Monday, July 19, 2010

o_O



Gee, how weird is this! o_O

A little while back I posted a video by the babatious Miss H M who is an American chick trying to be Japanese. And here's a reply to one of her videos from a white Japanese! At first I thought it was a joke but it turns out he really is from Japan. This video is in Japanese but some of his other ones are in Japanese accented English.




- oh, and that's of course The Misfits there at the end. Cool!

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Beware of... Sharktopus!!!



This looks awesome! A Roger Corman production for SciFi channel.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Best pop song on a Thursday



All music should be like this. :D


The intro (from Norwegian):
Hank: I'm feeling strong. You want some? I'm supposed to stop doing this. I'm supposed to stop. You think you have deserved a rocket? Nah, the racket sucks.
Happy Tom: If you want the rocket, you gotta sing with me: "Oslo I love you, you old whore." You didn't make it, but you're getting it anyhow.


Thanks to 12spanku on YouTube for the translation. Usually I have a good grasp of the Norwegian dialect but the accent here is simply too strong. :(

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Wild 'n' weird vhs covers from Korea

Check out these uber rare Korean VHS covers of equally uber rare horror/worldweird films:

Boy and a Magic Box


The Butterfly Kiss (Taiwan)


Chinese Whimsy (Taiwan, 1974)


THE BEASTS (which isn't a rare film at all as it's available on [cut] HK dvd/vcd but this vhs is mega mega rare).


[click scans for bigger size]


Thanks to Matt (a nice Québécois who fortunately lives in Korea) who got these scans and the info. There's a link to his blog "Unknown Kino" in the bar on the right.


PS: and yeah there's an awful lot of new posts from a guy who doesn't post at the moment. Argh.

You gotta be shitting me!!!!!

Fucking hell!!! I've just received two of these from eBay. They're for tapes I bought a little while back (and still haven't received):

Hello XXX,

We're writing to let you know that we removed the listing for the following item that you won or bid on:

XXX - Centipede Horror VHS Margaret Lee Keith Li

We're writing to let you know that we removed the listing for the following item that you won or bid on:

xxx - Centipede Horror VHS Margaret Lee Keith Li

To help protect you, we removed this listing so we can confirm that the seller is not putting you or other eBay members at risk.

If you've already paid for this item through eBay, you can open a case in our Resolution Center to get your money back. All you need to do is click the link below, and select the "I haven't received it yet" option. This will guide you through the process to get a refund. (Unfortunately, because we removed the listing, you won't be able to look up the seller's contact information.)


The auctions are off in order to protect me??? I'd rather have my bloody tapes!!! Arrggh! We're talking CENTIPEDE HORROR and JUMPING ASH here!!! For fuck's sake!!! I sincerely hope this is one of eBay's fuck ups (like they've repeated half the text TWICE!!! What are they, 12 or something!) and that I'll get my tapes. Screw the money, I want my TAPES!!! Argh!!! .\_/.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

KOOL new stuff in the BROILING heat

While my fridge chose to depart this dimension two days ago (the barometer now shows 22 degrees Celsius inside the fridge and 5 degrees in the freezer) fortunately here's a handful of mighty COOL stuff that's dumped in thru my letterbox during the last few days. I'm sure it's all gonna go down well with the lukewarm lemonade in the fridge.



I posted about having ordered Bruno Mattei's THE JAIL: A WOMAN'S HELL from the Czech Republic two months ago and I've just finally received it!! A looong wait but brilliant to finally receive it. The case is a crappy flat cardboard slipcase but then again the price of the DVD is only a couple of dollars (seriously!!) so I guess it's alright. I wonder if it'll ever get released anywhere else but The Czech Republic. o_O.






Ahh, and check out this RARE laserdisc which I got a couple of days ago; The entertaining A SERIOUS SHOCK! YES MADAM! starring Yukari Oshima, Cynthia Khan, and Moon Lee (who plays the truly bad guy this time!!). Brilliant. You can get it on a crappy DVD-R from Tai Seng from Amazon but this is much better! xD.

