There are no redeeming factors to this, the greatest of the Italian Cannibal films. One of the goriest, if not the goriest films ever made, it caused the arrest of the director when authorities thought the movie was real and believed it to be a snuff film. When the director proved the actors were still alive, he received the lighter sentence of four months for animal cruelty.

The film received an X rating, which killed its distribution and was banned from many countries. But with a dedicated following and cult status worldwide, the film has stuck around for 25 years. Grindhouse has released a two-disc DVD that gives a remastered, uncut version of the film with a ton of extras.

The film itself tells the story of a rescue mission sent into the Amazon rain forest to retrieve a missing American film crew who’s work was to document the culture and living habits of the native cannibal tribes of the region.

The team fails to save the crew as they are all dead by the time of the team’s arrival. Only bones were remaining as evidence the film crew were there. Well bones and the crew’s film reels which the team convince the tribe to relinquish.

The rest of the film has the executives of Pan American Broadcast Company and Howard Monroe (Robert Kerman), the rescue team leader, first review the raw footage then broadcast an edited version of the recordings. The the pre-edited reels show the crew raping and killing natives and the natives returning the favor with cannibalism added to the violence (we as the audience watch along with the players). By the ending, Monroe wonders who were the worse savages, the natives or the film crew.

Cannibal Holocaust is neither for the faint of heart nor for those easily upset by disturbing images. If you are a fan of horror and gore and you haven’t seen this film, you are sorely lacking a true point of reference and comparison. But if you’re not, avoiding this film may be your best course of action. One of the most famous of the exploitation films of the ’80s, Cannibal Holocaust is not for the mainstream.

Cannibal Holocaust Gallery:

Cannibal Holocaust Trailer:

Yell! Rating:

4 out of 5 stars

Year Released:

7 February 1980

Director:

Ruggero Deodato

Cast/Crew

Robert Kerman, Francesca Ciardi, Perry Pirkanen, Luca Barbareschi, Ricardo Fuentes

Genre

Exploitation, Snuff Film, Horror

Official URL:

Cannibal Holocaust

Top 10 Movies By Lucio Fulci

Foreign horror: a final frontier among many horror fans today. If you’re like a good portion of the staff at Yell! Magazine, you’ve grown to appreciate the finer things in life… and horror cinema. Like Godfather of Gore Lucio Fulci, for example. Arguably, Lucio Fulci is best known for being confused with Dario Argento. No, no, he’s not the guy that did Suspiria; he’s the guy that did The Beyond! Yell! Magazine is here to celebrate Fulci’s greatest works in this top ten list that only covers a small fraction of Fulci’s lifetime of work. With the rise of torture porn and the re-emergence of westerns on the horizon, could Fulci’s works be on the way to remake city like so many other classic works? Only time will tell, but for now, read on and remember a time when the blood was a little more bright and the gore was just a little more over the top.

No.10 The New York Ripper

This 1982 film by Fulci gives the audience a taste of everything that a great giallo film contains. The plot is as follows: a jaded old New York police detective teams up with a collegiate psychoanalyst to track down a serial killer that has been menacing lovely young women at random. More bizarrely, the killer adopts a strange (and somewhat hilarious) duck voice over the phone as he kills women. The trailer has it all: loud shrieking, sexual violence, a hot chick masturbating, and the sentence, “He used a very sharp knife, rammed it into her vagina, and hauled up into it as hard as he could.” What more could you want? Don’t let the duck voice scare you off; the plentiful gore, red herrings, and contrived sleaze more than make up for the film’s shortcomings. The film was notably banned in many countries and released as an adults-only video after heavy editing. Most of Fulci’s work has been released uncut in the United Kingdom, but The New York Ripper remains censored even to this day.

No.9 Manhattan Baby

This film is a little out of the ordinary from Fulci’s other fare in that it’s not excessively gory or bloody. But sometimes you don’t have to make a decent horror flick with tons of gore for it to be a good horror film. Lucio Fulci creates a dreamlike, etherworld atmosphere in Manhattan Baby, the story of a girl possessed by an entity mistakenly freed by one of her parents, an Egyptologist. The violence is a little more subtle in this one and it seems to have been Fulci’s attempt at a true psychological horror picture, but when paired with the spellbinding cinematography and surreal atmosphere, it still makes for a good foray into the world of Lucio Fulci.

