Hello everyone! Well, I haven't updated this blog since the 19th September. Sorry about that! There have been several factors involved that have made my absence so long, but mostly I suppose it has been sheer laziness. I have recently moved properties, so I was offline for about a month when that happened, and combined with work and general real life I felt like I had no time. This and the fact my mind was occupied on another project I was doing writing film reviews for a site called Horror Fans Asylum Reviews, which I have subsequently stepped down from to concentrate on my own page which has been neglected.
Another main reason I hadn't been updating the page was the fact I seemed to be having more interaction on social networking sites. With Facebook, I was posting a lot of upcoming film trailers and trailers for older, non-mainstream films (basically whatever caught my attention). In the past few days this has changed. It seems that Facebook has had some policy changes, one of which has impeded my ability to share with people movie trailers and clips from sites like YouTube. Pretty much killing off a considerable portion of what I liked doing on Facebook..... showing trailers and clips (old and new), and having some nice little discussions on them.
I can imagine that a lot of other fan pages are having similar problems. My page and other pages are seen as businesses on Facebook, who could possibly (who knows how?) be making money from sharing clips from YouTube and other sites of the same vein.
I never have, and never will, use this site or any social networking pages to make any monetary gain (as I can imagine is the same for a lot of bloggers). Fuck, not many people read the page anyway, there wouldn't be any chance in hell of making money off this blog! All the competitions I've had on here and my other pages all come from my own pocket!
So with New Year on it's way in a few hours, I thought I would take the opportunity to be as honest with people as possible, and make changes in how this blog will work. I'll mostly be using the blog for posting most of my random thoughts as well as the usual film posts (the way the blog should have been anyway), this will mean the blog will be my primary focus! And I'd like to still interact with all the great people I've met online on my Facebook and Twitter pages, so I please urge anyone who follows these pages to please take a few seconds to follow my blog on here or comment whenever possible! Though I'll still be on those pages, they aren't my primary focus at the moment.
While I'm being honest as well, I'm not here to write about all the news on what new films are coming out and all that crap, there are TONS of pages that deal with that! I'm just here to talk about the films I love or whatever curiosities I've seen recently. If it's a new film that's caught my eye, so be it. But I'm not really interested a lot in which new horror film or whatever is coming out soon, chances are it'll be a disappointment anyway. Most of the stuff on here will be from my own collection. Just thought I'd be clear on what my blog is all about!
That was quite a rant I had there haha! I'd like to thank Dr Blood for kind of being like a mentor to me for a while and convincing me to keep the blog going when I had pretty much given up. Thank you! Also to everyone else, I hope you have a fantastic New Year and I hope to see you soon. Below you'll find a full movie to see you through the bells!
Well, finally I have managed to make it to the 6th film in the controversial "Guinea Pig" series, "Devil Woman Doctor". So far in the series I've seen varying degrees of graphic violence, such as torture and graphic mutilation, and even more degrees of insanity. A man who can't die pulling his internal organs out, a mermaid coughing out pus and worms, midget scientists conducting human experiments, and many more bizarre incidents. But this film has to be the most bizarre film in the series!
"Devil Woman Doctor" was made in 1986 by Hajime Tabe. Strangely enough, this film was produced as the 4th film in the series, but ended up coming out being the 6th to be released.
It stars a Japanese transvestite called Shinnosuke Ikehata (AKA Peter) in the lead role as the Devil Woman Doctor, an unlicensed doctor who's job is examining "heretical sicknesses where the common sense of medicine cannot be applied".
Basically the film is a series of silly sketches, where the Doctor introduces patients with very ridiculous ailments, and the outcomes of each sketch are usually just as ridiculous. For example, a man with a human face shaped malignant tumour which called a "human face whitlow" in medical terms (insane). The patient is a loud mouth yakuza gang member whereas the tumour (which can talk) is very polite and well spoken. The Doctor persuades the gang member to leave behind his life of crime and try to become a celebrity.
Another random sketch (which I thought was quite funny) is about a relationship between a woman and a walking corpse. He isn't exactly a zombie as he can still act like a normal person, he is just decomposing. They manage to pull a few gags with that sketch. A scene where they pinky promise to love each forever, only for the corpse's pinky to be pulled off. Also another scene where the corpse is given car air fresheners to keep him smelling nice! Very bizarre but I had to laugh.