Oh, and I must admit I'm totally flabbergasted as to why I was the ONLY bidder for the film O_O

A couple more awesome tapes I got this week:


JUNGLE RATS, s: Ron kristoff.
VHS/Japan/fullscreen/English dub/Japanese subs

SUMMERTIME KILLER:
VHS/Japan/letterbox/English audio/Japanese subs

Antonio Margheriti's CODENAME WILDGEESE:
VHS/Japan/fs/English audio/Japanese subs

Lenzi's WARTIME:
VHS/lbx/English audio/Japanese subs

ULTRACOP 2000 (Yukari Oshima & Phillip Ko)



MISSION OF JUSTICE (Yukari Oshima, Moon Lee, Carrie Ng, Mark Houghton, Sophia Crawford):



THE BIG DEAL (Moon Lee, Yukari Oshima, Sibelle Hu & Sophia Crawford):

Best and worst ONAR news!!!

I decided to have a break but this needs to be posted.

Today, incidentally on the 13th, Bill Barounis of Onar Films has just posted the truly awesome news about his next two DVD releases!! The two films are ZAGOR KARA BELA and ZAGOR KARAKORSANIN HAZINELERI and altho I'm not familiar with them Bill says they are the MOST RARE OF THE LOST TURKISH FILMS!!! And not only are they no longer lost but he's got them now and he'll be releasing them on DVD!!! So that's truly awesome.

If you know Bill or has read some of this posts on his blog or on Cinehound forum you'll know he often says he's "jinxed" because all kinds of bad luck always pours in over him and his releases. And I'm sure you'll remember how I posted about his being taken to hospital critically ill a little while back. I'm not superstitious but, uh, maybe he really is jinxed.

At the same time as he got the films he also got diagnosed with brain tumour!!! Yes, truly terrible news!! He's gonna go in for surgery in a week's time. Read his own post about it here. Needless to say, I wish Bill the best of luck and to make a full recovery.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Gone

Just a quick note: I'll be gone for a while and won't update here or on the other blog. I won't be on forums either. In fact I won't be around at all. It's summer and too damn hot for writing stuff. No, actually I'll be going to live with cannibals for a while. If I like it there (i.e. the taste of human flesh) I might stay with them. We'll see. Later.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

First ever interview with LADY TERMINATOR star Barbara Anne Constable!!!


An interview with the star of LADY TERMINATOR, Barbara Anne Constable, was posted here about a week ago. It's the first interview she has ever done about the film. Oh man, this is so cool! I mean I've been a fan of this movie for sooo long and have dreamed of tracking her down to do an interview. Well, someone beat me to it (and I couldn't be happier for them!).

There's also a Lady Terminator Appreciation Group (which I believe is set up by the guy behind the interview). Go here and in the words of EVIL DEAD 2 join us.

LADY TERMINATOR review (Banned in Britain #2, 1994)

This is my review of LADY TERMINATOR which I printed in my zine "Banned in Britain" #2 from 1994. You can download the entire issue in the bar on the right. We also have a thread entirely devoted to the film over on Cinehound. Go here.

VHS/Japan/letterbox/English audio/Japanese subs/this is the fully uncut print which contains bits and pieces that are missing from the Mondo Macabro DVD.
[click scan for full size]


LADY TERMINATOR
Dir: Jalil Jackson aka H. Tjut Djalil (Indonesia 1988)
Cast: Barbara Anne Constable, Claudia Angelique Rademaker, Christopher J Hart, Joseph P McGlyn.

PS: Not to be confused with neither the Indonesian movie LADY EXTERMINATOR nor the Hong Kong Shaw Brothers film also called LADY EXTERMINATOR!


Uuhhh... this is a wet dream come true!!!
A perfect DVD release of the Indonesian gore & exploitation fest Lady Terminator!!!
All I can say to the good people at Mondo Macabro in England is thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

I’ve been hoping for a proper release of Lady Terminator ever since I rented a PAL copy off an American NTSC bootleg video tape a couple of years ago at a video rental in a seedy part of downtown Copenhagen. Obviously I made a copy off the rental tape and I reckon the version I was left with is a fuzzy 4th or 5th generation copy (on top of being a transfer from NTSC) - in other words not a brilliant copy, ha, ha.

Actually it was so unbelievably bad that I never even bothered to pull it out to watch again. I loved the film but thought it deserved to be watched in a better quality. And a version with a mucho better quality is exactly what I’ve got in my greasy paws now: The amazing brand new DVD from Mondo Macabro in the UK (although they chose to put it out on their US branch).