No.8 House by the Cemetery

House by the Cemetery is the third movie in the unofficial Gates of Hell trilogy. The film was considered a video nasty and with good reason; in the first few bits of the film, a young woman is lured to the titular house for some good ol’ premarital sex before she’s stabbed through the back of the head with a kitchen knife, the tip of which protrudes through her mouth. When a young family move into the house a few months later, they’re troubled by strange occurrences. The plot tends a little more toward the supernatural in this Fulci film, drawing influence from both The Shining and Frankenstein, but that doesn’t make it any less disturbing.

No.7 City of the Living Dead

This Fulci flick also has supernatural elements and is the first installment of the Gates of Hell trilogy. After a priest hangs himself in a cemetery, the gates of Hell are opened. Superpowered zombies go on a bloody killing spree in a remote town. This film not only features shots of ‘head drilling’ and a woman vomiting up all of her internal organs in a gruesome torrent of blood and guts, but also features among the unique brand of Fulci gore, someone getting his brains squeezed right out the back of his head with a zombie’s meaty fist. This movie ties in equal parts mysticism and zombies, along with a few well done references to H.P. Lovecraft’s work to make for a solid film.

No.6 Contraband

Contraband is another departure from the horror films that made Lucio Fulci famous. Poliziotteschi films emerged in Italy sometime in the 1960s but reached their popularity in the 1970s, depicting both crime and action in a gritty way. When you throw Fulci into the mix, you get it ten times more gritty. And bloody. A crimelord cigarette and booze smuggler named Luca has his world shattered when his brother is killed by a sadistic French crime boss known as the Marsigliese, who sets off an epic gang war. Luca has to join forces with rival smugglers, mafiosos, and even the long arm of the law when the Marsigliese abducts his wife. This particular poliziotteschi film is notable for Lucio Fulci’s personal touches to the tune of high octane amounts of violence and gore, including a woman’s face being burnt off with a blow torch.

Find out which Lucio Fulci movie ranked No. 1 on the next jump.

If you’ve been craving a different taste of horror lately, I might have something up your alley. Remember all the buzz about The Woman not too long ago? What many people may not realize is that The Woman is actually a follow-up to Offspring (2009), a movie directed by The Woman‘s producer, Andrew van den Houten.

Unlike many of my movie reviews, I’m going to stray away from the straight up plot synopsis I give and delve into the good, the bad, the gory, and the ugly for this one. There’s just too much ground to cover and this is one of those movies that you really have to see a few times to let everything sink in – but here’s a little bit of obligatory back story: A cave-dwelling cannibalistic tribe has been preying on a Maine community for some time, though roughly 10 years ago, it was thought that they were all wiped out. Well, guess who’s resurfaced? Ding, ding, ding, it’s our sharp-teethed little savages, on the prowl for some delectable human flesh. And let me tell you all something right now, they’re a holy Hell of a lot less charming and sophisticated than Dr. Lecter.

The first 5 to 7 minutes of the film get off to a rip-roaring start. We’re treated to a scene of gore so incomprehensible that my brain said, “Okay, this is supposed to be a woman who has been literally ripped apart,” but logically I still have no clue what that even was, because to think about a human looking like that just boggles the mind. There’s so much blood and gore that it’s as if the prop master and special FX man got together and said, “Okay, we have to make this shocking, but we also want to be cheap. Lester, you get the corn syrup ready and I’m going to go hit up all the meat sales and the Goodwill. We’re going to make this so cheap and disturbing that we’ll practically be giving the nightmares away!”

To me, it honestly looked sort of like they did exactly what I just described and stuffed a bunch of raw meat into some clothes they found at the Goodwill, poured fake blood all over it, added in a few latex limbs and said, “Ah, this is art!” And for what it’s worth, it is – it may seem over the top at the first, but when you realize that they’re cannibals, it goes from laughable to downright gross/awesome in no time flat.

Oh, and did I mention the dead baby? Yeah, that also happens within the first 10 minutes of the movie. We’re treated to a grotesque dead baby in a plastic bag. I have a hunch that was the tribe’s idea of take-out.