Finally another sketch where the Doctor has to remove a tattoo using a Freddy Krueger type glove with scalpels on it. the only problem is, the tattoo can move around the body and change shape. We are shown a stop motion scene of a tattoo moving around a man's body changing shape and disappearing then reappearing out the guy's anus! The Doctor tries to cut the tattoo out, but it keeps getting away until the patient ends up running out of skin.
Even for a series as crazy as "Guinea Pig", this is very out of character. It takes a very light hearted approach to things and is very slapstick in nature (the credits come up to a montage of the cast hitting each other, custard pie style in the face with what looks like a board with spikes on it, with blood splatting out of it!). It is quite an oddity even for Japanese cinema. It surely is the worst film in the series, but I had to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
There's not much else I can say about this film. It's bad but you'll find a couple of stupid laughs in it. I've had a good time revisiting the "Guinea Pig" series, from it's dark pseudo snuff beginnings, to it's high concept storyline's and then it's fall from grace with a slapstick comedy ending.
I hope you all enjoyed my post's on the "Guinea Pig" films, even if you hadn't heard of them before. Please leave a comment below and get a conversation going. If you want to hear any more of my ramblings, there are links to my Twitter and Facebook pages to the right. I have also just been given the position of film reviewer at Horror Film Asylum Reviews, a brand new site where I'll be reviewing more mainstream horror films every Wednesday. Check it out!
Hey everyone. Taking a brief break from doing the "Guinea Pig" series to talk about "Dredd 3D". I usually avoid recent movies of this nature because you generally find that most other sites have already talked about them, I like to keep it a bit more obscure! But Judge Dredd has always been one of my favourite comic characters and I felt compelled to do a post on the film.
"Dredd 3D" (2012) was directed by Pete Travis (Vantage Point), and has a script written by Alex Garland (28 Days Later, Sunshine). Judge Dredd creator John Wagner also had a close collaboration with the film.
In the future, America has become a radioactive wasteland. Throughout the wasteland there are Mega Cities surrounded by a vast desert called the Cursed Earth. Mega City One runs from Boston to Washington DC and the city is enforced by Judges from the Hall Of Justice. The Judges are judge, jury and execution who dish out instant sentences on the cities undesirables.
Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) is one of the most famous and feared Judges in the city. During a routine day on the job, Dredd is asked to evaluate a rookie called Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), who failed the tests to become a Judge but has a talent which is very special. She happens to be one of the best psychics the Hall Of Justice has ever seen.
At the beginning of the evaluation, Dredd asks Anderson to choose an incident to investigate. Anderson chooses to investigate a triple homicide at a 200 storey tower block slum called Peach Trees, where they find out the murders were probably related to a drug called SLO-MO: a highly addictive drug which slows time down to 1% normal speed for the user. Peach Trees is controlled by a ruthless drug lord called Ma-Ma, who manufactures and supplies all the SLO-MO in Mega City One. Dredd and Anderson locate an apartment in the complex which is alleged to distribute the drug, and after a shootout, apprehend a drug dealer whom Anderson has sensed was involved in the murder.
Ma-Ma is worried the drug dealer is going to tell the Judges everything about the drug operation going on in Peach Trees, so puts the entire tower block into lock down and orders the Judges to be killed. Dredd and Anderson are forced to fight their way up 200 storeys in order to survive. I wont spoil any more of the film for you than I already have!
People have commented on the film's story, which is very nearly identical to Gareth Evans "The Raid: Redemption". I agree that it is very similar, but I think it has all been an unfortunate coincidence. "Dredd 3D" is an independent film made with a 45 million budget, meaning that the film had to avoid a lot of expensive exterior shots of a futuristic town with flying cars and robots and all that other expensive stuff. This is one of the reasons the film had to be mostly filmed indoors.
The uniform that the Judges wear has changed a bit from the comics. Alex Garland thought that since Dredd was out on the frontline fighting a war on criminals, it makes sense to be wearing a suit of body armour to withstand any knocks he might take. I don't think the uniform looks that radically different that it makes the character look bad, it makes a bit more sense on realistic terms for me.
