I can’t believe I nearly allowed this to pass me by. A few weeks ago cult DVD company Panik House announced that they were going to be releasing a special edition of Chained Heat. They also revealed that they had even bigger news on the horizon. This was big news in itself, since what could possibly be more exciting than Chained Heat? Well, last week they finally revealed their latest project.

Panik House is entering into a production partnership with Synapse Films to release seven more films from the Toei vaults. Five proto-Pinky Violence films and two films of a new genre: Pinky Horror!

Kaidan Hebi-onna; aka Snake Woman’s Curse This was the first of the Pinky Horror films released by Toei. It was helmed by master director Nobuo Nakagawa, who has been called the Japanese Hitchcock, and Akemi Negishi (Sex & Fury, Lady Snowblood) stars.

There’s been a bit of a Rampo resurgence recently. I admit that I had never heard about him until recently, but after reading a piece on his work in Rue Morgue I tracked down a few of his translated short stories and enjoyed them immensely. Also, I have Panik House’s release of Sex and Fury and it’s pure gold, so I have high hopes for these releases.

I’m probably the last horror blog on the planet to link to the terminally cool 7 Black Notes, but I can resist no longer. The proprieter of that blog has pieced together various musical scores from Italian genre cinema that have never been released commercially into a collection of mini-scores. It must have taken an incredible amount of work to sift through all those films and mix together all those disparate tracks. Make sure you check it out. If you don’t get aroused listening to Images In A Convent, there’s no hope for you.

How often do you get to read, watch or listen to something on this blog that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy? For the sake of our emotional well-being, I have to break up the mayhem every once in awhile and bring you something unbearably sweet. Please enjoy this ode to brotherhood and compassion, as only the The Horror Blog can bring it to you.

And, hey. Take care of one another out there.

Just when it seemed as if the proprieter of DVD Trash was taking a few weeks off, he comes out swinging with a bevy of Turkish movie clips from Onar Films, from superheroes to Kilink and even giallo! This is exactly the kind of exploitation trash I covet. Cheap sets, brutal action, and hot Turkish women in bikinis.

That Kilink is a fucking badass. He sure gets a lot of play for a guy in a skeleton costume.

Impossivel! In a world of pointless remakes and vapid WB actors, the reemergence of legendary Brazilian director Coffin Joe is an occassion to be celebrated. In a roundabout fashion Twitchfilm has discovered that Jose Mojica Marins aka Coffin Joe will be helming a new film this October.

There is no word whether Marins will be starring in this film or if he is solely present as director but, as Gananian points out this is Marins’ first major project shot on 35 mm film in almost thirty years - his last directorial effort of any sort was in 1987 - and anything that brings a cult legend out of retirement is a good thing.

My recent passion for foreign horror cinema has been tempered by the fact that, outside of Asia, very few countries seem to be creating worthwhile work like they did twenty to thirty years ago. Between this and the upcoming Italian Masters of Horror series, is it possible that we’re on the cusp of a foreign horror renaissance?

DVD Maniacs has a great thread devoted to some of the best funky disco music to ever grace sleazy European exploitation movies. And for a limited time only, you can sample some of the Continent’s greatest horror bootyshakers. These include, but are not limited to, Cannibal Ferox, House at the Edge of the Park, and The Pyjama Girl Case. And don’t forget my favourite, the main theme from Porno Holocaust. If this don’t get you moving, you’re already dead.

The third in a series of reviews of films shown at this year’s Fantasia international film festival in Montreal.

The cast and crew of a sleazy investigative reporting show are making their way toward their next victim when a truck t-bones their van. When the group steps out of the van, they discover that they may in fact have been killed and sent to Hell, and it will take everything they’ve got to travel the world of the damned and get back to the land of the living.

Hell plays out like a fundamentalist horror show, warning the viewer as to what awaits them on the other side and scaring them into changing their ways before it’s too late. At first the characters’ journey toward the pit doesn’t seem particularly brutal. In fact, it’s a little cheesy, like a Barry Prima version of purgatory. The guards are made up like warriors from Conan The Barbarian, and they start chucking fireballs when the recently damned get out of line. Them, just when you think that this is a piss take version of the afterlife, the detainees are carted into a dusty, blood-encrusted enclosure filled with all manner of primitive torture devices and half-naked souls writhing. When one of the main characters begins her punishment and calls out for her mother, her voice is joined by a chorus of people screaming for the same distant comfort.

Even the relatively innocent aren’t spared. Perhaps the most novel twist in the film, the guardians in this version of Hell are either unaware of the moral worth of their prisoners, or they simply don’t care to distinguish anymore. In one of the more striking scenes, the guards callously mow down people who have paid their penance and are about to enter their rebirth just to get at their target, the escaped wicked.

Unfortunately, there are too many characters and not enough characterization to be spread among them, with the result that while you may feel sympathy with a few of the damned, the majority remain cyphers, a huge mistake in a film where most of the scares come from relating to the vicitms. The overlay of cheap CGI is distracting and takes away from whatever charm the natural landscape evokes. And while there are a number of interesting set pieces, including a torturous orgy for the adulterers and the lost and forgotten children of the damned seeking out and killing absent parental figures, the majority of the film is a mess of pacing, with redundant exposition thrown in at the oddest places.

I’ll admit it could be the cultural barrier, but Hell seems to be a great idea railroaded by a weak script and too much ambition for its meagre resources.

