Theme: Video Nasties

Our kids are watching all kinds of depraved shit on tapes, let's ban the shit out of everything!

All the films from the dpp list, a few more that was caught up in the mayhem and some

docus on the nasties and censorship in general! this program will run for quite some time.
#torbovision

Devil Fetus (1983) - Hung-Chuen Lau

In "Devil Fetus" we meet a chick that buys a jade vase that is supposed to make your deepest wishes come true. Apparently her wish was to be impregnated by a slimy white-haired demon, and this happens the very same evening! The devil-fetus is of course a mean bastard, and people begin dropping dead around it right away. Nicely paced and pretty wacky HK black magic flick. You don't really see the devil fetus much, but it is definitely there. Protip: Keep your eagle blood ready! Yay!

Chinese Magic (1983)

Taiwanese magic film! "Chinese Magic" consists more or less of nonstop magic, special effects and awesome sound effects. I thoroughly enjoyed this one, but I only have a basic idea of what actually happened in it as the copy I was watching had the subtitles cropped out during most of the film. Hopefully a copy in better shape appears of "Chinese Magic" someday, because it definitely deserves it. Talking frogs, fighting paper men, chest-bursting babies, curses, laser beams, virgin blood, menstruation jars! Great without subs and there is even a sequel!

The Orphan (1979) - John Ballard

"The Orphan" is a shitty excuse for a film that basically drags on for what feels like an eternity. People you don't care about talk to other people you don't care about about stuff you don't care about. The only thing horrifying about this film is how it manages to stay utterly uninteresting for nearly two hours. Seriously, NOTHING is happening and watching it feels like going in circles. People who claim this film has something going for it are morons. If I had a time-machine, I'd use it to go back in time and kill John Ballard before he could make this painfully dull celluloid stain.

The Unborn (1991) - Rodman Flender

Ordinary babies suck, but in-vitro babies are evil! Also, don't trust doctors, technology or progress. All of those things are bad according to this flick. Moms going mental, explodo births, backyard abortions, evil doctors, vicious rubber babies and Kathy Griffin getting clobbered to death! Not that bad, but too slow for a movie night. The baby is awesome once it enters the fray towards the end.

Baby Blood (1990) - Alain Robak

Primal demon from Africa enters abused circus chick and takes control over her pregnancy. Her new demon baby needs human blood asap! I vaguely remember being scared shitless by this when I was younger. While this film is a pretty bloody affair, it's actually more of a comedy than a horror film. "Baby Blood" is a neat little film that somehow manages to remind me of both "Braindead" and "Possession". 

The Pit (1981) - Lew Lehman

A messed up kid befriends a perverted teddybear and starts raising a bunch of trolls in a pit behind his house. Lots of pervy oddness the first half, reasonable amounts of troll-feeding the second half. This is amazing! 

The Rape After (1986) - Meng Hua Ho

Strange HK black magic flick. Peeps get raped by a cursed demon statue filled with the ashes of a dead baby. Demon baby rips off the head of a doctor, poopdemon drowns a monk in his own poo, shady abortions out of nowhere, a dude vomits frogs, ears gets ripped off, the undead shamble around, dude gets killed by burning birds, a chick chops off her own fingers, plants a cleaver in her own head and pours boiling oil on herself etc. HK has got to be a total freak zone... While some truly bizarre stuff happens in "The Rape After", the pacing is a bit off and leaves you bewildered. Yay?

Progeny (1998) - Brian Yuzna

Mid-coital abduction means alien baby! The inhabitants of the space hole are at it again, tentacle-raping and probing innocent chicks. Even though the baby most definitely is a tentacled beast, Sherry figures it's a great idea to keep it and care for it. Obviously a bad choice, seeing as alien babies truly are dicks. Sherry could learn a thing or two from watching "Miami Golem". There is some plot shit going on about losing time due to aliens, I definitely lost about 90 mins due to "Progeny".