The city also looks quite different. The comic book version of Mega City One is quite dense with a lot of buildings of all different shapes and sizes packed in close to each other. In the film the city is still bustling, but it seems more barren. Alex Garland also says that when all the tall buildings were all close together, you lose the sense of scale of how tall the buildings really are. So spacing out the high buildings were people live, shows you how massive the buildings are in comparison to the rest of the city.
Judge Dredd isn't the most talkative or emotional of characters, so the film is shown more from Anderson's point of view. For Dredd, everything is quite black and white and he is very fast at delivering judgement on people. Anderson is more emotional, and has more of a moral compass. She was raised in a slum like Peach Trees and understands the plight and desperation that most of the people in that environment have. Throughout the film, she even manages to make Dredd change slightly.
Even though there are some slight changes from the comic, this is a very faithful adaptation. The film is totally uncompromising when it comes to violence just like the comic is. There are some nice SLO-MO scenes where people are being shot in gruesome detail, and because it's so slow it seems very comic book like and even very beautiful. It's good to see a film these days that is so respectful to the source material, even in taking the risk of losing out on money by keeping the film an 18 rating. For a film like this that probably has a large audience that are under 18, it's good that the makers kept their integrity and I feel it really benefited the film.
If you haven't figured it out already, I really liked this film. Sure I may be biased since I'm such a fan boy, but I really did feel it was very close to the comic. I'll admit that the story isn't very original and is very similar to "The Raid", but if they decide to make a sequel it's a nice introduction to the characters and a good starting point to giving people an idea of the world that Dredd lives in.
Karl Urban a already a fan of Judge Dredd and had a lot of say in how the character is played, and I think he nailed it. Olivia Thirlby is great as Anderson and really does bear an uncanny resemblance to the comic version. She is as much a part of "Dredd 3D" as Urban is.
I love the dream like slow motion scenes when people are taking the drug SLO-MO. I like how the stylistic slow motion scenes are actually part of the storyline and not put in pointlessly like a Michael Bay film!
Also I like my film's violent, and on that note I'm glad they retained that tone and never pussied out.
Thanks for reading. I'd love to hear your opinions on the film or even your opinions on the comic, so please leave a comment below! I also have Facebook and Twitter pages which you can follow. The links are on the right of the page.
My next post will be on the final "Guinea Pig" film "Devil Woman Doctor".
Hi there! Sorry I've been away for about a month but now I'll get back on track. "Android Of Notre Dame" is the 5th film in the "Guinea Pig" series. It was made in 1989 and was directed by Kazuhito Kuramoto.
The series started out with no real purpose but to sicken with it's graphic violence and it was quite successful at doing so. Then the series went into gross out comedy territory and then fantastical fairy tale horror. This 5th installment goes into the realms of violent science fiction.
Like the last two films, this title also has a bizarre story. A midget scientist called Karazawa has a sister who is dying. He is experimenting on animals to see if it is possible to revive her when she inevitably dies The experimentation with animals is unsuccessful and he feels that to get the proper results, he must use a fresh cadaver.
Out of the blue, he receives a phone call from a man called Kato (Tomorowo Taguchi of "Tetsuo I & II" amongst other great films), who offers him the body of a 21 year old female for the bargain price of ten million yen.
Karazawa accepts the offer and before he knows it, he has the body in his laboratory. He is a bit unhappy at the freshness of the corpse (5 days old), but he proceeds with his experiments. They don't go to plan and he basically fries the cadaver with electricity! Frustrated he stabs away at the body. He comes to the conclusion that he needs something fresher.
Later on, Kato arrives unexpectedly at Karazawa's door. He says he has the final answer to successfully finish the experiments. Also he blackmails Karazawa by saying if he doesn't accept his offer, he will put a virus into his computer. Kato asks to see the secret laboratory, and when Karazawa leads him to it, he chops off Kato's legs with a random buzz saw blade he throws at him, then he kills him.
Kato is now the latest guinea pig for Karazawa's experiments, though he turns out looking like Pinhead's long lost cousin. He is basically a reanimated severed head with a robotic arm from this point on. Kato is then programmed to call his partner. She comes over to the laboratory and is then killed by Kato and his robot hand. Karazawa then takes the woman's heart and gives it to his dead sister, who then says, "Why did you bring me back to life? Finally I found peace." Then dies again. Bizarre.
