 I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE is one very nasty and visceral motherfucker that I’m extremely shocked to have enjoyed. Yes, I enjoyed it, but then again I’m a fan of what I call “the cinema of vengeance,” and there are few examples in the genre as strong as this in every aspect. It’s easily the best of the current remake/re-imagining wave, and I highly recommend it to any and all who have the stones to handle it. And whatever you do, make sure to watch it with the director’s commentary after seeing it for the first time. Very interesting stuff.

MACHETE (2010)

"Exploding houses? Bodies falling from the sky? Jesus Christ, Machete! You're a walking shit magnet!"
-Santana Rivera (Jessica Alba)

Sometimes you just have to check your brain at the door and enjoy an out of control roller coaster ride of a movie, and that's certainly the case with Robert Rodriguez's balls-to-the-walls non-stop actioner, MACHETE. And the true beauty of it is that it doesn't take itself seriously for even two seconds.

MACHETE sprang from a fake trailer that preceded the PLANET TERROR half of 2007's GRINDHOUSE (the most fun I had at a movie that year), a coming attraction that really made the viewer want to see the flick in question. Judge for yourself:



Audience reaction was strong and favorable, so Rodriguez actually rendered it into feature length, utilizing some of the footage from the trailer and spinning a wild, gore-drenched "Mexploitation" flick that's a delight for old school aficionados of 42nd Street-style fare and the uninitiated alike. (I took my girlfriend to see it, a woman who had somehow managed never to see an exploitation film before, and she loved it.)

Our hero.

MACHETE stars my man Danny Trejo as the title character, a completely badassed Mexican federale who dishes out evisceration and dismemberment like Halloween candy. Following a bloody encounter with vicious drug lord Torrez (Steven Seagal), who's pissed at Machete not allowing himself to be paid off to look the other way, Machete's wife and daughter are killed and a seriously injured Machete is left to die, presumed burned alive when the bad guys torch the house. Skip ahead by three years and we find the grizzled badass eking out a living as a low-paid day laborer near the Texas border, blending in as just another illegal immigrant.

Don Johnson at his most villainous.

It's a bleak existence marked by hatred for illegals, an animosity personified by the likes of vigilante sheriff Von Jackson (Don Johnson) and his pack of redneck scum who patrol the border and kill wetbacks, an activity they lovingly capture on video.

A scenery-chewing Bobby D as the loathsome Senator John McLaughlin.

Also along for the murderous ride with those assholes is Senator John McLaughlin (Robert DeNiro in a scenery-chewing turn), a politician who's up for re-election and riding a campaign platform based on stringent anti-immigration policies while secretly being funded by drug lord Torrez. From out of nowhere, Machete is approached by Michael Booth (Jeff Fahey), a businessman who claims to feel that the Senator's point of view fails to realize that the country, and more immediately the state, runs on illegal labor and cutting that off would fuck things up bigtime.

Machete takes aim, only to find himself royally screwed.

Booth offers Machete $150, 000 to assassinate McLaughlin during an outdoor political rally and Machete accepts, unaware that he's being set up himself; Booth has one of his own men shoot Machete as Machete wings McLaughlin in the leg, intending for the whole thing to be witnessed by the media and made to look like a conspiracy to stop the senator, thus garnering sympathy votes. Unfortunately for Booth's plans, Machete does not die easily, and once he susses out what's up, a hardcore odyssey of gory vengeance begins. That bloody trail also brings Machete into contact with two beautiful sides of the immigration issue: Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Santana Rivera (Jessica Alba) and work site taco truck proprietress Luz (Michelle Rodriguez), who is actually the head of a network that smuggles illegals into the country. With all the pieces in place on the chessboard of hate and retribution, all hell breaks loose and it soon becomes hard to distinguish between splattering sanguinary spew and salsa picante.

MACHETE is packed to the rafters with crazy, ultra-violent set pieces, some amusingly heavy-handed political commentary, and a cornucopia of tongue-in-cheek exploitation movie fun. In fact, if it were up to me I would classify this film as a completely straight-faced action comedy, and a very funny one at that.

Assorted notes and observations:

• At age 66, the leathery Danny Trejo makes for a grizzled and Charles Bronson-like protagonist, a man of few words and positively lethal badassery, and I hope to see more from him as Machete (which may happen if Rodriguez is serious about making two sequels).
• We get the welcome return of the toothsome Avellan sisters, Elise and Elektra, aka "the crazy babysitter Twins" from PLANET TERROR (who also happen to be the director's nieces).
  

Robert, give these gals a movie of their own while they're still hot, for fuck's sake!

• Lindsay Lohan appears in the role she was born to play, namely a drug-addicted, spoiled rich kid who gets into a lurid threesome with her mother and Machete before having a change of heart and becoming a vengeful, gun-toting badass in a nun's habit.
  

Lilo's best role next to MEAN GIRLS.

• Steven Seagal's sadistic and assholish Torrez is a fun bad guy with plastic hair like something out of the Devo merchandise catalog, circa 1981, and he's a scary antagonist in many ways. It's a hoot to see Seagal ditch his good guy badass image to essay a bad guy badass, one who used to be a fellow federale with Machete, so you just know the guy's beyond deadly.

