The Maniac Cop trilogy; underrated Slasher flicks

        As far as I know, and I know very little, police brutality was a hot button issue in the late 80's early 90's...which I care very little about being that A. this is an uncultured swine article and B. thinking about news stuff takes up brain space that could be used for useful things like action figure pricing and how much beer money comes out of a 35 hour workweek. Never the less, the 'fuck da po-lease' attitude that was all the rage in the late 80's gave the Maniac Cop trilogy a good groundwork to showcase  its corny dialogue and overzealous use of red corn syrup. It does have an underlying critique on police corruption, the faulty criminal justice system and how we as law abiding citizens are at the mercy of the long arm of the law. The message is delivered subtly enough that even I (someone who usually wants no part of political statements in movies) enjoyed the films.
Maniac Cop
   

       When it comes to origin stories, the story of Matt Cordell becoming Maniac Cop is among the cheesiest. Playing out like the obligatory rape scene that dotted the landscape of prison dramas of the day with the added unf that could only come from a slasher movie. Horror movie fanboys also might enjoy BRuce Campbell as good guy cop character that is tormented by the Maniac Cop when he is framed for the murders that the crazed po-po commits. Definitely a creeper of a movie, it harkens to the days of media induced fears that make us city folk nervous, violent crime waves and errbody getting killt hide yo wife hide yo kids type shit. If Halloween brought the fear to the suburbs then Maniac Cop brought it to the city, and don't give me that Jason goes to New York bull shit. This definitely had better deaths and a much creepier slasher.
Maniac Cop 2
      Borrowing a page from Halloween II, Maniac Cop 2 picks up right after the end of the first movie, in fact it has the first five minutes or so of Maniac Cop just so you know that you are in fact watching the second installment. In this installment we see the murderous po-po team up with another serial killer in New York, finding his kindred spirit Maniac Cop pretty much acts as a security guard for the wouldbe serial strangler, killing amy police that are on his trail and busting him out of sticky situations if need be. This time we have Det. McKinney played by underrated actor Robert Davi hot on the heels of the strangler and Maniac Cop. Davi has an excellent look as a Detective, calling back to the rough-and-tumble noir Detectives of yester-year. Because this movie needs no back story(except the first five minutes) we are left with much more murder and gore than its predecessor, making this my favorite of the three films. Maniac Cop 2 has a very wrapped up ending leaving no loose ends that might need killing later. Unless a hand reaches out of the grave of the believed to be deceased Matt Cordell...
Maniac Cop 3;Badge of Silence
 

  Well fuck me running....a hand did reach out of the grave right before the credits rolled in the Maniac Cop 2. Having no fucks to give this time around Maniac Cop Cordell goes balls out on these mudafukas. Closer resembling the Terminator instead of a slasher.  This time around Maniac Cop has grown a heart, defending a falsely accused lady officer from attackers...definitely the out of character experience that most third installments are famous for. Also witness the return of Det. McKinney in all his noir detective goodness.Definitely recommended to fans of over the top b-movies, destroying a police station, killing countless officers, and a flaming maniac cop behind the wheel of an automobile?? YEah, you gots to watch this shit.
   I'm truly surprised that these films don't get as much attention as the major slasher franchises, the scares and gore are on par and at times much better than big names like Jason, Freddy and Chucky, with some pretty funny writing to boot. This trilogy definitely deserves a spot on the shelves of any self respecting gorehound and horror movie fan.

Maniac(1980) *VS* Maniac(2013)