Continue reading the Offspring review after the jump…

Yell! Rating (x/5 Skulls):

3.5 out of 5 stars

Year Released:

28 August 2009

Director:

Andrew van den Houten

Cast/Crew

Jessica Butler, Kelly Carey, Amy Hargreaves, Art Hindle, Spencer List, Jack Ketchum, Pollyanna McIntosh, and Holter Graham

Genre

Horror, Cannibal

Official URL:

none

I don’t really think I can say anything that will deter fans or encourage haters with respect to whether or not they’ll see this movie. Considering that it’s the fourth sequel to a franchise built around an admittedly awesome premise, it’s pretty much a film that caters to fans of the one big question:

“How many ways can we creatively crush, charbroil, dismember or explode a group of attractive 20 somethings this time around?”

By now though, the formula is starting to wear thin and a once innovative idea is playing itself out and being milked for all the sweet, sweet cash that it can rake in.

Before I go any further, however,  I will say this; Final Destination 5 is probably the most clever film in the entire series, and may even convert a few people who are on the fence about seeing it. Let’s just say if you’ve always been “curious”, then this is the movie to experiment with.

Can't see how this could go wrong.

The plot follows the same structure as the last four films; a group of actors who you’ve never heard of (Miles Fisher, Ellen Wroe, Jacqueline MacInnes Wood, PJ Byrne, Arlen Escarpeta – also, David Koencher) go on a company retreat where nice-guy protagonist Sam Lawton (Nicholas D’Agosto) has himself a fancy premonition and decides that he and his friends best GTFO, lest they wind up scattered all over the place. After they escape with their lives, death gets a little pissed and decides to take them out while hiding under the guise of devastating coincidence. As a quick stab at building character development that ultimately leads nowhere, expository black-guy Sam Bludworth (Tony Todd) explains a twist wherein this time around, if you kill someone, you gain their remaining life span.

Now, the problem with having a swirling tornado of cause and effect serve as your main slasher is that it’s a concept that’s hard to take seriously. When your death is kicked off by slipping on a pile of ramen noodles, you know that any fear or tension you’ve built up is completely tossed out the window. With that in mind, the sequels (especially the later ones) have played around with black humor and eventually devolved into a contest of “which film can be the most self-aware?” The cool thing about FD5 is that it seems that they’ve just about found the right balance.  You’ll find your balls in your throat as the suspense builds higher and higher and you’re baited and switched until your nerves jump right out of your skin. When the death scene punch-lines are finally delivered, you’re surprised, laughing and cringing.

And if you think about it, the suspense is what makes these films so much fun. It’s not necessarily a question of who’s going to die- that sort of thing is revealed in the initial premonition. The best part is in finding out how they’re going to die – with no cheap tricks to surpass our expectations. Remember Final Destination 4? Remember how that one guy fell victim to a pool drain by having his internal organs sucked through his rectum? Yeah, they definitely try a lot harder this time around. At this point, there’re so many close calls that you might just have a stroke before anyone even bites it.

And surprise surprise, it pulls this film ahead of all the others. The primary disaster gore-fest and the first death alone left audiences clutching their chests. Being the ultimate fine-arts loving faceless bad-ass that I am, I try my best not to visibly squirm in my seat. Truth is, deep beneath my façade of manliness, I had soiled my shorts many a time.

"Don't forget to steal your 3D glasses."

Director Steven Quale really gets to have some sick fun with his technological prowess through some resourceful usage of 3D, which seems to be the icing on the cake for a series such as this. To give you an example as of what kind of visual treat you’re in for, just picture comic relief guy #7 about to be obliterated by – I don’t know – an accelerated hail of golf balls. As the usual malignant chain of events is set in motion, you get a first person view of the last thing he sees before the inevitable. Irreverently having limbs, entrails and sharp objects being flung straight at you while some poor archetype kick the bucket really launches this series into the guilty pleasure zone that’s it’s been trying to hit for so long.

In fact, given the combination of shock and suspense, Alfred Hitchcock’s bomb under the table concept has never been used more perversely. Basically, it works like this; you have two people picking away at a boring conversation and the camera pans down to reveal *GASP* a bomb under the table! Suddenly Martha’s complaints about her dentist’s excessive profanity tend to carry a lot more dramatic weight. Now imagine that folded in to a scene where the bomb is replaced by some spooky foreshadow, supplemented by the lingering thought that something pointy is about to be thrust inches from your face. It only adds to the aforementioned chest-clutching.