Torrez (Steven Seagal), living the pimp life.

• Also on hand is the the always welcome Cheech Marin as Machete's brother, a priest whose line "God has mercy...I don't" pretty much defines his role.
  

Cheech: a long way from his days with Tommy Chong.

To sum up, MACHETE is the kind of film whose enjoyment factor is contingent upon the kinds of films the viewer digs. If you love old school exploitation excess, ultra-violence, gratuitous nudity and general mayhem, this film is right up your alley. If your taste runs toward Merchant Ivory films of genteel ruminations on the human condition, this ain't for you. Ya pussy.

Machete and his army of kickass day laborers!

TENEMENT: GAME OF SURVIVAL (1985)

WARNING: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!

Is there any better lure for an exploitation movie junkie than the promise of a film that was allegedly deemed too ultra-violent to be rated? That was certainly the case with TENEMENT: GAME OF SURVIVAL — aka SLAUGHTER IN THE SOUTH BRONX, which, if you ask me, is a better title — , a very, very nasty 1985 grindhouse classic that was legitimately awarded an X rating by the MPAA for its foul language and generous lashings of sadism, gore, and humanity-degrading brutality. I'd never heard of it until it popped up a while ago as one of three films included in a "Grindhouse Psychos" boxed set, and my interest was piqued as I read a description of its plot. I love revenge movies and films about people trapped in a location where they're pitted against psychos or monsters and there's no way out other than to become as savage as their assailants, and that's exactly what we get with this low budget, balls-out visceral mamma-jamma. (I don't know how the fuck I missed this during its theatrical run, but I'm guessing it came out during the period in my third year of college where the only movie I saw in the theater was RE-ANIMATOR.)

The Gang: these guys make the droogs in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE look like choir boys by comparison. And is it just me, or does the guy with the red sash have a kind of Shabadoo Quinones thing going on?

The plot of TENEMENT is a study in exploitation movie simplicity: a bunch of totally '80's multi-racial thugs/gang members of the type common to films like VIGILANTE, SAVAGE STREETS and the sublime DEATH WISH 3 are hanging around in the basement of some South Bronx shithole tenement building — located in an area so desolate that it's nearly as surreal as the myth-ready wasteland in THE ROAD WARRIOR — snorting Angel Dust off of switchblades (no, really) and apparently eating rats (no, really) while making feeble attempts at break dancing, but otherwise not bothering anybody. The building's drunken Hispanic busybody of a superintendent calls the cops and has the gang busted, but the gang hears the approaching cops and has time to rid themselves of their stash and hide their weapons before their trip to the local precinct. The super mocks them to their faces as they're led away and the building's residents immediately throw a party to celebrate, secure in the knowledge that the gang is gone for good. Seeing as we're only about eight minutes into the movie at that point, it's no surprise to viewers when the gang is released a few hours later due to lack of evidence. Once freed, the gang scores some primo Angel Dust, gets staggeringly high (their leader has crazed, blood-filled visions), and embarks on a vicious mission of payback that sees them make their way up the tenement floor by floor, raping, killing and mercilessly torturing as they go.

That's pretty much it as far as the basic plot goes, so the bulk of the film is taken up with the building's residents being horribly slaughtered and finally banding together once they've had enough. As is par for the course with the urban terror genre, the tenement's residents are a corny collection of ethnic/religious stereotypes straight from Central Casting:

• an unwed, very pregnant Hispanic girl
• her "Ay-yi-yi"-accented mother
• the bitter black handyman who becomes the de facto leader of the residents.
• a tough-as-nails Jewish old lady from "the old country"
• a loving middle-aged black couple, of which the wife is a broad-beamed complainer who would be right at home in a Baptist revival meeting
• the savvy black single mother who fantasizes about moving to a Park Avenue apartment where she can raise her daughter in safety while drinking champagne all day
• a blind Hispanic man and his companion dog
• a number of cute kids for instant audience sympathy
• the once-well-off white girl who's become a whore in order to pay for her boyfriend's raging heroin habit

There's little attempt at characterization, but that's beside the point since we're given all we need to know in brief bits of character shorthand since the real point of the movie is the carnage and the fighting back in response to it. And what carnage it is! I haven't seen so much red paint used in lieu of stage blood since the LONE WOLF AND CUB movies or one of Chang Cheh's Shaw Brothers flicks, and every now and then random bits of ripped out (and hard to identify) internal organs are on display. We're even treated to a bit where the head creep, Chaco (Enrique Sandino), and the gang's sole female member get it on beside the corpse of one of their fallen comrades (who was ingeniously killed when he shot up what he thought was heroin but was instead rat poison) and his gut-stabbed victim, engaging in some blood-smeared foreplay that made me laugh out loud at how fucking sick it was.

The only way this bit could have been more repulsive is if Chaco had wanked off between her blood-anointed tits.

The film is certainly not shy in the violence department and its "X" was earned due to that and relentless uses of "motherfucker" in the dialogue. According to director Roberta Findlay's commentary, there was actually a point when multiple uses of the F-bomb, especially when used in a maternally incestuous context, would ensure an X-rating, which would explain why RICHARD PRYOR LIVE IN CONCERT (1979) went out unrated. Then again, John Waters' A DIRTY SHAME (2004) reportedly earned its NC-17 for dialogue involving frank sexuality and concepts related to various kinky acts, so I guess things haven't really changed at all...

