From the preamble to the Grindhouse Releasing 2-disc DVD of Cannibal Holocaust (1980), after a couple of paragraphs of blather about the First Amendment:

What you see will definitely shock you and offend you. Nonetheless, it should be viewed as a disturbing historical document of a bygone era of extreme irresponsibility which no longer exists, and, hopefully, will never exist again.

Right. A company called “Grindhouse Releasing” sells this edition of “the most banned movie ever made” purely as a historical document. Practically in the public interest. Sure.

Man, when you say to yourself, “I need to do some light reorganization of my A-Z indexes,” it sounds so simple. until you remember that there are like 800 reviews, and the indexes have to be rebuilt lovingly by hand. Plus, that unfinished review of Heavy Metal 2000 is STILL all that’s waiting for me at the end of the tunnel. Luckily, Todd is there to pick up the slack:

RANI MERA NAAM

If Rani Mera Naam is any indication of Rowdy Rani’s content, I can very well understand what Doss meant by that “100 percent action” distinction. Because, in contrast to the typical “masala”-style films of its era — which incorporated action as just one part of a larger stew of genre elements — Rani Mera Naam offers its viewer a steady stream of under-cranked fistfights, shootouts, vehicle chases, and stunts from pretty much its first frame to its very last. Although, as the 70s progressed — and especially in the aftermath of Amitabh Bachchan’s introduction of the badass, “Angry Young Man” screen archetype — mainstream Indian films became increasingly action oriented, I imagine that, as early as 1972, a film like Rani probably struck its audience as being fairly novel.

What can I say?  House-painting sucks up one’s free time like nothing else except possibly booking a tour.  Be that as it may, here– at last– are my contributions to the 10,000 B.S. roundtable, plus an unrelated review of a film that I’d have been better off not to catch by happenstance on cable TV one evening:

Conquest (1983), which is a barbarian movie that kind of wants to be a caveman movie too…

Ironmaster (1983), which is a caveman movie that badly wants you to assume that it’s a barbarian movie instead…

The Pumpkin Karver (2006), which is a slasher movie made by people who apparently hope to convince us that Friday the 13th, Part V: A New Beginning really wasn’t quite so bad after all…

and…

10,000 BC (2008), which is a caveman movie that turns into a barbarian movie in the third act.
 
 
 
 

The Stitcher (2007)

It always amuses me to see a schlock slasher flick that proudly declares across the back of the box that it’s “Inspired by True Events.” Well, yes, I suppose that’s true, in the sense that every fiction ultimately has its inspiration in someone’s experience, however far imagination may remove it from reality. But a more proximately honest declaration would be, “Inspired by Every Unambitious Friday the 13th Clone Ever Made.”

FEAST II: SLOPPY SECONDS

“Feast II” has monsters, topless biker babes, and midget luchadores. I should love this film, but I don’t.   *SIGH*

The reason I dislike this movie is that it tries to be edgy, disgusting, and outlandish like the first film, but goes too far. It’s a distasteful collection of vulgarity that wore my patience to the bone.

Lesson Learned:
Never perform CPR on someone who died of explosive dysentery.

Evil Aliens is a movie that has clearly been inspired by the early films of Peter Jackson, definitely Dead Alive, but also movies like Bad Taste and Meet The Feebles. It should have been a movie that I would have picked up right away at the video store, but it wasn’t. When I first saw it and did research on it, I came up with reviews from a number of folks who said it was a bad rip-off of Peter Jackson. So I left it alone. But as time went on, I started to uncover an equal number of reports from other people who said that this was a good homage of sorts. The fact that there was so much disagreement about the movie intrigued me, enough so that I decided that I had to judge it for myself.

Baseline Killer (2006) serves as my introduction to incompetent ultra-schlock director Ulli Lommel.  I had not realized how blissful my ignorance was until I allowed it to be snatched from me.

Max Allan Collins’ one-man play Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life delivers. You get the feeling that, even if other characters were present on stage, they’d be practically unnoticeable beside Ness.

Altin Cocuk (Golden Boy)

Funny thing about the James Bond movies is that, while they are models of conspicuous consumption, their basic tropes are so much just that –- basic –- that one could recreate them in a backyard home movie and still have them be easily identifiable. Make your bald headed uncle wear his shirt backwards and put him in a high-backed chair with a cat in his lap and you have your villain. Get the babysitter to dance around in a swimsuit to a Ventures record and you have your credit sequence. Make sure that your hero’s suit has at least been recently pressed, and that he can hold a cocktail glass in a somewhat rakish manner, and you’re good to go. Then you can have your mom… Well, that got weird awful fast, didn’t it? Anyway, you see my point.

You’d think that it would be this aspect of the Bond films that made them ideal fodder for the make do, cash poor cinema of 1960s Turkey. But the fact is that’s not the reason that Altin Cocuk, Turkey’s answer to James Bond –- aka Golden Boy –- was made at all. Altin Cocuk was made because it was 1966 and, in 1966, every country on Earth with a functioning movie industry was constructing their answer to James Bond.

RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD

“Return of the Living Dead” is one of the movies that my teenage self considered awesome that has withstood the test of time. Counter to the movie’s oppressive feeling of dread is a ghoulish sense of humor. “Send more paramedics” is a perfect example. The zombies are preying upon the living by asking for more help. We, the audience, know what is going to happen to the next ambulance that arrives at the graveyard. It is ghastly, but we laugh because it is also clever and diabolically unfair.

Lesson Learned:
Lysol destroys 99% of the germs that cause the smell of death.

When I was younger, I was fascinated by the private eye profession. In television shows about private detectives, they always seemed to have a colorful life. They would charge fees running up to several hundred dollars an hour – which seemed like a fortune to me as a youngster. TV private detectives also always seemed to keep meeting sexy women, and they always seemed to need to use their firearm on creeps who really deserved getting shot. But as I got older, I learned the hard truths about private detectives. For one thing, I remember when MAD Magazine revealed to me that private detectives in real life mainly worked on getting provocative pictures for their clients who were involved in messy divorces – not a very glamorous thing to be doing. When I recently spotted the private detective movie Hollywood Harry at my local used video store, my first thought was if it would show me a sanitized look at the private detective life or something closer to the real thing. It also interested me in that Robert Forster was the director as well as the star.

Skull Heads (2009) — A creepy family in an Italian castle confronts the outside world when the teenage daughter falls for a handsome film director. Also, because this is a Charles Band flick, there are killer dolls running around.

Related: I goofed.  Reader Revenge Month is in April. It’ll be sort of like the time lag between Election Day and the Inauguration.  (I’m a lame duck!)