As with the rest of the films in the series this film is quite short, running at just over 50mins. The film is played quite seriously, but the acting is terrible. The over the top violence which is the main trait of the series, is almost non existent in this film. Also whatever special effects are in the film are done quite badly compared to the other films. This is definitely when the series went into decline (some would say the series was in decline from the beginning), and the wooden acting and sub par special effects ruin the film. Though the film has an interesting premise and some pretty cool imagery it is largely forgettable. The only reason it is probably remembered is because the "Guinea Pig" name has been tacked on. Definitely a curiosity though! I couldn't find the trailer, so I've posted the whole film below.
Also if you're wondering where Notre Dame comes into all of this, Karazawa mentions at some point in the film that Quasimodo was an android!?
Thanks for reading. The next post will be on the final film of the series, "Devil Woman Doctor".
The fourth entry in the "Guinea Pig" series, "Mermaid In A Manhole" (1988) is the second film in the series (after "Flower Of Flesh And Blood") to be directed by manga artist Hideshi Hino.
Based on a manga made by the director, "Mermaid In A Manhole" is like a sick fairy tale. The film is about a painter whose wife has left him. He spends most of his time going into the sewers to paint the things he finds there. "This is my secret place. All my lost treasures are here. All the beautiful things I have ever lost, they are here. All the time I have lost is here. Everything is hidden in the darkness."
While in the sewer, he stumbles across a mermaid. He recognises the mermaid from when he played in the area as a child, and the sewer used to be a river. He realises that he always came down into the sewer to paint because he hoped to see the mermaid again. From now on, he will only paint her.
While painting in the sewer, he notices the mermaid has a bad infection. He takes her to his home to try and heal her and to continue to paint. The mermaid's condition rapidly deteriorates, until her full chest is covered in cysts, yet she insists on being painted. The painter struggles to find the right paint to properly depict the infection on canvas, so the mermaid asks him to slice the cysts on her chest and collect the pus to use as paint.
As the infection progresses, it takes over much of her body. In one truly disgusting scene, her boils burst and worms and other insects come out of the wounds along with pus and blood. In the end, when the painting is done and the mermaid is dying, she asks the painter to finally kill her. The painter then dismembers the body.
While all this has been happening throughout the film, his neighbours have been wondering what he is up to. When the painter kills the mermaid, the blood seeps into the neighbours flat. When they go over to see what's happening, they find the painter chopping up the body. The police are called, and come to the conclusion that he killed his ex wife, believing she was a mermaid.
Out of all the "Guinea Pig" films, I found "Mermaid In A Manhole" the toughest to watch. It was quite sad to see this beautiful mermaid dying in the most horrible fashion. The scenes where she is in pain from infection, with sores spraying blood and pus is truly disgusting, especially the scenes with worms coming out of the wounds and coming out the mermaids mouth. But I really like the story, which is quite profound.
Out of all of the "Guinea Pig" films, Hideshi Hino's contributions stand out the most. The mood of his films are the darkest, and really do have the power to affect you. He definitely put the "Guinea Pig" films on the radar and is really the man to blame for the controversy surrounding the series. I would've loved for him to continue a career in film as I think he would have made his mark in Asian cinema. I would say that this is my favourite from the whole series. I'll need to seek out some of his manga to read!
As always, I'd love for you to leave a comment. It helps me know people are reading! Also like my Facebook page or Twitter (links are on the right hand side of the page), as I'malways ranting on either one of them!
Hello! As I'm not the most prolific of bloggers due to constantly being busy recently, I thought I'd ask some of my followers on Facebook if they would like to submit a post on the page for people to read.
James Bell sent me a post for the film "Dumpling" (2004) directed by Fruit Chan. Thanks James!
Here's what he has to say about this great film!
"In my later teenage years I started a love affair with oriental cuisine, and out-sourced foodtypes from different Asian regions to try and quench my hunger, even though I can't handle spice. I remember becoming mildly obsessed with dumplings, the dough or flour wrapped bundles that could contain meat, vegetables and in some cultures sweets. I loved the variety of flavours, and how you could boil them, fry them or steam them, to create a multitude of differing offerings. Around the same time I got into Tartan Asian cinema, and the 'Extreme' sub-genre of this, and came across a film aptly entitled 'Dumplings' (2004); later I found out there are two versions of this film, the full-cinematic release (which I prefer) to the smaller original short, part of the Three...Extremes (2002) compilation.