But the one sequence that really gained TENEMENT its X is one of the nastiest rape scenes ever committed to celluloid, and it's even more amazing/horrifying because it has such hideous impact without showing one bit of nudity. It's often been said that what the viewer can come up with in his or her imagination is far worse than anything a director can show directly onscreen, and that's proven true by this scene. The rapee is hauled into her bedroom by about four gang members and has her wrists tied as the assault begins, but a pair of sewing shears is within reach on her nightstand and she swiftly grabs them and plunges them through the eye and into the brain of her rapist, killing him stone dead. That was shocking enough, but then the remaining gang scum proceed to pummel her senseless before hitting upon the unsavory idea of killing her by unceremoniously shoving a broom handle into a place where such household items were in no way intended to go... This landmark in cinematic good taste occurs while the woman's five-year-old daughter hides in the closet, eventually coming out once the gang has taken their leave, there to discover her mother's horribly violated corpse.

Do I need to tell you I don't recommend this one as a date movie?

Following that bit of business and several other heinous atrocities, the tenants take the fight to the gang in earnest, resorting to blunt instruments, scalding water, a swiftly MacGyvered electrified fence, and other defenses before the day is eventually won by a handful of survivors.

Lesson learned: an old Jewish broad with a grip-taped baseball bat is a dangerous thing.

TENEMENT is a down-and-dirty, relentlessly vicious story that appeals to those who can handle it because it's simply impossible not to put yourself in the place of the besieged tenants. Made in the years before cell phones and during the days when a cut phone line meant no way of contacting help, this is an urban horror story that brings one back to the bygone time when New York City could still (almost) believably be depicted as an earthly manifestation of Hell itself. It's kind of a campfire horror story transplanted from the deep woods into the concrete jungle and as such it's very effective, provided one can stomach its excesses. I know I could, and stories about people resorting to savagery when backed against a wall have for some reason always spoken to some dark place deep within me, so if you also understand the appeal of that primal, on-the-defensive animal urge, by all means give TENEMENT: GAME OF SURVIVAL a look. It ain't great cinema by any means, but you can certainly do worse with a Netflix choice.

'GATOR BAIT (1974)

No, that isn't Ben Affleck in drag.

I can’t believe it took me as long as it did to finally see the 1974 exploitation classic ‘GATOR BAIT, and I have to say I’m more than a little surprised by what it had to offer. The film’s rep rests squarely on the shoulders of its star, ill-fated Titian-tressed beauty Claudia Jennings, a former Playmate of the Year whose body of work lead her to being dubbed the “queen of the B’s,” and after sitting through one of her grindhouse epics it’s doubtful that she’d fade from the viewer’s memory any time soon.

Claudia Jennings: Can you say "Yowza?"

‘GATOR BAIT is a post-DELIVERANCE backwoods revenge pic that takes place deep in an unnamed bayou, a forbidding environment best avoided by those who don’t know its ways, and utterly at home in this seemingly limitless swamp is Desiree Thibodeau (Jennings), a barefoot Cajun trapper — in the skimpiest of outfits, including a pair of Daisy Dukes that pretty much doesn’t have an ass, and a potato sack blouse that allows occasional glimpses of her mouth-watering ninnies —who poaches the local wildlife to provide for herself and her younger brother and sister. Desiree’s activities are illegal but overlooked by the local sheriff who doesn’t care because her family has hunted the swamp for generations, so he figures she’s got the right by virtue of ancestral territory. Unfortunately his moron of a son, apparently the town’s only other cop, has other ideas, and along with a slow-witted hillbilly pal he lays in wait to catch Desiree in the act and offer her a choice of going to jail or fucking him and his buddy. The would-be sexual extortion goes terribly wrong, however, as Desiree eludes her pursuers after lobbing a bag full of venomous snakes onto their swamp boat; as the stupid cop shoots at the snakes, he blows holes into the boat’s hull, and shoots his homeboy in the head. Panicking, he returns to town and claims Desiree killed his friend, so the sheriff rounds up the dead guy’s outrageously inbred redneck relatives and sets off into the deep swamp to apprehend Desiree. Operating under the false impression that the poacher is a murderess, the rednecks can’t wait to get their hands on her, both to hand out their own brand of justice and get a piece of her “coon-ass.” (The Cajuns in the film are derogatorily referred to as “Coonies.")

That’s the setup, and from there viewers are taken deep into a swamp virtually untouched by man and made witness to a game of cat and mouse so overmatched that it’s like what would happen if a bunch of great white hunters had the incalculable stupidity to fuck with Tarzan on his own turf. Desiree may not have the jungle lord’s near-superhuman capabilities, but she’s plenty smart and knows her way through the bayou like it was the back of her own assless shorty-shorts, so it’s just a matter of time until she’s done killing those assholes one by one.

