Showing posts with label splatter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label splatter. Show all posts

2025-10-29

Review: Blood Sucking Freaks (1976, Joel M. Reed)

Master Sardu runs a very questionable theater, in which acts of torture are re-enacted on stage. Critics doubt his artistic intentions and achievement - and indeed the show isn't quite what it claims to be...

Oh my. We are kidding, aren't we? Well, ultimately, the answer just has to be yes, we are kidding - but first let's get a couple of things straight.

"Blood Sucking Freaks" is a cheap and very nasty little oldskool splatter movie from the 1970s. It's outrageously tasteless, sleazy, and gory. It easily rivals Jess Franco's mediocre (=bad) movies, maybe even his bad (=unwatchable) ones. But with much more gore. It makes no attempts at gritty realism, it's a reasonably proper low-budget movie, but what is visually going on looks more like an amateur school play with cheap prosthetics. There is a bit of a story in it, but about 90% of the screen time are devoted to little, hardly elaborate, build ups to, and depictions of, some sort of physical (gory) torture. When you're done watching the movie, you kind of wonder: Why the effort? Why the violence? What was this?

So, very clearly, "Blood Sucking Freaks" will offend a lot of people, in fact everyone, including horror film geeks. There's less storytelling in it than in a Herschell Gordon Lewis splatter movie, but the level of depravity is easily on par with "Two Thousand Maniacs!" (1964), if not higher. It has no strong character moments, no notable rhythm, neither in dialogue nor in structure, and the gore scenes pretty much neutralize each other, it's a more or less indifferent row of scenes with talking, and cutting limbs. (Yeah, it's gory.)

Having said all of this, one has to admit: It's hilarious. Some people had a lot of fun making this. It's really like children's play, only by and for hardly grown up grown-ups. It's so blunt and crude, and there's even a little hint at some self-aware subtext in there, that one can't deny it says... something. In fact, with some good-will effort, one could say it has moments where it makes a pretty good point about what it actually is, both in form and in content. An idea similar to the background of "Cannibal Holocaust" (1980), or "Natural Born Killers" (1994) - but waaaaaay (!) more simplistic and crude. So, there might be even a certain cathartic quality to "Blood Sucking Freaks", in one way or another, but it's highly questionable if this was the director's intention, and it's certainly anything but nuanced or subtle about it. (Definitely gory.) 

Well. What can you say. Obviously, this movie is not to be taken verbatim. It has a hint of atmosphere, it has a hint of charm, and a hint at a message - but it's nowhere near what is commonly known as a "good movie", regardless of budget. It's blunt, bad, nasty grindhouse(-basement), very-low-budget filmmaking for desensitized oldskool gorehounds. If you like that kind of stuff, you get the full package. The average audience will probably just vomit, not only because of the amount of gore, but also because it feels cheap, base and pointless.

It is up to the viewer to find out if watching "Blood Sucking Freaks" might turn out to be a funny or cathartic experience - but one thing is for sure: by common standards, in every regard, you most likely don't want to.

Verdict: It's sick. Whatever that may mean to you. 4/10  

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077247/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Sucking_Freaks

Trailer Video:

Sorry, no trailer video. It's a little too much, it might brake blog provider's rules.

But you can find it on the IMDB page, and here:
https://archive.org/details/TRAILERBLOODSUCKINGFREAKS

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2025-09-04

The Toxic Avenger (2023) trailer

In case you've missed it, here's the trailer for Troma's new, rebooting "The Toxic Avenger", filmed in 2023, released in 2025.

Actually it looks pretty cool. The casting, namely Peter Dinklage, Elijah Wood, and Kevin Bacon, seems super adequate to the material, with all three actors having their own sort of cult status in the fantasy and horror community, and it levels up the acting quality quite a bit in comparison to the 1984 original. The appearance of the new Toxie is really convincing, and the poster artwork (see e.g. Wikipedia, link below) very nicely sets its own, gritty, toxic, low-budget tone for the movie. "The Toxic Avenger" is getting good ratings on IMBD - all in all, it looks like this is a fun watch, while keeping the legacy and feel of the original intact. A reboot done right!

Have you watched the full movie? Did you like it?

Watch the official trailer for "The Toxic Avenger" (2025)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKe0pep35gQ

Troma Entertainment


https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1633359/ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toxic_Avenger_(2023_film)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090190/ (original 1984 film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toxic_Avenger_(1984_film) 


2025-05-05

Streaming Kino: Riki-Oh ("Story Of Ricky", 1991)

Comic-adaptation "Riki-Oh" is a guilty pleasure that doesn't give you much time to catch your breath.

It's a cult movie, thanks to its unapologetic approach to both adapting the original material to live action film, and the on-screen violence. Where others might have changed the tone, director Lam Nai-Choi ("The Seventh Curse") chose to closely mimic the original, only with actors, latex, styrofoam, and large amounts of fake blood. 

"Riki-Oh" is a fast moving manga-style prison drama, with grotesque, funny, bizarre moments, and a lot of very brute, very gory violence. If you have a strong stomach, it's a highly entertaining watch.

Fun fact: Actors Fan Mei-sheng and Louis Fan Siu-wong, playing the master of the prison and Riki-Oh, respectively, are father and son in real life.

video source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlRfZ8-pgGY
Alin Sun

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2024-06-26

Review: Un Gatto Nel Cervelo ("A Cat In The Brain"/"Nightmare Concert", 1990, Lucio Fulci)

Renowned horror film director Lucio Fulci is haunted by shocking visions of violence. He goes to see his psycho-therapist to help him ease his mind - but the line between reality and fantasy begins to blur even more...

Fulci plays Fulci. In "Un Gatto Nel Cervelo", we get some insight into the crazy mind of a notorious horror film director, and his issues. The uncut version of this concoction has a runtime of 93 minutes. A version currently available on YouTube, which probably is identical to the original German FSK 18 VHS tape release, has a runtime of only 68 minutes. 25 minutes of violence removed - that should give you an idea of the level of depravity this movie has to offer. It's basically a collection of violent scenes, framed by a little giallo story with some comedic elements. In its cut version, it's unwatchable, you literally have no idea what's going on. In its uncut version, a really strong stomach is required to sit it through.

But it's also funny as hell. The giallo element is a farce, the gore is all too blunt and omnipresent, and the scenes of violence are taken from other Fulci movies, which just has to be obvious even for the occasional Fulci viewer. Of course it makes sense given the premise of the story, but the amount of re-used footage is just too substantial. Once you get what's actually going on - or if you don't, then the end of the movie will make it very clear for you - you'll just have to smile from ear to ear. Lucio Fulci is one of the grand-daddies of splatter cinema, a lot of bad things have been, are being, and will be said about horror film makers, and he knows precisely what he's doing. 

Shock scene after shock scene, "Un Gatto Nel Cervelo" is just relentless - thus it has some serious horror value, but it's certainly not a quality thriller. And it isn't meant to be. Yes, there is a psycho thriller story in there, but it's more like the gory equivalent of a "commedia sexy all'italiana". It's cheap, grotesque, a bit naive, and absolutely hilarious given the actual background of Lucio Fulci and his critics. It's a wild ride, and a big, heartfelt middle finger to those who think he's just sick in the brain (lol), as well as a lovely present to his fans. It was never meant to give people real nightmares. Quite the opposite - it's only a movie! It's only Lucio.

Verdict: It doesn't get any more Fulci than this. 6/10

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099637/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_in_the_Brain

Trailer video:

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