‘But what exactly IS an Indonesian film’ (well, apart from it being from Indonesia obviously) I hear you utter. ‘Is it like a Hong Kong movie or what?’ Well, I’ll tell you what, I haven’t got all day so why dontcha just rush out and get hold of Pete Tombs’ great book ‘Mondo Macabro’ and let him tell ya all about it, hah! (I’m so funny I kill myself). No, seriously, I’ve only got two pages left (pages that were actually earmarked for an incredibly cheesy BRMC interview but as soon as I got hold of THIS new release THAT interview went into the toilet!) so I’ll try and give you a crash course in Indo flicks but it’ll be brief and since everything I know about Indo flix I got from the Pete Tombs’ book anyway I still urge you to go get his book!

The Indonesian government was apparently mucho corrupto in the 1970s and what do you do if yer a corrupt government? Well, you slack off in the moral dep. and thus film censorshit regulations loosened up and the sleazy film exploiters that we all know (and whose products we fester on) from other parts of the world soon popped up everywhere in Indonesia too. Films with gore, action and (to a lesser degree) sex came out by the bucket load.

Well apparently cos I haven’t actually watched very many of these flicks myself, just a handful - but what a handful! And according to Pete Tombs’ book, the Indo flicks became more and more outrageous as the 70s switched to the 80s. But in 1988 a film came out that apparently was so crude it made the Indo film regulators choke and, sadly, introduce new censorship rules. That film was Lady Terminator! Actually, when the authorities found out how over-the-top Lady T is they banned it right away. But although it only ran for nine days at the cinemas more that 100,000 people saw it!

As I said before, I haven’s watched very many Indo flicks (as of yet but after having watched cool stuff like Lady T, Devil’s Sword, Mystics in Bali, Queen of Black Magic and a few other ones you can bet yer ass I’ll be tracking more down!) but so far it seems to me that some Indo flicks are very much like the early 80s HK horror flicks, just without the slapstick! And also, it may be hard to imagine but they’re done even more cheap!

If you’ve seen stuff like Black Magic With Buddha (which I reviewed in #1 ten years ago!), Blood Of The Black Dog or The Rape After then you know what I’m talking about. Well, some of the Indo flicks are like this while others are... different... ehh, well, mebbe this isn’t such a grand explanation - as I said, go get hold of Pete Tombs’ book (they have it at Amazon). By the way, there’s also a quite good documentary (from the Mondo Macabro tv series from UK tv) on the disc. Needles to say it’s compulsory viewing!!

The first time I encountered a bit of exciting Indo celluloid was when Discovery Channel showed a docu (sorry, don’t remember the title) on horror movies for Halloween some time back in the 90s. A short segment from a film showed a guy who suddenly pulled off his own head in gory detail in the middle of a crowd! The film was Queen of Black Magic (which, in some markets, is released as part 3 of the Hong Kong Black Magic series although it’s got nothing to do with those [totally awesome] movies) and it’s got gore, black magic and flying heads galore. See it if you can!

Anyway, enough of this babble, lets habla a bit about the damn movie itself then we can always come back to this pointless drivel later, shall we!
As you can probably figure out yourself Lady Terminator has something in common with the ol’ Arnie favourite, however, we’re not talking some mere inspiration here, we’re talking a fucken remake... a remake done Indo style - incl. a babetious 80s chick in Arnie’s role! And she isn’t even an android!!

VHS/Argentina/fullscreen/English audio/Spanish subs

The story goes a bit like this: 100 years ago there was a queen called ‘Queen of the South Sea’ who would lure scores of men to bed but none of them could live up to her expectations and they would all get killed ‘in the act’. Well, until man no. 1000 figured out the trick: when she would ‘ride’ her man a snake would slip outta her pussy and kill the unfortunate guy (ouch!).

However, man #1000 just grabbed the snake and pulled it out after which it turned into a kris (i.e. a dagger). After this, the horny queen was cursed to go the bottom of the sea for 100 yrs but, of course, just before departure she swore to come back after 100 yrs to take revenge on the guy’s great granddaughter.