During the course of all of this we learn a lot about Desiree’s antagonists and swiftly realize just how vile and sleazy they are. The patriarch of the redneck family has a love/hate relationship with his sons, all of whom are at least mildly retarded or just plain mentally ill, and even disciplines the perpetually-horniest of his brood with a bullwhip when he catches the lad attempting to fuck his own very willing sister in the mud near where she was hanging the laundry. (Dad wasn’t all that pissed off about the boy wanting a piece of sis, but was seriously irked at the possibility of the voluptuous girl getting knocked up and squeezing out another dimwit.) The other redneck son holds a personal grudge against Desiree for having had the gall to cut off his balls years earlier when he tried and failed to rape her, and now wanders about with his sawed-off double-barreled shotgun serving as an ever-rigid and potent surrogate penis. And even the sheriff has a big secret: twelve years previous he’d had an affair with Desiree’s mom and “accidentally” murdered her father, a bit of information used by the rednecks as blackmail fodder, guaranteeing that their own illegal shenanigans go unchecked.

With all of this mishegoss going on there’s plenty of bad taste to go around, and once the hunt for Desiree gets underway things go from very bad to that much worse when, after searching for her home for days, the inbred posse locates the place just after our heroine has left on a three day hunting trip. The bad guys stage a home invasion that begins with them abusing Desiree’s tongueless little brother, and her nubile jailbait sister ends up in the lusty hands of the sheriff’s son and the two inbred brothers. As the two un-castrated men hold down the poor girl during the preamble to a gang rape, one of them tells the nutless wonder with the shotgun that he’s going to show him “how a real man does it;” that remark sends the castrato over the frustrated edge, so he throws his brother off of Desiree’s sister, stuffs his shotgun between her legs, and unloads both barrels, retorting “Is that manly enough fer ya?” The girl expires almost immediately, and the misogyny factor goes through the roof. No bullshit, when that bit of business happened I actually exclaimed “Oh my God!!!” and I’m pretty hard to shock. It’s not graphically depicted, but the idea alone really gets to you.

The odd thing about it is that such horrors were once commonplace in exploitation films, and yet, despite the many ultra-violent movies I’ve sat through over the decades, I still find myself jarred by such material. I can handle all manner of cinematic carnage, but the idea of some innocent girl — or any girl at all, for that matter — taking a shotgun blast to the cooter is a bit beyond the pale, so keep that bit in mind before sitting down to watch ‘GATOR BAIT with your girlfriend.

Which brings me to the oft-cited sentiment that ‘GATOR BAIT is one of many exploitation flicks held to be a feminist statement. Lemme tell ya, buddy, the makers of this film simply set out make a movie about a scantily clad hottie who kicks ass on the people who fucked with her and her family, but I strongly doubt that capital F feminism was intentionally involved in the creative process. Think about it: you have fine-ass Claudia Jennings, a woman for whom the wearing of clothing should have been a capital offense, traipsing about the fen in gear that shows off her priapism-inducing assets for all they’re worth, despite the fact that such gear is in no way conducive to the rigors of marshland hunting and trapping.

Desiree is not so much a feminist role model as she is a fantasy wild woman/jungle girl updated and transplanted to a sweltering southern bayou, and as a lifelong fan of such characters I have no problem with that. But don’t hand me that feminist over-analysis horseshit; Desiree’s a forest spirit fantasy made flesh — hell, she even looks like an anthropomorphic fox — and to say otherwise is a tad disingenuous.

Other than the surprisingly taut story, the true surprise about ‘GATOR BAIT is that considering its R rating and the presence of Jennings, the star doesn’t get naked at any point in the movie. Sure, we get tantalizing glimpses of her good stuff, but the requisite nudity for this type of flick falls to her nymphet sister who innocently strips out of her already-revealing shift and bathes in the river. That somewhat disappointed me because I’d seen provocative shots of Claudia Jennings in her Daisy Dukes and unbuttoned sleeveless shirt for over three decades, and expected the film to deliver what the ad campaign couldn’t.

But I wasn’t terribly pissed because she looked great throughout the movie, and sometimes titillation is better than in-your-face nekkidness, and the movie kind of reminded me of pinup art or Al Capp’s Wolf Gal.

Bottom line, ‘GATOR BAIT is definitely worth checking out, and is a lot better film than you’d expect from the “hicksploitation” genre, capably holding it’s own alongside the real heavy hitters of its ilk, namely DELIVERANCE and SOUTHERN COMFORT. It’s solid, down-home, grimy sleaze, and as such it works just fine. TRUST YER BUNCHE!!!

THE HORSEMAN (2008)

Here's a quick question: say you're a dad who's out to annihilate the human filth who dosed your daughter with heroin, videotaped her drugged-up and incoherent self being gang-banged by multiple creeps for commercial sale and then dumped her used-up body, and you have one of the offending scum tied nude to a chair with no possibility of him getting away. You need to know where the rest of her rapist/murderers are and he has that information. His genitals are right there, hanging like an uncooked piece of pork, and you have on hand an assortment of deep sea fishing hooks. What would you do?

Writer/producer/director Steven Kastrissios' THE HORSEMAN (as in "of the Apocalypse;" I'm guessing, because the title is not explained in the film) is a welcome and extremely savage throwback to the old school revenge exploitation genre, similar in some respects to TAKEN (also from 2008), only minus the utterly implacable martial skills of Liam Neeson's secret agent or whatever the hell he was, but with elements of the currently popular "torture porn" genre (best exemplified by HOSTEL) thrown in for sadistic measure.

