Quick Review : Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979)

Who doesn’t love a good ‘video nasty’? Well, in my view, 90% of the time, these ‘video nasties’ only have their controversy to survive on. Plot, acting, direction…they are secondary to the shock value. Take Zombie Flesh Eaters. It’s poorly acted, poorly paced, and poorly scripted. I only watched it because I had a vague memory of watching it late night on Channel 4 as a teenager, and seeing the infamous eye-gouging scene that was censored to hell for broadcast (perhaps I am mistaken?).

Review: Cannibal Holocaust (1980) (The Most Controversial Film of All Time?)

“Man is omnipotent; nothing is impossible for him”

Is Cannibal Holocaust the most controversial film of all time? That’s what it says on the sleeve of the Shameless Edition which I picked up last week. I thought shameless was a reference to the price: 18 pounds! But, I was willing to pay that steep price for something that would shock and disgust me. It takes a lot. Cannibal Holocaust ticks all the boxes for extreme horror: rape, genital mutilation, cannibalism, buckets of blood, disembowelments, real animal slaughters…it’s a film that you couldn’t get away with doing today. Ask Eli Roth: he tried with The Green Inferno, but that lacked any shock value (and was pretty dull as well). As is often the case, nothing could top the original Cannibal Holocaust. Yes, it’s probably the most controversial film of all time. But does that make it any good?

‘Halloween Special’ Review: I Spit On Your Grave (1978) (A True Video Nasty?)

“You came to a nice place”

Halloween is approaching…so I sought out a true video nasty: the original ‘I Spit On Your Grave.’ Last night I settled down with some tomato soup and popped the DVD in the player…

The plot can easily be summed up: a New York lady (Jennifer) goes to the countryside, gets raped by several men, then in various acts of revenge kills them. And there isn’t much in between: the rape scenes take about forty-five minutes of the film up; the murders about forty minutes. So there is little room for exposition, character development, or any of those things necessary to weave a cohesive story. The lady is a novelist, retiring to the country for some inspiration. Of course, when people retire to the countryside, they get a lot closer to ‘nature’ than they intended to in horror films! The men are no-good hicks, referring to women as ‘chicks.’ According to one of them, city girls only come to the village to get laid. So that’s a perfect justification rape! One of them, Matthew, is a ‘retard’ (in their words). So, they are the main characters, and we don’t find out much more about them.