Some serious party poopers

The House on the Edge of the Park (1980)

Right after Cannibal Holocaust (1980) Ruggero Deodato made this nasty little film. Even though the shock values might not be what they were in Cannibal Holocaust, this movie is still very disturbing. There's two kinds of sexploitation, there's the rather childish male fantasies and then there's the sick kind. This being a Ruggero Deodato movie this is of course the latter. It's a story about Alex (David Hoss) a homicidal rapist and his friend Ricky (Giovanni Radice), who invite themselves into a party hosted by a snobbish couple. Alex and Ricky take the group hostage, beating the men and raping the women. So the story isn't exactly great and similarities to The Last House on the Left (1972) are quite apparent. This is a bad movie, no other way of seeing it, but at parts it's so bad it turns into an unintentional comedy. Especially the twist at the end was just hilarious in it's stupidity and it pretty much ridiculed the whole movie before it. I don't know if that was a planned sick joke or just stupidity, but for me that worked very well. So basically it's an hour of torture, rape and torment and the ending makes fun of it all.
51%

Here's the trailer which is hilariously misspelled.

Getting old is never a good thing

Phantom of Death (1988)

Well I'm not going to waste too much time into reviewing this one. Had to watch it as I'm going through giallos for a project I'm working on and this is among the worst of the genre. The first 30 minutes or so were actually quite ok with some great scenes and good acting by Michael York, but the last 60 minutes were quite bad. It loses it's stylish touch to the intriguing story and becomes a dull police thriller. Donald Pleasence didn't really put any effort into his part, Edwige Fenech was good looking as usual and like I said Michael York did a good job. Deodato does what he can with the stupid script but unfortunately it doesn't save the movie.
32%

Tits, cannibals, braindeads, nazis and a whole lot of vengeance

We had a movie night at my friends house and watched quite a bit of sleaze. Here's the catch of the night.



Night of the Hunted (1980)

This movie was so uneven that it's hard to do any conclusion of it. The beginning was quite strong, but it falls to a quite over length love scene and there on it's going up and down like a rollercoaster (no I'm not meaning the other love scenes). Some scenes were really nice but others just plain stupid. Who knows, maybe it's meant that way as the theme is loss of mind, but I bet they could have done it better too. There's lots of skin in this movie and at times it gets funny as none of the women seem to want to keep their clothes on. That's ok, but it doesn't save this one from being quite boring. I do have to give credit to the end part of the film where there's some effort. Especially liked the ending scene, don't want to spoil it so won't say anything more about it. Oh and the main "villain" should start pistol shooting for money as he seems to be better at it than at acting. Don't think I'm going to ever watch this again. Some points for the ending and the boobies.
49%



Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Was my second time I watched this. Last time was way over 10 years ago so I didn't remember much from it, except those animal scenes and the lady in a pole as they just stick to you. We'll there was much more than just the shock effects of animal killing. It turned out to be quite a good movie. For example didn't remember the idea of watching the film material of the first group to tell their story, kinda takes away the "originality" of Blair Witch Project. Also it makes some good points on who the real savages really are. But the usage of the shock effects is just underlining the point too much, I mean you tend to think "OK I got the point already, move on". So all in all quite a good movie, that suffers from over usage of gore/shock effects, but definitely worth watching.
77%



Irreversible (2002)

Second time for this one too. Even thou it was still in somewhat fresh memory, it hadn't lost an inch of it's edge. Still stunningly beautiful, horribly disturbing and terrificly brilliant.
98%



SS Camp 5: Women's Hell (1977)

Tits, nazis and violence. Great combination, eh? Nope, not this time. Totally stupid waste of film, Ilsa did this already aeons better than this effort. Some points for the boobies, which were, thank god, plenty enough to keep me awake thru this.
20%



Lady Snowblood (1973)

Vengeance, don't know what's about it that appeals to me in movies. Many of my favourite movies, even thou I don't hold grudge against anyone, have vengeance as a theme. I'm beginning to think it's an easy theme to make a powerful movie... Don't know, but I'll certainly look into it in the future. Anyways about this movie, the vengeance is not direct which gives it a nice twist. A girl is concieved, grown and trained for the purpose to avenge the death of her mother's husband. This was beautifully shot and you can see how much Tarantino has taken influence from this movie for Kill Bill. Even thou I was tired as hell at this point, it still kept me easily awake till the end and left me with something to think about. Really good movie and will definately find it's way to my collection.
82%