The protagonist of THE HORSEMAN is a grief-and-vengeance-driven father named Christian (Peter Marshall) who works as a pest control professional and quite literally embarks on a mission to take out the two-legged, sentient vermin who did serious wrong to his daughter, a situation he's made aware of when the cops find her body, which contained heroin in her system, along with amounts of semen. As if that information were not enough to send any parent into a state akin to that of a Fury straight out of Greek mythology, Christian receives an anonymous package containing a copy of "Young City Sluts 2," the porno that graphically depicts what happened to his kid, and it is that piece in the puzzle that sends him down a trail of ultra-brutal retribution as he kills his way down the line of distributors, producer, director, actors and anyone else associated with his daughter's sleazy and degrading death. As Christian travels the desolate highways of Queensland in search of his prey, he encounters a young runaway named Alice (Caroline Marohasy) who has troubles of her own, and the two form a charming bond along the way. But that ray of sunshine in their lives is overshadowed by Christian's horrific quest, so no matter how it all turns out, you just know it ain't gonna be pretty for anyone involved.

Every aspect of the film is the best that it can be and I've always felt the Australians have a knack for making exceptional exploitation films — MAD MAX, anyone? — and THE HORSEMAN totally delivers on its very visceral promises. The fights are very realistic, giving us an ordinary man pushed past the brink of savagery who possesses no action movie-style highly-trained fighting abilities but wields a knife, a crowbar and a utility hammer with shattering efficacy, and the flick's violence is definitely not for those who can't take such material depicted with unflinching nastiness. And, as previously mentioned, the film contains several scenes of excruciating torture and sadism that even made me utter assorted exclamations when the going got rough (and, BOY, does it get rough), so proceed with caution if you plan on watching this with friends or family who are not hardened to the excesses of exploitation cinema.

But while THE HORSEMAN has much to offer and is very entertaining, it kind of runs out of steam during its last third and degenerates into repetitiveness as it makes its way to its inevitable climax. The film's structure basically follows Christian's path of vengeance and can more or less be summed up as "Christian finds scumbag, beats the shit out of the guy, tortures him for information and then kills him before continuing on to the next scumbag," and while it's an entertaining ride, it becomes a catalog of predictability (with a few exceptions) that prevents the film from being a classic. That's a frustrating aspect when one considers how strong the narrative is when coming out of the gate and maintaining serious momentum before the final third's coasting (which is not to say that the final act does not contain brutal graphic violence).

But, all quibbles aside, THE HORSEMAN is definitely worth your time, especially if you're looking for the polar opposite of the largely toothless fare that continues to crawl across the world's movie screens. RECOMMENDED.

Cover art for the American DVD release.

DEATH WISH 3 (1985)

Throughout the history of cinema there have been critically acclaimed films that made a shitload of money, thereby guaranteeing sequels, and while several such follow-ups are good, sometimes even eclipsing the flicks that spawned them — FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, A SHOT IN THE DARK, THE GODFATHER PART II, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and TOY STORY 2 spring immediately to mind — more often than not the sequels fall far short of the quality found in the original work. Among the lackluster movies that make up this reviled sub-category are such infamous works as EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, THE TWO JAKES, BASIC INSTINCT II, the entire gaggle of JAWS offspring, the unfortunate sequels to THE MATRIX, and of course the STAR WARS prequel trilogy, but no sequel has ever fallen straight to the depths of cinematic Hell quite as spectacularly as DEATH WISH 3. And seldom has any other film, good or bad, been anywhere near as balls-out entertaining.

The original DEATH WISH from 1974 was a serious and rather depressing piece of early-1970’s social commentary that centered on a NYC architect, Paul Kersey (played by the venerable Charles Bronson, nee Buchinski), who is the most gentle of souls, once a conscientious objector during his military service, now a loving family man, basically the sort of guy who wouldn’t harm a fly. Then, one day while he’s away at work, a bunch of thugs (including a repellent Jeff Goldblum in his screen debut) break into his posh Upper West Side apartment and brutally beat and rape his wife and daughter. Kersey’s wife does not survive the assault and his daughter is so traumatized by the experience that she ends up a vegetable and is committed to a mental health care facility for life (or, more accurately, until she is again gang raped and eventually killed in the appalling DEATH WISH 2). To take his mind off his family’s tragedies, the emotionally distraught Kersey accepts a design job in Arizona and receives a revolver as a token of appreciation from his client. Upon returning to the almost cartoonishly crime-ridden streets of New York, Kersey takes it upon himself to go on a one man spree of payback against the human vermin who make NYC life unlivable, first beating the piss out of a mugger with a sock full of quarters, then upgrading to using his gift pistol to blow away more scum, the press soon bestowing upon him the catchy moniker of “the Vigilante Killer.” Lionized by the citizens who soon begin to follow his example of fighting back and demonized by a police force that is pissed off because he makes them look useless, Kersey is eventually shot, but he survives and is given a pass by the NYPD who secretly banish him and tell him in no uncertain terms that he is never to return.