(00:14:03) splittter: that was piss poor
(00:14:14) dresden: piss would look down on that film
(00:14:16) torb: fuck you, brian yuzna
(00:14:30) theNomad: fuck you with an alien tentacle

Demon Murder Case (1983) - William Hale

Kevin Bacon vs. possessed brat! Young Brian is being a bit of a dickhead, turns out he's possessed by a ton of demons. He trashes around from time to time, levitates a bit, gets exorcised and mocks god. Pretty shocking. Kevin Bacon is mostly getting his ass kicked by a kid in this one, at least until he enters stab-mode. Unbearably mediocre. 

Note: Image quality from hell!

Gakidama (1985) - Masayoshi Sukita

A ghost-larva (funny, seeing as "larva" is latin for "ghost") enters the ear of a reporter and impregnates him. After going on a nonstop eating-binge the reporter gives birth to a tiny, lazy-eyed ghoul/gakidama. Oh, yeah and it exits through his mouth in quite messy fashion. The reporter then gets obsessed with finding and eating the gakidama himself... While the demon looks rubbery and silly, this flick has a pretty cool eerie vibe to it. Bonus: radical music during the end credits. Neat.

The Seventh Curse (1986) - Ngai Choi Lam

Haha, where to begin? "The Seventh Curse" is an off the hook adventure film starring Chow Yun-Fat and an incredibly annoying Maggie Cheung. A sort of badass cop gets cursed by savages in Thailand worshiping a blood drinking kung fu-skeleton, and the cop has to sort his shit out. Nonstop action and madness ensues. 100 kids are dropped in a meat grinder by an evil sorcerer to create a flying demon fetus, lots of martial arts, police raids, a giant Buddha head rolling after peeps with fountains of blood coming out of its eyes, insane stunts (I'm sure they killed some stuntmen with that car), nudity, gunfights. It all makes sense once you realize this was made by the director of "Story of Ricky". Double-yay! Also, Chow Yun-Fat with a rocket launcher is far more effective than the exorcist ever was.

Theme: Kids Are Dicks!

Demon fetuses, wicked babies, exploding births, killer kids!
The conclusion is that kids suck enough to have tons of films made about the subject.

#torbovision

Computer Superman (1977) - Sompote Sands

Let me first admit, that my knowledge and understanding of Thai is rather limited. This means of course that I didn't really understand a word being said in this Sompote Sands film. Four dudes - one with giant hands, one with giant ears, one with a tail and one with an exceptionally runny nose (?) - gets yelled at by their dads and team up to battle with thugs. At least that's what I think happened. Anyways, taildude is turned into an awesome cyborg by this utterly eccentric scientist-chap and he saves the day! This is definitely a comedy of sorts though and the special effects are sweet (running-scenes especially). I'm assuming this must have been popular when it was originally released, because its pretty neat even without me being able to understand the dialogue. I'm definitely hoping subtitles will be made for this one day. Yay!

Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992) - Shinya Tsukamoto

While the original Tetsuo is accepted as an awesome film, it's sequel is generally considered to be far inferior. I can see where the critique is coming from, but personally I love "Body Hammer". It might not be as "edgy" as the original was, and it's basically a lot of the same stuff happening again, just with a bigger budget, but as an entertaining spectacle, it is marvelous. The bodybuilding scenes are awesome, the soundtrack is still awesome and the speed and craziness of it all is still there. "Body Hammer" should not be dismissed.

Android (1982) - Aaron Lipstadt

Klaus Kinski's + robots in space? The result is pretty decent, but it has nothing to do with Kinski being in it. Kinski is pretty bland in this one. What I do find entertaining is the fact that the android in this, is listed as playing "himself" in the credits. I can't decide whether its utterly dumb or if it is related to the ending of the film. I'm also quite sure that the megablockbuster "Prometheus" used the scenes where Max watches "Metropolis", as inspiration.

