Extra Weird Sampler

EXTRA WEIRD SAMPLER presents clips from over 100 of the strangest and most fantastical films ever made. From THE AMAZING TRANSPLANT to WRESTLING WOMEN USA, this sampler has it
I watched this 4-5 years ago and got interested in these movies, so I bought a couple of them. I am now hopelessly addicted to SWV and have almost all of the Special Edition DVDs. I've spent way too much money and have had way too much fun watching these B-to-Z grade films!

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True Gore II (1989)

Don't be misled by the title and put your lube away: True Gore II (aka Empire of Madness) (1989)--M Dixon Causey's follow-up to the eponymous first entry--has virtually no true gore in it at all. Instead, the first half is a compilation of faux-snuff vignettes akin to something you'd find in a SOV horror collection like Snuff Perversions 1 & 2, Snuff Files, The Dead Files, Violations I & II, or even more recent titles like Murder Collection Volume 1. The second half is in turn a send-up of satanic panic style videos like Law Enforcement Guide to Satanic Cults, Devil Worship: The Rise Of Satanism, and countless others shat out during the 80s/90s.

The vignettes are hilariously inept to the point where it seems clear that Causey was parodying the shockumentary form; the 'intestines' stuffed into the mouth of the rotting corpse during the necromancy ritual, for instance, are clearly-visible sausage links, with no effort being made to disguise this (quite the opposite). Even the credits are a joke, mocking the seriousness with which shocku producers take themselves, crediting a 'researcher' for a film that clearly had none, and a 'visual archivist' being listed in place of a cameraman.

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Cannibal Lunch Box (Triple Feature)

WARLOCK MOON -a bizarre blood cult is on the prowl for human sacrifices! A beautiful college co-ed is lured to an abandoned country club by a strange coven of cannibalistic witches, ghosts and brutal axe murderers. Will she be able to thwart their plans to recruit new victims for ritualistic murder? Or will she be the main course in a blood cult banquet? Starring a young Laurie Walters of TV s Eight is Enough and Joe Spano of TV s Hill Street Blues. BLOOD FEAST II
-from the godfather of gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis, comes from the most eagerly awaited sequel in the annals of splatter cinema! The cannibal caterer is back with a new recipe for gross-out, comedic carnage that literally blows chunks across the silver screen! From the groundbreaking production team of H.G. Lewis and David Friedman. MAN FROM DEEP RIVER -follow a photographer as he journeys through the treacherous jungles of South East Asia. Attacked and captured by a tribe of jungle dwelling savages, he attempts an escape, and commits a barbaric act that strangely earns him the respect of the natives. As a sign of acceptance, the tribe attempts to assimilate him into their fold, initiating him through a series of brutal and sadistic rites! Can he survive!

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Knock Outs (2011)

When call girl Cindy gets busted under the new 36 Strikes Law, she receives the maximum sentence of “Life in Prison without Parole”. Desperate to beat the rap, Cindy agrees to become a Special Agent for the Feds on the condition that she infiltrates the illegal Female Fight Club that exists in the prison. What happens next is the sexy fight of her life as she uses her skills to get inside the club and bring it tumbling down.

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She Wore a Yellow Ribbon [Blu-ray]

Joanne Dru teams with The DUKE again in this Technicolor marvel (after appearing together in "Red River" the year before). In this one, Dru plays a young romantic hopeful for both John Agar and Harry Carey, Jr.
Monument Valley never looked better. The stormclouds are stunning, even if the fake lightning is not. And the sunsets! Only Technicolor can capture the colors with such brilliance!
While I prefer "Rio Grande" and the lamentably-not-on-DVD-yet "Fort Apache", "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" plays more as a quiet homage to the cavalry than the actionfests of the other two films. Not that this film is sparse on action! However, the focus here is most definitely on the honor and wisdom of the old guard.
As usual, Ford has many subtle threads woven in to the plot of the film that enhance the story with backstories that are only hinted at. The most notable of these is the former Confederate soldiers, now part of the U.S. Cavalry. Their honor is intact, and they are still true to their ideals, despite wearing the uniform of the Yankee. There is, we know, much more to their story, but we see just what we need to. Any more, and the real story would get lost, the focus moved to the wrong place. How many modern directors make the mistake of letting this happen again and again and again? Too many, for sure.