It follows the story of a middle-aged woman, who is in a loveless and (not by her doing) open marriage. Feeling isolated from her husband she turns to a local chef who – it is believed – can help restore beauty, and although what she offers works, the side-effects are not just physical, but also morally repugnant. What lines would you cross to get the image you desire, and what are you prepared to have to eat to get it? Apart from the lead storyline, a second, more human one, grounds you to the inhuman events unfolding elsewhere, and tie together nicely – but I tell you now, because of this film, I can now only bring myself to eat fried dumplings, at a push."
Thanks, James Bell for taking the time to submit this post! If you haven't seen this film you should definitely give it a shot. You'll never look at a dumpling the same way again!
I've talked about the worst two parts of the controversial "Guinea Pig" series, but that is pretty much where most of the controversy ends. "The Devil's Experiment" and "Flower Of Flesh And Blood" were pseudo-snuff movies with very little to no plot, and pretty much made to disgust the audience and leave a bad taste in their mouth.
"He Never Dies" (may as well use the short title) is a more silly and bizarre title. After the controversy of the first two films, made to feel real and were quite serious and mean spirited in nature, the series took a very surprising turn. It had a script, a full cast, opening and closing credits, and was made as a horror comedy!
"He Never Dies" is a 1986 film directed by Masayuki Kusumi, who doesn't seem to have directed anything since. The film is about a man who lives alone in a small apartment. He is experiencing problems with his life and with his work. Not only has he lost his girlfriend, but he is bored and always in trouble with his boss at work, who wants nothing to do with him. He attempts to cut his wrist at home, but the pain makes him reconsider his attempt at suicide.
Instead of suicide, he decides not to go back to work. After 4 days of sitting about bored, and with not a single phone call from anyone to see if he's OK, including his boss, he assumes he has just been forgotten. He finally gets the courage to cut his wrist and does it properly this time. He panics and sits on the floor, waiting for death, when he realises that the pain is gone and the blood has stopped.
He then stabs through his arm with a pen, which also does nothing to him. Frustrated, he chops his hand off which also doesn't have the desired effect of killing him! He comes to the conclusion that he can't die and even tries calling the emergency services to tell them this fact, but even they don't care. After some more attempts at killing himself to no avail, he decides to get revenge on his ex-girlfriend and a co-worker who is going out with her.
He calls his co-worker (who is also in the company of his ex-firlfriend) and asks him to come over under the pretence that he needs gardening utensils for some reason, and also a hatchet! When the co-worker comes to his house (also with the ex-girlfriend who waits in the car) he proceeds to terrify him by cutting open his stomach with a knife and throwing his internal organs over the co-worker.
The ex-girlfriend comes up to see what's taking so long with her boyfriend. When she goes into the apartment she finds her boyfriend unconscious on the floor and the man's severed head (which is still alive) on the table. Instead of being scared, she berates the man for making such a mess of his apartment, and starts to clean up all the blood.
All very bizarre. The end credits are of gory scenes from the movie played backwards and of an outtake of everyone goofing around and laughing. Also there's an American guy who presents the film at the start, and also closes the film saying there could be more immortal people in the world like the man in the film who don't realise it yet!
Besides the extreme violence, this is a very lighthearted and fun film. The main character is very likeable and quite funny, and at just over 40 minutes in length, it doesn't outstay it's welcome. It's also one of the strangest films in the "Guinea Pig" series, especially when placed beside the previous two films in the series. I bet no one was expecting a sequel like this after a film like "Flower Of Flesh And Blood". That's probably why I like it so much!
After the realism of the first two films and the way they were probably taken so seriously by the press at the time, I think this is the series way of telling people to lighten up a bit. You can tell they had a lot of fun making this film. As unsettling as "Flower And Flesh And Blood" was (which is a credit to the director Hideshi Hino for making an effective film), when you see the making of the film, all you see is the makers of the film and the actors having a good laugh and goofing around. It's weird to see the contrast between the making of a film, and the film itself!
I couldn't find a trailer for this film but I found a best of video. Enjoy!
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