      Most people who consider themselves movie buffs often utter the phrase "well, it's no ____" or "at least it was better than ____" when giving recommendations. It is much easier reviewing movies
when have two side by side, but I'm not a complete idiot, not completely, I won't compare apple to oranges, we need at least two compatible films. More often than
not we see the horror movies these days are either complete reboots of obscure titles or complete rip offs  When I first found about the remake of 1980's groundbreaking slasher movie MANIAC I didn't know how to feel, the movie was ahead of its time in its storytelling,it could benefit from a modernization of its story it has a lot of relevance in today's world but are classics better left alone?? It could be biz as usual a sub-par shot for shot  remake that does the original no justice or a complete retelling with the same  core story and plot twists that make it a  brilliant re-imagining of a classic, leaving genre purist with little to say afterwards. Either way, it is pretty fair that we compare the two movies and see which is the better film and if both are worth a watch or not.
MANIAC(1980)
 For Frank Zito it has been considerably easy to deal with traumas of childhood, simply imagine your mother is the women you brutalize on a nightly basis...well it doesn't sound easy when you say it like that. Maniac is a slasher flick that focuses on the slasher and not the victims, revealing what could push a man to go on a murderous rampage. What happens off camera in other horror movies take center stage in Maniac, you see Zito catching up to the victim, the tactics he uses to get near the scantily clad ladies and you see the murder from a first person POV. This is a little jarring to see stalking and stabbing through the eyes of the murderer, every stab, every fast paced step, making you feel Zito's struggle to try to stop himself from killing again. This leaves you pedaling water morally, yes it is wrong to kill women, no matter what kind of mommy issues you have...but those that make you an evil person or just....sick? Maniac makes you think, unlike the clear cut black and white slasher movies where the hot ladies are angelic and good and the shady characters are undoubtedly evil.
  Beside the "thinky" smart stuff, Maniac contains some pretty cool murder scenes. About as much red corn oil and spongy fake meat than can be expected from any self-respecting B-Movie, it does not disappointing on these fronts. The soundtrack is a bit lacking but using Zito's heavy breathing as his murder theme was a stroke of genius. Also any movie in which famous special FX guru Tom Savini is brutally wasted holds a very special place in my heart.
Maniac(2013)
Using the same basic story as the original, there nothing much to be said on that front. Elijah Wood as Frank was brilliant, he portrayed the disturbed role pretty well. The most notable difference between the two films is the almost exclusive first person POV used in the remake, at first this was a pretty cool gimmick but towards the end of the movie it got to be just that...way to gimmicky for my taste. There was an unrealistic amount of mirrors and reflective surfaces in these peoples homes, this took away from the experience, taking me out of the story by making me realize that I in fact was watching a movie, I'm not asking for complete submersion but if they used first person view in a handful of scenes it wouldn't have come across as forced. Although, when they did pan out of first person POV so that you could actually see Frank's face while he stabs and stabs and stabs was a sick and twisted flash of pure genius.
    Mostly using the same story as the original, the story did branch off in certain points. All of which are justified, making the story much more believable than the original, I found this ones plot easier to digest... why would a fat, greasy and obviously fucked in the head dude hang out with a very attractive model and photographer. The story just seemed a bit more hashed out in this
version.
 *VS*
Side by side both are very good slasher movies, both have crazy murdering dudes, both have creative and gory death scenes, both have sexy ladies dying all over the place...but the edge has to go to the original Maniac from 1980, only for the less gimmicky use of camera and Tom Savini's exploding head. But both films come recommended as far as slasher films go.

I Spit On Your Grave, Exploitation with a Message

     The real art in any B-Movie or grindhouse type flick, aside from the cheesy dialogue and the ability to make a bad-ass out of any protagonist, is the ability to take outlandish and improbable situations and using it as a jumping off point to greater social issue that could not be dealt with in any sort of conventional medium. For example Romero's Dead series spoke about civil rights, commercialism and the cold war in america, a host of blaxploitation films dealt with the ignored problems of inner city youth and most recently Django Unchained deals with America sweeping slavery under the rug and trying to ignore it. Granted, a lot (if not most) exploitation films are an exercise in pushing the envelope and getting cheap laughs out of gore and inappropriate actions, but once in awhile you get all those cheap laughs and a message on a hot button issue.