Tetsuo (1989) - Shinya Tsukamoto

"Tetsuo" is one of those movies that is a tad too mainstream for the programs I try to put together here, but that I end up streaming anyways because it's bloody awesome. It had been a few years since I saw this and I must admit I liked it even more this time around. It's a difficult film to describe in many ways, but I don't think calling it "the "Eraserhead" of its decade" is completely wrong. The visual quality and strangeness of it all is similar to what we find in Lynch's film, but the energetic pace is definitely from the 80s/a taste of the 90s. I would also dare say that "Tetsuo" has a lot in common with silent cinema. Just have a look at the  acting in the scene with the drill-penis. Anyways, it's a film that doesn't need much of an introduction - I like it.

Alien Terminator (1988) - Nello Rossati

Franco Nero, George Kennedy, Roger Moore's daughter, KGB, CIA, UFOs, Nazis, aliens, terminators. Sort of slow, but has all sorts of odd shit happening from time to time. Bizarre car chases and chases in general, a completely nonsensical plot about alien conspiracies and a pretty strange ending. The cover is way more awesome than the actual film (as is often the case with these), and the film totally doesn't deliver the goods. Rather than getting a radical scifi film, you get a dirt cheap conspiracy flick shot at some utterly lousy locations. I have seriously no idea what market Nello Rossati was trying please with this one, as it is all over the place. Why is George Kennedy even in this? Why is anyone in this?

Nemesis 4: Death Angel (1996) - Albert Pyun

The fourth installment in the Nemesis-series. Features Sue Price killing cyborgs with her superbeefy thighs. The plot is something about Sue squeezing the life out of the wrong cyborg and some ensuing drama. Don't let the cover fool you - she gets naked or is naked in most of her scenes. God damnit, Albert Pyun... Why? 

Moontrap (1989) - Robert Dyke

Bruce Campbell and Chekov go to the moon and discover traces of ancient civilizations and evil robots! This one managed to do a lot on what was probably a tiny budget. A neat little film, in a genre I absolutely adore. It gets increasingly silly towards the end, but it's still good fun. Apparently, a comic book adaptation was made of this, and I assume that would be pretty awesome. Yay!

I.K.U. (2000) - Shu Lea Cheang

(Mostly) softcore porn about cyborg chicks out to collect "orgasm data"! Lots of corny special effects, some cool music and strange locations. It's like watching a high-paced hacker movie from the late 90s that somehow only consists of sex-scenes. This is an odd one, peeps. Yay!

The Humanoid (1989) - Aldo Lado

Aldo Lado somehow found himself making a space-opera at the end of 70s. The result? "The Humanoid". This one is a proper stinker, that almost put the dude I was watching it with to sleep. A dude turns into Jaws and start fucking shit up. Blatant Star Wars ripoff, featuring an Asian kid that knows magic/can summon jedi archers, Ivan Rassimov (!) as Darth Vader/Lord Graal, the silliest hairdo in history and a R2D2 clone that looks like a dog! Not extremely entertaining, but good enough. I'm mostly amazed that Aldo Lado managed to poop out this film after having made some really fine films earlier in the 70s.

Robowar (1989) - Bruno Mattei

Predator as reimagined by Bruno Mattei. If you replace the space-alien with a robocopesque robot that sounds like a speak & spell toy on crack + replace Schwarzenegger with Reb Brown you have this flick.  Also, has Massimo Vanni (from tons of neat Italian stuff) and supercool Filipino beefcake Max Laurel (from Zuma, Sgt. Clarin and Commander: The Last American Soldier). It even has quite a bit of hut-destruction. Robowar is awesome in every sense of the word! Robowar is one of my favorite Mattei films. Watch this one back to back with Robo Vampire.

Kamen Rider ZO (1993) - Keita Amemiya

A professor sets out to improve the human form. Turns out the best way to do this is to give a dude the power of the grasshopper! An odd choice, but the kamen rider-project seems to success anyways, the on the other hand, demon fetus he is working on is evil. Grasshopper rider vs. insectoid bastards controlled by demon fetus ensues, as the demon fetus hates the professor's kid. Good fun and nice rubber suits. Yay! 

Theme: Robots!

Robots, cyborgs, androids, computers and everything related to such things.

Enjoy the company of awesome robots and robettes at torbovision all week!

#torbovision