When DEATH WISH proved to be a hit, the sequels took their own sweet time in showing up, the first of which being unleashed in 1982. The early 1980’s were the dawn of the era of truly mindless action flicks, and the DEATH WISH series quickly threw out all semblance of quality and social commentary, opting instead for as much over-the-top graphic carnage as possible. DEATH WISH 2 is an exploitation piece of the lowest order, a celluloid slaughterhouse that offers up far more rape, violence, shootings and general degradation of the human spirit than even this hardened grindhouse junkie could stomach, with a sickening air of abject cruelty permeating the whole megilah. And providing the icing on this mountainous shit cake is Jimmy Page — yes, that Jimmy Page — apparently having forgotten the skills that made him a rock ‘n’ roll legend, providing a cacophonous mess of a score. Fortunately for bad movie addicts everywhere, DEATH WISH 2 made enough scratch to warrant a sequel three years later, and thus was the sublime ridiculousness of DEATH WISH 3 foisted upon an unsuspecting public.

For his third outing, Kersey returns to “the City” to visit an old and utterly nondescript army buddy (read “cannon fodder”), but as is expected in this series the guy is soon rendered null and void by some of the many “creeps” who infest the neighborhood like two-legged cockroaches. When Kersey enters his dying friend’s apartment he is nabbed by the cops, who of course think he’s responsible, and he’s promptly brought before Shriker (played by Ed Lauter, veteran of about eleventy-jillion flicks), a hard-nosed detective who recognizes Kersey (apparently he saw the previous flicks) and roughs him up a bit just to show him who’s boss. Now, Kersey — hereafter referred to as Badass Grandpa — may be an old fart, but he ain’t taking that kind of bullshit, so he immediately socks Shriker in the nuts. That move lands Badass Grandpa in the holding tank, a foul enclosure just brimming with punks, junkies and creeps straight out of Central Casting.

“I’m old. I’m bold. GET USED TO IT, CREEPS!”

It’s all been cookie cutter stupid up to this point, but once Badass Grandpa hands out an ass-whuppin’ on an overweight creep by shoving his Rosie O’Donnell-sized skull through the bars, all bets are off. This amusing act of self-defense/gratuitous violence attracts the attention of Fraker (masterfully — and shamelessly — essayed by Gavan O’Herlihy, the guy who played Richie Cunningham’s older brother, Chuck, during the first season of “Happy Days”), a horse-faced white dude sporting an idiotic reverse Mohawk and what I guess is supposed to be some kind of scary neo-tribal war paint, but instead looks like he passed out drunk and a five-year-old drew on his face with some crayons and nobody bothered to mention it to him.

"Hey! Why the fuck are youse laughin' at me?"

Upon seeing Badass Grandpa in action, Fraker asserts his imagined status as the cell’s resident alpha wolf and gives the old coot a cheap shot to the ribs, after which he is released back onto the streets. But as he departs, Fraker looks Badass Grandpa square in the eye and advises him to watch the seven o’clock news because “I’m gonna kill an old lady. Just for you.” Then, apparently having forgotten about being pissed off at him, Detective Shriker releases Badass Grandpa, tells him how much he admires his work as a homicidal vigilante because he can’t stand creeps either, returns his gun and actually gives him carte blanche to wipe out as many punks/creeps as he feels like, all with the full clandestine cooperation of the local police department. Thus emboldened, Badass Grandpa takes up residence in his dead war buddy’s apartment and is befriended by Bennett (Martin Balsam, who was memorably offed on the staircase by “Mother” in the original PSYCHO), a tenant who is nice enough to introduce Badass Grandpa to the other residents, each and every one an ethnic/religious stereotype — the old ultra-Jewish couple, the earthy Hispanics, etc. —, gives a detailed who’s who of the local creeps, and shows Badass Grandpa where his dead pal kept a big, honkin’ military issue machine gun, complete with ammo feed (but strangely no tripod on which to mount the sumbitch). Ooh, foreshadowing!

Meanwhile, Fraker returns to lead his gang and resumes his kingship by savagely murdering the gang member who had filled in for him, an act I know would have certainly filled me with a sense of unwavering loyalty. Y’see, the creeps in this film would be right at home in some post-apocalyptic hellhole as seen in films such as THE ROAD WARRIOR or FIST OF THE NORTH STAR, what with their stilted lingo, outlandish hairdos and idiotic outfits that run the gamut from the generic biker/punk rocker gear to wildly inappropriate FLASHDANCE ballet togs, but they are completely out of place in any modern day metropolis, a point driven further home when we actually get to meet some of them. Other than Fraker, the most notable creeps are Hermosa, played with staggering non-menace by a pre-BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE Alex Winter (he’s the blonde one who isn’t Keanu Reeves, namely Bill) and “the Giggler,” an outrageous black dude/FAME refugee in a leotard who gets his handle from his habit of giggling when he robs or otherwise assaults someone. Seriously, you have to see these guys to believe them.