     I Spit On Your Grave(1978) is about a well-to-do writer who escapes to the countryside where she can find some peace and quiet to finish writing her novel. When she is targeted by a gang of local pervs and is gang raped by all of them. She then proceeds to go on what real-type movie reviewers would call a roaring rampage of revenge. Systematically hunting down everyone of her attackers and dealing out some vengeance. On merits of a Grindhouse movie its pretty average and at times a bit boring. The acting is usual B-movie fodder, the story is kinda thin and honestly for a b-movie some of the kill scenes were pretty tame by this bloggers desensitized standards, but this film is not to be watched for merely a "so bad its good" or for gore and scares.
               I Spit On Your Grave is meant to be taken in as a thought piece, taking a subject as serious and disgusting as rape and not sugar coating the subject. The raw power in the rape scene alone...even though it wasn't very outlandish by B-movie standards, was very real and very ugly. A rude awakening to the rape culture that has been cultivated not only in the U.S but in the whole ass-backwards world...at least when it comes to this area. The movie even takes the most common (and most ridiculous) justification for rape, the blaming of the victim and how any particular way of dressing "invites" any sort of abuse on the victim. The attacker gives that excuse, and the victim lets him get all his bullshit chauvinistic schpiel out , making him look like a coward and idiot...then she proceeds to rip off his dick and lets him bleed out as she listens on the other side of the door.
               Which leaves me a bit perplexed...how is it that exploitation cinema even back in the day is more empowering for blacks, gays, women and minorities? Maybe that explains societies unease at the sight of any kind exploitation, B-Movie or grindhouse movie. Maybe they are a bit too forward thinking for the socially retarded United states. Maybe you can keep this in mind next time you watch movies like Pink Flamingos, Faster Pussycat!Kill Kill, Dawn of the Dead and even Blacula....
        As far as I Spit On Your Grave goes...it comes very recommended for even for those just looking for cheap laughs and gore ridden violence.

   

Gammera the Invincible : Turtles kicked ass before TMNT.

Back in 1965, looking to capitalize off of the monumental success of Toho's Godzilla, Daiei film Co. went about creating their own fearsome giant reptile, a flying, fire eating, turtle of mass destruction known as Gamera. In '66 the Americans got ahold of the film, splicing in American made footage and over-dubbing the soundtrack and released the picture stateside as Gammera the Invincible (yes they misspelled it, hah). Nearly half a century later, Gamera is a household name in Japan, as one of the most popular giant monsters in cinema history, spawning multiple sequels, toys, comics, and tons of other miscellanea, surpassed, fame-wise, only by Godzilla (Gojira) himself. But I'm here to talk about the beginning, not the end result:
                                                             

"You call that fire?"

  Gamera, not unlike his more famous counterpart, is awakened by a nuclear bomb explosion, and proceeds to smash on everything in sight, stopping his rampage only once to save the life of a young boy. The world gangs up to fight back against Gamera, shooting, electrocuting, and bombarding the gargantuan beast with missiles to no avail. At one point they even resort to using dynamite to flip the giant turtle onto his back (you know, the classic I've fallen and I cant get up routine), figuring if they can immobilize the beast they can buy some time and figure out a way to destroy it  Somewhere along the line we find out Gamera just gets a little pissy when he's (it's?) hungry, his preferred dietary staple being fire. Eventually the warmonger gathering (the american added scenes, which oddly enough give the movie a kind of Doctor Strangelove quality) decide it's time to put them huge nuclear stockpiles to use, but are stopped in their tracks by some Japanese doctor dude, who everyone keeps insisting is such an important dude throughout the movie, and his plan. In the end they trick ol' Gammy into stepping into some kind of closing bubble thing on the tip of a missile and shoot him to mars, oh the oddities of film making.....
                                             

Ey! I'm Gamera, and I'm coming fo' that ass.

Honestly the special effects in the movie far surpass modern CGI, one of the many examples being the classic 'run the film backwards to make amazing things happen' trick which allowed for some cool shots of Gamera eating fire. In a lot of ways Japanese special effects artists of today still use a lot of the same techniques, opting for live actors in suits instead of computer generated characters, model cities and rural areas instead of green screen cut/paste landscapes, and scaled to size model what have you's (cars, planes, animals, machinery) which in the end makes for a much better result, and allows the mind to be slightly more convinced of the reality of the situation, rather than the obvious lack of depth and proper coloring employed by the available computer generating programs of today. Now that is not to say that some of this movie isn't just utterly ridiculous at points, I mean the plot alone is laughable, and some of the effects make no sense (Gamera flying by shooting flames out of his shell and spinning like a top the entire time) but the quality of the effects employed are top notch.
                                     

Gamera having a dance, mid-mass-destruction.

Be sure to pick this flick up, it's available in many of those 50 movie packs you find at your local Target or Walmart, which are a hell of a deal in of themselves, (50 movies for 8 bucks? Are you kidding me?) Or you can find it online in a singular title form, but it's gonna cost ya a bit more. This movie is one of the all time classic Daikaiju (giant monster, although literally translated as great monster) films, and the last one filmed in black and white, and is a must own for even passive fans of giant monster movies. (Pssst, its on youtube for free too) Also of note, the OG Japanese version, sans American actors is also available wherever the hell you can find a damn DVD store nowadays.
            