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Blood for Dracula (1974)

Paul Morrissey's moralistic take on modern values is a brash mixture of humor, horror, and sex - and a revelation to fans of the horror film. In Blood for Dracula, the infamous count searches Italy for virgin blood

On my recent trip to Japan I had ample opportunity to check out some of their movie stores, and browse blu-rays. Let it first be said that trying to find anything specific over there is a frustrating experience, because even their english titles are sorted by katakana (unlike with music). However, since so few of their Japanese titles have english subtitles, and their english-language titles are mostly available much cheaper elsewhere, there were only a couple specific blu-rays I was really after anyways. 

One of which was the Japanese release of Blood for Dracula. Both Blood for Dracula and sister film Flesh for Frankenstein have been released only in Japan and Australia, and screenshot comparisons have shown that the Australian releases are vastly inferior. Knowing this, I searched Tokyo for a copy of Dracula, and in my last week there, finally found it in the Tower Records in Shibuya.

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Nurse Sherri (1978)

Horror movie about a demented professor of the occult, whose soul jumps into the curvaceous body of Nurse Sherri (Jill Jacobson) shortly before he dies on the operating table. The possessed lady in white then begins stalking, seducing and kill people - even her boyfriend - until someone puts an end to the madness.

Director Adamson and producer Sam Sherman weren't afraid to make a film, edit footage out and then edited stuff in just in order to make it sell. If you go through their work together you'll see several examples where they make a movie, it doesn't sell so they add something in to make it a drive-in hit. That's the case here as they delivered a "naughty" nurse type film but then decided to add in more horror elements, ala CARRIE and the end result was pure gold at the box office. Originally released with more horror elements, the latest DVD offers the long lost "adult" version, which features more nudity and that's the version I watched.

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Five Bloody Graves (1969)

A lone gunman hunts the fearsome Apache Satago across the plains of the Wild West. When Satago's marauders ambush a stagecoach, the gunman rides to the rescue of the trapped passengers and helps them in their last stand against the deadly Indians.

Al Adamson! Truly one of the Princes of schlock filming and a true heir to Edward D. Wood Jr.s Throne of cheese! Adamsons films have everything that makes the true crap movie so frightening: Illucid scripts, continuity errors of epic proportions, acting somewhere between barely OK to truly awful, former movie greats fallen into rough times, no budget whatsoever, cameos by the director himself (not in the Hitchcock manner, more in the Ed "Glenn or Glennda" Wood way)... you name it.

Said that, this is one of his less crappy movies (we are talking about Adamson standards here though), mainly because of a really good director of photography (newly immigrated Vilmos Zsigmound, who later would shoot movies like Maverick and Assassins) and a gorgeous background scenery.

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Midnight Offerings (1981)

Vivian has magic powers. She doesn’t hesitate to save her boyfriend David from failing in school by murdering teachers. However, David has gotten tired of her and is putting his charm on a new girl in school, Robin. Robin discovers that she also has magic powers, and it comes to a mental struggle between the two women over David.

Before there was “The Craft“, before “The Secret Circle” and before “The Raven” (ok, scratch this last one), you might remember a made for TV movie titled “Midnight Offerings“. The film takes the lead from other like films such as “The Spell (1977)” and ” The Initiation of Sarah (1978)”. Since the movie falls way back into the year 1981, it is probably more likely that you remember it as, “that witch movie that starred Melissa Sue Anderson”. The film offered a pretty decent witch against witch premise that I’m assuming inspired many others over the years. Though trying to locate this one is not as easy with it never arriving on DVD and most likely lost in VHS hell somewhere. In fact as of this review, even wikipedia missed the boat on this one. Though a few kind folks have provided various video links to sections, so its not lost entirely. (Side Note: You can find DVD versions created by bootleggers, most likely pulled from the analog data)

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Skullduggery (1983)

A nerdy fellow that enjoys playing a Dungeons and Dragons-like role playing game goes on a killing spree as the result of a family curse.