Jump to the present (well, mid 80s!). A young, sexy American chick with big, curly 80s hair (actually she looks like a girl I knew once who, as it turned out, was trouble too, ahh) is in Indonesia to study the legend of the ‘Queen of the South Sea’. The legend says that soon after the Queen’s demise her castle went into the sea, and although the young, sexy American chick with curly 80s hair doesn’t believe the part about the Queen she oddly enough believes the part about the sunken castle (no, it doesn’t make sense - just don’t think too much about it and enjoy the film!).

The young, sexy... etc. soon finds some old geezer who owns a book about the whereabouts of the old sunken castle and to make a long story short she rents a boat with a crew, dives down and is possessed by the old South Sea Queen! This is when the fun begins!

The sexy chick returns from the sea, her own mind is now gone and she has fully become the incarnation of the ‘Queen of... etc.’ She puts on a leather jacket, a bra and an AK47 - and then she goes to work, i.e. looking for the doomed great granddaughter. The rest is a tour de force in over-the-top gory exciting exploitation action!!

The film is a remake of The Terminator - and it’s not! The plot is kinda the same, but most of the details are explained differently: No one comes back from the future, there is a terminator but it’s not a cyborg. The terminator pulls out it’s own eye but it’s not a mechanical one. The person behind the terminator doesn’t wanna change the future... she’s just royally pissed off because she couldn’t kill her fuck no. 1000!! And so on. The story-line is very much the same, the details are just very different.

Also, what is totally over-the-top fun are the scenes that are carbon copies of the original: The scene when the great granddaughter is attacked the first time in a bar and saved by a guy - in this version an American cop working in Indonesia (!!!) (for fuck’s sake, he even says the legendary line: ‘If you wanna live come with me’!!). And there is the police station scene where the terminator basically destroys the whole station and kills everyone except her main target.

On top of all this, Lady Terminator is both quite gory and there’s quite a few scenes where the sexy terminator takes her top off (uh, since this IS an Indonesian movie I guess I should point out that I don’t mean she takes her head off and it flies away - but that she takes her shirt off! Ahm...).

About the gore; there’s one totally rad scene at the police station in which Lady T guns down a cop, but hey, although he’s dead she’s not satisfied, so she shoots him again, in fact she blows him into a bloody pulp... but she’s still not happy, so she puts a last touch on killing him by kicking him in the balls!! I guess you’ll have to be a gorehound to enjoy films like this! (but hey, why else would you be reading this here mag?).

What else can you say about this awesome piece of gory exploitica. Well, heaps probably but unfortunately we’re out of space this time ‘round, but I URGE you to get hold of this flick. It is totally o.t.t. amazing and VERY enjoyable.
But before I finish off I just want to comment on a review in Oriental Cinema vol. 2, #9. Some fuck-face reviewer (not the overly cool editor Damon Foster, mind you!!) bitched about Lady Terminator being without any creativity and stealing ideas from an American film!

Firstly, I think it’s funny that this criticism comes from an American of all nationalities!! I mean, it’s not like we have NEVER seen or heard of an American film that bluntly stole everything from a foreign film, is it?! Like, it’s only happened a billion times!! At the moment, the Yanks are about to remake every motherfucken horror film ever made in Japan!! And how about Nikita!? How about Godzilla!? How about The Vanishing!? How about a zillian-trillian other Asian and European films!? They even remade Faulty Towers for fuck’s sake!!! Besides, this ass-wipe reviewer seems to forget that stealing from big blockbusters and remaking them for peanuts, adding tons of gore and sex THAT IS WHAT EXPLOITATION CINEMA IS ALL ABOUT YOU FUCKING MORON!!!

Anyway, enough of this (besides, the bloody wanker wrote that review eight yrs ago and has probably forgotten all about it by now, ha ha). Just don’t sit on yer arse and complain about my review being about a film from an uncool place like Indonesia or that it’s a remake. It doesn’t matter where a film comes from or whatever. What matters is whether a film is entertaining or not. I’ve watched Lady T five times and I’m gonna watch it again!
I’m off, see you next time. [new note: this was the last review in that issue, hence the farewell!]

Version reviewed: Mondo Macabro (US) [DVD, ntsc, reg. 0] letterbox, dubbed in English, uncut, 82 min. Extras: Docu from UK tv on Indo films, trailer, alternate scenes + quite a bit of reading material and previews of other Mondo Macabro releases.