Heheh "Eye Scream" Heheh

It takes a sequel like this to breathe life into a potentially dying franchise, and the producers have already stated that if this one does well, we’ll be treated to Final Destinations 6 and 7. By the look of it, if they can manage to keep things as thrilling as they did with FD5, then we could be in for something very interesting.

The Verdict: 3 out of 5 stars

While you could nitpick like a pretentious, curmudgeonly turd about how there is no substance to be found in what amounts to a film that serves only as a visceral experience, it could be argued that you’d be completely missing the point. Yeah, it’s not The Shawshank Redemption, but it was never meant to be in the first place. Final Destination 5 is just amazingly stupid fun that’ll take you on a roller coaster ride of bisection and dismemberment. If that sounds like your idea of a fine movie-going experience, then I guarantee that you’re in for a screaming good time.

Note: Don’t be surprised if someone in the next sequel narrowly avoids being butchered, bludgeoned and generally eviscerated, only to be hit by lighting or crushed by a meteor. You heard it here first, folks.

Final Destination 5 Trailer

Yell! Rating (x/5 Skulls):

3 out of 5 stars

Year Released:

12 August 2011

Director:

Steven Quale

Cast/Crew

Nicholas D’Agosto, Emma Bell, Miles Fisher, Ellen Wroe, Arlen Escarpeta, Tony Todd and Arlen Escarpeta

Genre

Horror, Thriller

Official URL:

Final Destination 5

Takao Nakano gained international attention with his 2010 film Big Tits Zombie, but before these accolades, he made a name for himself in the direct-to-video market. One such film that had a similar gore/nudity theme as seen in Big Tits Zombie was Sexual Parasite: Killer Pussy.

After watching this film, two things immediately come to mind (other than Sakurako Kaoru boobs anyway). The first is that Nakano must be a Cronenberg fan as Sexual Parasite: Killer Pussy and Cronenberg’s Shivers are very similarly themed. The second is that the film is shorter than usual; its running time is around 60 minutes.

The film itself is super fun to watch. It starts off with three scientists in the Amazon jungle and they discover a parasite in the river. A native shaman warns the group of the dangers of removing this creature, but they ignore him. When the female of the group sits on the specimen container, the parasite breaks through the barrier and invades the poor woman’s vagina.

We then jump into the future to five youths in a car driving through the forest. When the car breaks down and they end up on foot they become lost. After hours of walking, they discover an abandoned structure with a “do not enter” warning sign on its entrance. To escape from the cold, they ignore the sign and enter the building.

They are immediately hit by the heat of the complex prompting the three girls of the group to remove much of their clothing. After settling into a nearby room, two members of the group explore the complex and find a cold-storage room with a woman’s body inside. Mistakenly leaving the door to the room open while they continue to explore the facility, the woman thaws and escapes. We recognize her as the female scientist from the beginning of the movie.

The two explorers then discover a bathing room with a pool filled with hot water. The girl, Hiroshi (Tôgo Okumoto), decides she will bathe and sends her male companion back to inform the rest of the group.

While Hiroshi is in the shallow bathing pool, the female scientist enters and joins her. The scientist then grabs Hiroshi and kisses her. While open-mouthed, the parasite enters Hiroshi and travels down to take up residence in her vagina.

Thus begins the sex and blood. Hiroshi seduces her boyfriend and the parasite gets its first taste of Japanese male genitalia. The gore continues until only Mikage (Sakurako Kaoru) is left alive. She leaves the complex with the parasite inside her, then gets a lift from an unsuspecting guy who becomes her next victim. The film ends with her seduction of the driver.

Sexual Parasite: Killer Pussy Gallery:

12►

Yell! Rating (x/5 Skulls):

3.5 out of 5 stars

Year Released:

22 August 2004 (Japan)

Director:

Takao Nakano

Cast/Crew

Sakurako Kaoru, Natsumi Mitsu, Masanori Miyamoto, Tomohiro Okada, Tôgo Okumoto

Genre

Comedy, Horror

Official URL:

none

“They’re Strippers!”
“No they’re Zombies!”
“They’re Zombie Strippers!”