Equipped with his new info on the local creeps, Badass Grandpa befriends all of the residents of the building, listening to their tales of misery at the hands of the scumbags and formulating the required plans of action to deal with them; the ultra-Jews have been home-invaded through their kitchen window by the Giggler more than once — he even taunted them with “We’ll be back! WHENEVER WE LIKE!!!! Hee Hee Hee Hee Hee!,” the nasty so-and-so — and the imaginatively-named Maria (the Hispanic chick, played by Marina Sirtis two years before she irritated the shit out of us for seven seasons on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” as Counselor Deanna Troi; thankfully she doesn’t have a single line in this entire picture) has been harassed to the point of near-rape by Bill, er, Hermosa until Badass Grandpa smacks him in the mouth with a convenient tire iron. I’m telling you, the ludicrous image of Alex Winter grinning like a Jack O’Lantern while plastered across Marina Sirtis’ windshield screaming “I’m gonna eatchoo, bitch!” as she drives like a maniac in an underground parking garage looks just like something out of a Wally Wood MAD Magazine illustration. I mean, how badly does an attempted rape scene fail when it elicits howls of belly-laughter even from the women in the audience?

Once he’s satisfied with his reconnaissance efforts, Badass Grandpa begins his urban renewal crusade in earnest and takes advantage of his police department free pass to purchase high-powered firearms by mail, weaponry such as a Wildey Magnum pistol that’s literally as big as your forearm, fist included.

Now THAT’S a gun!

He also rigs the tenement’s apartments with a variety of booby traps, one of which includes a wooden platform festooned with nails for the perforation of felonious feet, while another features a spring loaded two-by-four that explosively bashes would-be home invaders square in the mouth; when this trap goes off during Badass Grandpa’s meal with the ultra-Jews (causing the douchebag on the receiving end to screech like a banshee as he flees into the night), the diners rush to the kitchen and find the board sticking straight up next to an open window. As Badass Grandpa resets the trap, the ultra-Jews gape in shock, point at the board and ask, “What’s that?” Badass Grandpa smiles and says, “teeth!” We are then treated to a closeup of the board with what appear to be two bloody Chiclets embedded in the wood.

NOTE: At best the trap in question would just smack you right in the face, possibly breaking your nose, but unless the guy who got hit had been looking straight up at the ceiling and had his mandible surgically removed there is no fucking way that his teeth would end up in that plank. I’m sorry, but even for a film with this little grasp on basic reality, this is a bit of a stretch.

Once the gauntlet is thrown, in short order our ancient hero renders several of Fraker’s creeps tits-up on the pavement, most hilariously in the case of the Giggler; Badass Grandpa wanders down the street eating an ice cream cone and swinging a very expensive camera like a streetwalker’s purse during Fleet Week, attracting the baleful gaze of the Giggler. The felon eyes Badass Grandpa and begins to follow him, finally launching himself at the old man, snagging the pricey Nikon. As the Giggler speeds away, looking over his shoulder and living up to his fey nickname, Badass Grandpa drops his vanilla cone and from out of nowhere produces his insanely huge hand cannon and ventilates the fleeing FAME refugee. The actor/dancer playing the Giggler makes the most of his character’s demise by not merely hitting the asphalt, oh no! This master showman goes out with a wildly inappropriate and fruity jazz dance fall and lands like he’s interpreting an autumn leaf daintily tumbling to the earth, it’s season over and its time done. Such artistic expression may be laudable, but it has no business being in this film. In fact, when I first witnessed that moment, I snarfed the beer I was drinking out of both nostrils and then sat there laughing like the village idiot. Meanwhile, people on the street stop what they’re doing and even hang out of windows cheering and laughing at the corpse of the Giggler — which in real life would have a hole roughly the diameter of a manhole cover through it —, with one teenage onlooker raising the Black Power fist and screaming, “Right on, man!” to a smiling Badass Grandpa. And in a perfectly moronic coda to the sequence, the camera then jump cuts to the gang’s dank basement headquarters where we see Fraker’s thugs deep in the throes of mourning for their fallen comrade; much wailing and hand-wringing goes on, and then one of the creeps poignantly utters the deathless line, “They shot the Giggler, man!”

I’m telling ya, folks, not since Shakespeare have I been so moved by dialogue that truly expresses the depths of one man’s soul-wrenching misery.

Needless to say, Fraker ain’t having some old fart piss all over him and his creeps, so he decides to escalate the situation by having his boys abduct Counselor Troi and gang rape her; this scene could have been a hell of a lot worse, especially considering the misogynistic excesses of DEATH WISH 2, but it’s still pretty distasteful considering that it’s clearly meant to titillate a certain audience element, bares Marina Sirtis’ olive-toned tetas, and worst of all shows Bill, er, Hermosa leading the pack. After the boys have had their fun, Maria’s unconscious body is found and her husband and Badass Grandpa rush to the hospital to see her. They are immediately informed by the attending physician that during the assault Maria suffered a broken arm which caused a blood clot that dislodged and made its way to her heart, killing her just minutes before her visitors arrived.

At this point I would like to ask any of the medical professionals who read this blog if such a thing is possible; I’m no doctor, so I don’t know, but the offhanded speed with which that bit of info is delivered rendered all believability null and void for me.