Wow. What the hell did I just watch? That is all I can think after watching Skullduggery.  I have heard a lot of bad things about this movie over the years but never bothered to watch it until recently and almost immediately regretted my decision. It was just as bad (if not worse) as everyone said that it was and I think that I might have lost some IQ points-not that I had a lot to begin with-after watching it. I knew that I was in trouble after the movie opened with a weird, Scooby-Doo-like theme song (that I will never, ever be able to get out of my head no matter how hard I try) and things just got even worse from there.  Make no bones about it this movie is bad. Not in a “so bad it’s good” way but just in a “wow, this film is very, very bad and it just plain sucks” sort of way. It’s boring, goofy, confusing at times and just all around a terrible movie in every possible way.

I’ll admit that it sounded like it could be interesting but after the horrible opening scene (that takes place in the 1300’s) I just got a bad feeling that I was in for something quite painful and I was right. After this horrid opening we are transported through time to 1982 and meet our main character Adam (who is pretty talented at just walking around looking confused or angry and being a dick to his friends and others in general). We get to watch him do amazing things like play a role playing game, argue with his dorky friends, and then attend a really lame talent show (don’t know why it was called a talent show since no one seemed to have any actual talent) where a goofball magician (that sort of reminded me of the short-lived WWF wrestler Phantasio that made one whopping appearance in the ring back in the day) awakens the curse inside him and makes him a killer.

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Hell's Belles (1969)

When hot-headed Dan out-drives the thoroughly vicious Tony in a motorcycle race and wins a brand new bike, he sets in motion a chain of events that includes one blazing gas station and a disastrous rock slide.

This is one hell of a fun movie, and probably the best motorcycle flick of the '60s after Easy Rider. The is actually an update of the old Jimmy Stewart movie Winchester '73, except a motorcycle is used in place of the rifle. Jeremy Slate, always great in these '60s flicks, is the lead and is supported by a wonderful exploitation movie cast. Les Baxter's score, next to that of Easy Rider is about the best heard in a biker flick, a perfect artifact of the period, and lots of fun.

Quasi-comedy biker flick with western-genre elements has motocross champ Jeremy Slate (as the one decent character, and convincingly so) plotting his vengeance on the Arizona biker gang who stole his prized cycle. He catches up to them but is beaten badly, and for compensation the scurrilous pack leaves him scowling chopper chick Jocelyn Lane (an attractive cross between Nancy Sinatra and a post-teenage Hayley Mills, but a bit too refined for this kind of movie). "Hell's Belles" isn't much, nor does it strive to be, but the desert locales are interesting, Les Baxter's score is campy, and the performances aren't bad. Adam Roarke, a fine actor who made more than his share of groaners, plays the leader with admirable finesse, and the growing relationship between Slate and Lane is intriguing. The final showdown is well done, as is the closing scene. American International Pictures, having had huge success with "The Wild Angels" in 1966, had a tough time getting out of the biker rut, and by 1970 it was all starting to look like rehashed goods, but this entry has some modest surprises up its sleeve, and leaves you with more than just a quick biker fix.

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The Locals (2003)

“The Locals” would have worked best if sold as a Head Trip film, where what we think is reality is in fact not, and the point is to let the movie pull us along until it decides to send us reeling with its Big Reveal. And the film almost pulls it off, if not for the very poor technical craftsmanship, which really detracts from the script. It may seem petty to harp on the film’s nonexistent skill with lights, but consider this: the movie takes place almost entirely at night and on a lonely stretch of dirt road in the middle of nowhere. That’s prime fodder for an atmospheric and intense film where darkness is absolute. This is what “Dead End” did with tremendous success.
Two best friends Grant and Paul hit the road for a weekend of surfing, booze and hopefully . . . girls. With night falling they take a short cut and meet Lisa and Kelly, a couple of babes with a fast car, who invite them to a party. Lust takes the wheel and a game of cat and mouse begins leading them deep into the heartland of evil where they meet...........The Locals. Written by Greg Page

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