So says the cast of this Jay Lee horror/comedy. Starring the gorgeous Jenna Jameson and Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund, Zombie Strippers is, from start to finish, a trashy, sexy, bloody mess of fun.

Lee, usually a director of films you would see at Sundance, decided it was time to make a film that would appeal to a wider audience, and make him some cash at the same time. When he managed to snag Jameson for the lead role, Sony opened the purse strings and everything fell into place.

The story takes place in the near future. George Bush has been re-elected for a fourth term, along with Arnold Schwarzenegger as his VP. The U.S. seems to be at war with everyone, including Alaska for God’s sakes.

With soldiers dying at an alarming rate, the military creates a virus to reanimate dead soldiers (hmm, where is Dolph and Jean-Claude?). When it becomes unmanageable, they call in the A-Team, no sorry, the Z-Squad to eliminate the threat. Unfortunately, one of the squad members, Byrdflough (Zak Kilberg), is infected and escapes notice.

When Byrdflough flees the facility, he winds up in an underground strip club, where he bites the lead dancer, Kat (Jameson). Instead of transforming into a mindless monster, Kat remains relatively the same as her former self, except for her insatiable appetite for human flesh (which she abates by selecting men from her audience).

When death-loving Lilith (Roxy Saint) sees Kat enjoying being dead, she willingly becomes a zombie herself by allowing Kat to take a chunk of her. Both Kat and Lilith continue dancing and when the club’s patrons go crazy over the change, Ian (the club owner played by Englund) sees dollar signs. He allows the girls to continue to dance and feast and then cleans up the mess afterward, caging the reanimated corpses in the basement.

Sox (Penny Drake) becomes zombie stripper Number 3 when she confesses her love for Kat and also allows herself to be bitten as Lilith did.

Kat has a rival, the jealous and egotistical Jeannie (Shamron Moore), who believes she should be the headliner of the club. When she dances and is ignored for being alive, she lets her pettiness get the better of her. She seeks out Byrdflough, who after biting Kat, was captured and locked up in a side room of the club. Byrdflough bites Jeannie and now there are four zombie strippers.

Gaia (Whitney Anderson) becomes the fifth and final zombie stripper when she goes to the basement and becomes a happy meal to the undead jailed there. When she reanimates, she lets her fellow flesh-eaters out of their cage and now the zombies outnumber the humans.

Ian, along with Cole (the DJ/announcer played by Calvin Green), Paco the custodian (Joey Medina), and the remaining strippers and their manager fight off the marauding undead, at least for a little while. Meanwhile, Kat and Jeannie have it out on the stage with ping pong and billiard balls.

Lilith and Sox bring Ian to an end, but after he reanimates he is captured by Lieutenant Ryker (Jen Alex Gonzalez) of Z-Squad and is taken away to be used in scientific experiments. Gaia feeds on stripper manager Blavatski (Carmit Levité) and rips open Cole’s skull and munches on his brain. Cole and Blatvatski are dispatched later by Sassy Sue (Laura Bach) of the Z-Squad who arrive to contain the outbreak.

Paco comes to his untimely end after deciding to take on a group of zombies single-handedly and fails. Kwan (Jessica Custodio), of Z-Squad, has the pleasure of dispatching Lilith and Sox after they had finished with Ian. Rincon (Billy Beck) puts two blades in Kat’s skull to finish her off and finally, Major Camus, leader of Z-Squad, blows the heads off Jeannie and then Berenge (Jeannette Sousa), Berenge being the intellectual non-conformist of the strippers.

The film ends when head scientist Chushfeld (Brad Milne) picks up a garbage bag with a zombie head inside and is bitten, leaving the impression that the outbreak will continue and a second Zombie Strippers movie may happen sometime in the future (director Jay Lee, while interviewed by Tyler Shainline of horroryearbook.com, indicated he would be interested in the project if Sony came calling). As of publication of this article nothing is in the works.

Packed with gore and boobs, with parody and satire throughout (see Paco and the Juan Valdez donkey, as well as Kat, post-infection, finally comprehending Nietzsche, as two of many examples), Zombie Strippers leaves little to be desired by the fans of this type of film. Our rating reflects this reality.

