Thriller: A Cruel Picture

Thriller: A Cruel Picture (aka They Call Her One Eye) is a classic revenge exploitation film, once described as the first film to be banned in Sweden (a big claim indeed!). Thriller tells the story of a mute young woman who is forced into heroin addiction for which she has to work as a prostitute, and her revenge on the men responsible for her humiliation.

Starring the beautiful Christina Lindburg, this film has earned much notoriety over the years. During production real ammo was used and Lindburg was made to inject saline solution into herself for the drug use scenes. An actual corpse was also used in one scene to show the star being stabbed in the eye. The film was cut, cut and cut some more in an attempt to get it out to audiences. An X-rated version was also released (with a body double for the scenes) in an attempt to try and bring the punters in.

This is the sort of film that exploitation fans like myself dream about, blood, guns, beautiful women and a history as messed up as the film itself! A thoroughly enjoyable wild ride of a movie, and for completists out there, I recommend the limited edition DVD, which includes the movie uncut in all its gory details. You can also pick up the Vengeance edition which is more widely available, but doesn't contain as much violence as the LE. Pick up a copy today and see just what you were missing!

More info on this film can be found here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072285/

Young People Fucking

                                                     Video probably NSFW ...

To be honest, I went into this film with a bit of trepidation, expecting something similar to the frankly dreadful 'Shortbus', but what Young People Fucking gave me was a frank, funny and often cringe-making look at a group of different couple types navigating through the difficulties of their sexual relationships. We had the First Date couple, the Exes, the Couple, the Best Friends etc. The film was split into sections including Foreplay, Sex, Interlude, Orgasm etc and whilst some parts were certainly more interesting and entertaining that others (the Roommates section for example), I came away from this film pleasantly surprised.

YPF is certainly no Oscar winning masterpiece, it's very talky in parts, but the character development is good, the characters are likable and you really find yourself routing for particular groups to make the best of their situation.

Definitely worth a look on a cold winters evening when there's little else on, you may come away amazed that you enjoyed this film quite as much as you will!

Sleeping Beauty

This Auzzie film is a twisted tale, in a Kubrikian style, of a Sleeping Beauty who desperately attempts to navigate student life whilst doing everything she can to make some money on the side. Step forward for the opportunity to sleep whilst strangers pick you up, roll you about but never, never sleep with you.

Emily Browning is perfectly suited to the role, an upcoming actress with untarnished beauty who plays innocent as easily as she plays slutty. She seems to have sprung from relative obscurity with Lemony Snicket to Sucker Punch and I can only see bigger and better things from her in years to come.

I recommend this film to anyone wanting something a little less eye-candy and a little more intellectual. If I have one criticism, it is that the film's ending is a little flat and leaves you feeling that something was lacking, but overall, worth a look for anyone out there wanting a break from the gore and psychedelic craziness of their usual viewing!

Apologies to all for the recent lack of posts, I have been ill and haven't had a chance to add anything, but normal service will resume this evening. Please enjoy this trailer to my all time favourite film in the meantime. Thank you! :)

                                                         The Wicker Man

Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)

Possible spoilers below:

I've literally just finished watching Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) and it is one sick little puppy. The first half of the film leaves you wondering what all the fuss was about. If you've seen Centipede 1, then it's pretty much a load of clips from that with a few other slightly weird sequences chucked in to build the plot, but it's very slow going. The second half however is another beast altogether. The official UK release is cut by over 2 mins and I'm pretty certain that they will almost all come from this half of the film.

I don't want to give away any spoilers but there are some pretty gruesome scenes, including teeth smashing, face stapling and a new born fetus trampled into the floor. The director of this film obviously deciding that shock value was the way forward and it doesn't fail to deliver.

In all, this is not a good film, by any measure, but if you want to see more of the same from C1, with extra nastiness thrown in for good measure, you'll be on to a winner to watch this. Let's hope this is the final installment of this series now as it feels like it has run its course. Something tells me it isn't though and we can expect more to come very soon.

Someone's Knocking at the Door

"The most depraved film of the 21st century" the tag-line proclaims ... well, maybe not, but this is certainly a twisted little puppy of a film. The premise: a pair of twisted serial rapist murderers return to a hospital where they were tested upon to take revenge on the medical students who study there.

This independent film is a horror one minute, a comedy the next, a psychological drug-fueled head fuck the next moment and a deviant sexual nightmare the next. There are more than enough moments to make you shake your head at what you have just seen and more than enough gore to satisfy the die-hard horror fans out there, although the red stuff isn't lingered upon, more thrown in your face and then wiped away and as you're rubbing your eyes at what you have just seen, a fat man with a foot long phallus will come running at you waving everything he has in your face!

This really is a rather silly film, but thoroughly enjoyable with plenty of over-the-top sex and gore and at only 76 minutes long is the perfect length ... I'll have to leave this review here for now, I think Someone's Knocking at the Door ...

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song

'Rated X by an all white jury' - Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song starts Melvin Van Peebles (father of Mario) as the eponymous hero Sweet Sweetback. This film tells the story of an African American man's flight from white oppression ... and when this guy runs, he really runs! It's like watching the love-child of Shaft and Forrest Gump as Sweet runs and runs and runs ... and runs some more. When Sweet's not running, he manages to find the time and energy to sleep with a number of beautiful women ('actresses' hand-picked by Van Peebles for the express purpose of him having unsimulated sex with them on screen - although the sex is real, none of the 'ins and outs' are shown, but Van Peebles did end up contracting an STD during the making of the film and successfully filed for compensation for his 'injury'!

Highly regarded by some critics as an early masterpiece in Black Cinema, I encourage you, unless you are a film student or rampant cinephile, you'd probably thank me for saying that you should give this self-indulgent waste of time (in the same sense that Brown Bunny was a self-indulgent piece of shit) a wide berth. There are so many much better examples of Black Cinema out there which don't try to be what they're not.

If you know what's good for you, you will run and run and run as quickly as you can in any direction, so long as it's away from anywhere this film is playing!