Suspiria, Witches be hating

 

 
If I learned one thing in my many years of watching horror movie aimlessly into the wee hours, it’s that most of the time “good”American horror movies are “highly influenced” by foreign movies. I use quotations lavishly to protect my ass from the internet backlash from my “many” readers. Recently, the plague of one word titles from Japan at the box office has had me sticking to the subtitled counterparts from years prior. I blame this solely on one particular film from Italy from decades ago, highly influential in its subject matter, use of camera, colors and lights and that creepy music. Dario Argento’s Suspiria heavily influenced movies like Halloween, Friday the 13th, The Shining and Nightmare on Elm St.  Before I delve further, I recommend to watch it unlubricated, as the saying goes. Horror films have a better impact when you  don’t know what to expect, just know it is one of Papa Rex’s favorite movies of all the time, not just of the horror genre.

Suzy, the cute big-eyed American teen finds herself  in Freiburg, a small German town famous for both its prestigious school of ballet and fits of sudden monsoon rain. When she arrives at the school for the first time she is turned away, while leaving, Suzy sees a young women running out of the school in terror, fleeing into the dark forest. As Suzy’a cab pulls away she sees the scarred girl fade into the dense forest. The next day when she is let in to her new school, Suzy witnesses several unsettling events happen, things of an occult nature, missing students, night terrors, sudden plague of maggots and the eerie breathing of an unknown sleeping figure behind a curtain.

Suspiria uses colors, shapes and symmetry to paint a horrific picture in your head and leave it there long into the night. The strong visuals and lurking musical number will leave you unsettled from start tot finish, really feeling the terror of those haunted by…whatever it is that lives in the bowels of the school. The writing and pacing of the film is done well, what this means for horror flicks is that there is a constant state of anxiety the spaces between build up and kill scene are just right, there is never a “come on just kill the bitch” feeling that most slasher films are famous for. Like any good slasher movie, it must be filled with believable terrified women, Suspiria is no slouch. Filled to the brim with scantily dressed, pasty skinned teenage girls with big brown eyes, which I find better convey a look of utter terror.

Dario Argento’s Suspiria is an overlooked genre staple, wich is a damn shame because it so clearly influences the who’s who of horror movie directors. Get your hands on this classic and find out exactly what you have been missing.

Robo Vampire, The Best Crappy Movie EVER!!!!

Many of us in this day and age have an appreciation for the art form that is the “B-movie”. Usually very low budget fare with questionable acting and the worst special effects you have ever seen, they instill a feeling of giddy-ness rarely found in those who are legally sane. Well today I do believe I have found the absolute epitome of the genre in a little film that goes by the name of “Robo Vampire“. This movie has everything you could ever ask for cheesy villains, gore, bad special effects, a Robo Cop wanne be, boobs and Kung Fu.


The film starts off with some dude with his hands tied behind his back being shoved around by some form of military personnel wielding the obligatory M-16, when some steam begins to pour out of a nearby coffin and some form of Chinese vampire zombie jumps out and all hell breaks loose. Needless to say the afore mentioned prisoner and camouflaged bully wind up dead. The only way to describe the movement of these vampire zombie things is if a rabbit was doing a Frankensteins monster impersonation. It is truly ridiculous.

Now there are 2 story lines running throughout this movie that they try to connect through the miracle of over dub and film editing, however you never at any point see people from the separate story’s interact with each other. The First Story is one of mysticism, “vampires” (one of which has a gorilla mask on) and a very Be Kind Rewind-esque Robo Cop ripoff, while the second story is basically about some guys (and a lady) going to save a woman who was kidnapped by a drug kingpin.

Spray painted hockey gear and a gun. My hero.

Highlights include but are not limited to : An on foot chase scene where the monkey faced vampire is hopping away from the silver spray painted hockey padding clad Robo guy, and sparklers poking out of the end of sleeves denoting that mystical powers are being used.

Robo Vampire is a MUST HAVE . Not only is it ridiculous to the extreme while taking itself deadly serious, but every word is dubbed horribly, adding to the hillarity. Seriously this movie gets so many thumbs down they canceled each other out and started racking up cool points.