The first in a series of reviews of films shown at the Fantasia international film festival in Montreal.

A woman is murdering people in downtown Seoul, seemingly at random. The only clue she leaves behind at the scene of each crime is a sticker of an anime character, Princess Aurora. As the police try to track her down, one of the officers discovers that not only might there be a method to the killer’s madness, but he may be involved personally.

Princess Aurora starts off with incredible promise which the rest of the film sidesteps completely. The opening scene is one of the most surprising, brutal little vignettes I have seen in a long time. From that first blood-soaked scene, the impression one gets is that this is going to be like a Korean Falling Down, as the petty behaviour of the people around her drive the killer toward deranged retribution. It’s truly unfortunate when the red herring is more interesting than the actual reveal.

Most all of the killer’s victims are introduced as they’re causing grief for people weaker than them. It’s this aspect of the film that really pissed me off. This bullying is the only aspect of their personalities we’re allowed to see, giving us reason to believe that this is how they are 24/7. If the film were an allegory, this flimsy characterization would make some sense. As it stands, the reason we’re shown the victims in this light is to emphasize that they truly deserved it even before we discover why they are being chosen by the killer. The filmmaker has completely stacked the deck here, making it impossible to feel any empathy for the victims, and completely discarding any attempt at creating moral conflict over the killer’s actions. I don’t mind being manipulated, but this is so ham-fisted it’s insulting.

This absence of complexity seeps through to the rest of the film, making all but the end sequences nothing more than a bland police procedural. Princess Aurora has not one but two codas, both of which, like the very beginning, promise a great movie experience that could have been. Here we not only get another visually stunning kill, but the film also delves into issues of personal responsibility, no matter how depraved. It poses some interesting questions, but it would have been nice if those themes had been explored throughout its running time instead of tacked onto the end.

What could have been great, given a little more thought, bypasses good and settles for mediocre.

It’s the tenth anniversary for Montreal’s Fantasia film festival, the largest of its kind in North America, and I’ll be heading there this weekend for a greasy breakfast and some international horror movies. This year the organizers have decided to go all out, with the release of some of the festival’s best shorts on DVD and the introduction of Fantasia Under The Stars, free outdoor screenings of some of the films they’ve shown in the past. Today they announced the four films, which include Kamikaze Girls, UFO Robot Grandizer, Night of the Living Dorks, and Attack The Gas Station. These screenings will take place at 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays at the Parc de la Paix.

The crew at Lion in Zion have crafted one unsettling little short. A man visits his friends at their flat before heading out for a night on the town and slowly discovers that something is very, very off about the entire situation. The animation consists of large computer-generated heads grafted onto live-action bodies, a technique that I would normally abhor but which works wonderfully to give the entire thing an off-kilter, anxious look.

With the rise in mp3blogs and vinyl sharity, it’s become remarkably easy to find obscure horror soundtracks. Most of these treasures are collected together under a specific film which, while great, has the disadvantage of not giving a very diverse sampling of various composers’ styles. It’s rare to find a site which has that kind of diversity, but the Giallo Index is one such animal. While the sound quality isn’t the greatest, it does have the advantage of letting you sample tracks from 26 different gialli before committing yourself. Click on the CD covers to dowload the mp3s. Enjoy!

Mondo Macabro delivers once again, this time with a piece of Lollywood Horror entitled Hairy Beast. Before you watch it, I have to warn you of two things.

First, this seems to be some sort of condensed version of the entire movie, as you actually get to see its resolution. So if you would rather not have the movie spoiled for you, as much as that’s possible with this kind of film, don’t watch the clip.

Second, this clip is crazy in the best possible way. It comes with my highest recommendation.

I don’t know what it is, but I get the biggest kick from the most obscure shit. Take the thread on DVD Maniacs where the board members discuss the conspicuous placement of J & B Scotch bottles throughout various European cult flicks. KH Brown even went to the trouble of contacting J & B for their opinion on the matter.

A: Thanks for your email.

We had heard of this before being in what they call in Italy “Yellow” flims. We think that it is because of J&B being very popular with the Rat Pack (Franck, Dean and Sammy) and perhaps that is where the Italian connections comes in!! probably something we will never really know but a nice story.

We still have very strong Hollywood ties and still appear in some great films the earliest being Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the most recent being The Cooler

regards,
J&B

If you’re obsessive like me, go check out the fun. There’s plenty of beautiful screengrabs available to support their case. Oh, and take a shot anytime someone says that the thread makes them thirsty.

Everybody’s getting in on the fun. Hot on the heels of Masters of Horror emulator Fearmongers is The Italian Masters of Horror.

This blatant rip-off of the North American Masters of Horror fills me with glee. Italy is a country with a distinguished history of taking successful genre films from abroad, adding their own twist to them, and rereleasing them to an unsuspecting world in a completely different form, many times for the better. I’m really glad that this new format has enticed some of the old masters back into the game. Who knows, maybe this will kickstart a new Italian horror renaissance.

In support of their forthcoming Bollywood Horror collection, Mondo Macabre have placed one of the featurettes from that upcoming release on Youtube. Entitled “Freddie, Jason and… Saamri - The Ramsays and the Birth of Bollywood Horror”, it’s a fascinating peek inside a rarely seen sub-sub-genre. The Horror Blog, entertaining and educational!