Oh, and lest I forget, from out of nowhere comes Deborah Raffin in the thankless role of a police administrator or psychiatrist or some shit who is assigned to keep tabs on Badass Grandpa — NOTE: she’s not in on his arrangement with the local fuzz — and unbelievably falls in love with his Methuselah ass. This improbable plot element, one of the most improbable in a film where a talking, disco dancing tree would barely raise an eyebrow, allows Badass Grandpa to briefly have a love interest who you just know is going to get killed, thereby spurring the old coot on to greater heights of urban wholesale slaughter. The two instantly embark on a romance that we are supposed to deeply care about, despite the fact that the two of them have been together for all of maybe ten minutes, but wouldn’t ya know it? That ol’ meanie Fraker knocks out the police administrator (or psychiatrist or some shit) while she’s sitting behind the wheel of her car at a red light, kicks the car into gear, sending it careening out of control until it crashes and bursts into the kind of pyrotechnic display that no movie in this genre would be complete without, an event that is of course witnessed by Badass Grandpa.

Oh, it’s ON now, creeps.

Badass Grandpa returns to the apartment building with a mysterious package that he received in the mail, and then breaks out the gigantic machine gun that was in his dead war buddy’s flat, gaining Maria’s husband (and his homemade zip-gun) as backup. The two then literally wander the streets, blowing away overacting creeps willy-nilly, when, lo and behold, Detective Shriker joins in the fun and the three hobble about feebly, inspiring the once timid neighborhood denizens to pick up bricks, boards, baseball bats, the family cat, and damn near anything else that isn’t nailed down and fight back against the savage scumbags. The already ultra-violent streets are suddenly turned into an even more over-the-top living Hell as the locals give as good as they get in defense of their homes, and the skies literally rain bodies from the rooftops as Badass Grandpa and his boys blast the living shit out of everyone and everything in sight.

The sheer madness that ensues goes on for about fifteen solid minutes of our heroes staggering about like they’d stumbled into a living shooting gallery, each cutout target able to move, scream, cuss and bleed. There’s even an incredible bit where a creep hurls a Molotov cocktail through a tenement window, after which a shrill old lady’s scream is heard; shortly thereafter the old lady runs into the street, her torso ablaze, but the hilarious part of this is that she’s obviously portrayed by a dude and resembles Norman Bates doing his “mother” act while auditioning for the role of the Human Torch in FANTASTIC FOUR: THE RISE OF THE SLIVER SURFER.

Eventually, shit gets so thick that Fraker gets on the phone and calls some unnamed thug, presumably of the same tribe or a regional affiliate, and politely asks him if he can “send some more guys.” We are then treated to a shot of a horde of barbarian bikers instantly roaring into the neighborhood, whoopin’ and a-hollerin’, whirling chains over their heads, and generally being a blight on humanity. The only way this image could have been any funnier is if there were a few random Vikings and pirates screaming, “Aar, me hearties” for spice.

This laughable display is greeted by Fraker’s punks with a stirring show of solidarity, namely with more whoopin’ and a-hollerin’, and whirling of chains over their own Mohawked/shaved/Afroed heads. Faster than you can say, “Have you ever seen such cruelty?” the mayhem somehow manages to get even more outrageous, causing Badass Grandpa to run out of machine gun ammo, so he falls back on his old, reliable Wildey Magnum. Yet more punks soon litter the streets with their splattered corpses and the locals appear to be gaining the upper hand. However, despite a valiant show of homicidal acumen, Badass Grandpa soon begins to tire and is caught unawares by a creep who stabs him with a trusty “shiv.” Luckily, Badass Grandpa had on a bulletproof vest during the stabbing, so he survives and makes it back to his dead pal’s flat, hurriedly rummaging for the mysterious package he received earlier. Just as he grabs the box, Fraker storms in to hold Badass Grandpa at gunpoint and taunt him about the fact the he too has on a bulletproof vest. Unimpressed and with a burst of speed that would have made Barry Allen envious, Badass Grandpa whips out the contents of the mysterious package, a handheld rocket launcher that he aims at Fraker, literally blowing him to chunky bits from five feet away (an act that would have also killed Badass Grandpa thanks to the confined space involved, but why quibble?) while simultaneously sending the wall behind the head creep showering onto the street below. Upon catching sight of this and somehow realizing that the pretty bits of hamburger littering the sidewalk are the earthly remains of their leader, the rampaging creeps, bikers, pirates, ninjas, Viet Cong, zombies, giant monsters, vampires and Shiite Muslims dejectedly lower their chains, knives, cricket bats, Panzer tanks and disintegrator pistols and drive off into the unknown from whence they came in a parade resembling the exodus scene from THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, only populated with nothing but total douchebags and no camels to speak of.

As the neighborhood around them burns and scores of stiffs festoon the place for as far as the eye can see, Shriker tells Badass Grandpa that he’ll cover for any difficult questions that may arise from his having turned the area into a demilitarized zone, so the old dude should make like a bakery truck and haul buns outta there. And so, like the hardened warrior he is, Badass Grandpa packs his suitcase and wanders off into the horizon, just as the pretty much non-existent-up-to-this-point squadron of police cars enters the post-fray. THE END.

Unfortunately, this overview simply cannot in any way, shape, or form get across just how maniacally insane this film is, so if you feel like you need a million volts of outright stupidity shot straight up your ass, put it in your Netflix queue right now. No joke, truly idiotic though it may be, DEATH WISH 3 is one of my top twenty all-time favorite movies and I can’t urge you strongly enough to see it as soon as you can. Oh, and avoid the other sequels at all costs.