Zombie Strippers Trailer:

Zombie Strippers Picture Gallery:

123►

Yell! Rating (x/5 Skulls):

4 out of 5 stars

Year Released:

18 April 2008

Director:

Jay Lee

Cast/Crew

Jenna Jameson, Robert Englund, Roxy Saint, Penny Drake, Whitney Anderson

Genre

Horror, Comedy

Official URL:

Zombie Strippers the movie

Yoshihiro Nishimura and Naoyuki Tomomatsu, two members of Japan’s new generation of gore cinema filmmakers, have combined talents to produce another campy, over-the-top blood fest that is every bit as good as their previous solo works.

Transfer student Monami (Yukie Kawamura) is a vampire looking for love on Valentine’s Day. She targets Jyugon (Takumi Saitô), the school’s best-looking guy. She gives him chocolate to show her affection but, unbeknownst to Jyugon, it’s filled with her vampire blood. When Jyugon eats the chocolate he slowly comes under Monami’s spell.

But Jyugon is the beau of rival student Keiko (Eri Otoguro), who has no plans to let him go without a fight. When she dies from a fall caused by Monami, Keiko’s father, the vice principal and chemistry teacher of the school, uses his mad scientist know-how (along with some of Monami’s blood) to reanimate her. Thus begins the war between Vampire Girl and Frankenstein Girl.

If you haven’t seen a film by Yoshihiro Nishimura or Naoyuki Tomomatsu, and you enjoy the low-brow blood-and-guts shit that we do here at Yell! Magazine, then you’re in for a treat. You will get to see faces pulled off of skulls, decapitations, severed legs used as helicopter propellers, and more that will bring a smile to your face.

Check out the picture gallery / video below to get a sense of what I mean and enjoy.

Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl Pictures

Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl Best Scenes

Yell! Rating (x/5 Skulls):

4 out of 5 stars

Year Released:

26 June 2009

Director:

Yoshihiro Nishimura and Naoyuki Tomomatsu

Cast/Crew

Yukie Kawamura, Takumi Saitô, Eri Otoguro, Sayaka Kametani, Jiji Bû

Genre

Horror, Comedy, Action

Official URL:

Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl the movie

With the release of the seventh Saw film, Saw 3D, I felt nostalgic and decided to pull out copies of the previous six films in the franchise and make an all-nighter of it. So, with my fifth of Scotch, beer chaser, popcorn, and 42-inch plasma, I sequestered myself for an all night horror fest.

Well, to my surprise, I made it up to the third Saw film and stopped. I decided to take some advice from Shakespeare (damn, I actually retained something from high school English) and interrupt my regular viewing with some comic relief. But I didn’t want to stray too far from the gory path I was traveling. Seeing Mpho Koaho in the rack twister death scene made viewing the 40 Year Old Virgin or The Hangover a bit too much of a stretch.

Seeing that the Evil Dead trilogy and Black Sheep (another favorite) have seen the inside of my DVD player recently, and that I was in the mood for something a bit more recent, I decided to delve into something foreign. If you can’t buy American then go Japanese I always say.

Noboru Iguchi

Films such as Tokyo Gore Police, Mutant Girls Squad, Samurai Zombie, and The Machine Girl, to name a few, are a pleasant distraction from the seriousness of the Saws of the world.

This night The Machine Girl was the film of choice. Starring Asami, the sexy 26-year-old adult video star (Iguchi himself comes from the AV industry) as Miki, the high school firebrand who mixes it up with the local Yakuza after her brother was murdered by the Don’s son.

Machine Girl

She is captured and tortured but escapes after losing her left forearm. Joining forces with the parents of her brother’s best friend (who also was killed), Miki exacts her revenge with the help of a custom-built machine gun attached to her stump.

The Machine Girl is full of blood and guts, bad acting, humor, and violence, which will turn off the upper crust of the film viewing world like Baby Duck does a wine connoisseur. But who the fuck cares, this shit isn’t for them anyway.

Try out the aforementioned films and have a bloody enjoyable time, I’m back to Saw IV.

Later,

The Machine Girl Trailer