HANGING FOR DJANGO (1969) Review

TODAY'S BARGAIN: HANGING FOR DJANGO (1969) - Standalone DVD
PRICE: $2

Directed by: Sergio Garrone
Written by: Sergio Garrone
Starring: Anthony Steffen, William Berger, Mario Brega, Riccardo Garrone, Nicoletta Machiavelli

Sergio Garrone is one of the best examples of the Italian exploitation director, content to cash in on whatever topic was popular at the time. Before he started capitalizing on the nazisploitation craze with films like SS CAMP 5: WOMEN'S HELL and SS EXPERIMENT LOVE CAMP Garrone churned out a few of the countless Django cash-ins including the excellent DJANGO THE BASTARD and of course HANGING FOR DJANGO, which incidentally (like a lot of the others) doesn't even contain a character named Django. Stranger still is the film's German title (DJANGO UND SARTANA DIE TODLICHEN ZWEI) because the film stars neither a Django nor a Sartana character. There's a Santana which is close, but not related at all.

It may not have a character named Django but what this film does have is some pretty decent spaghetti western talent from the likes of Anthony Steffen (who starred in approximately one billion other 'Django' flicks), William Berger (who played the brilliant Banjo character in SABATA among others) and Mario Brega (basically a staple in any Leone western) who for once gets to play a good guy! HANGING FOR DJANGO (also known as NO ROOM TO DIE and NOOSE FOR DJANGO depending on which copy you happen to pick up) has bounty hunters, ruthless villains, sweaty Mediterranean 'Mexicans', plenty of gunfights, double-crosses and a hefty sum of money up for grabs. The only way this could get more spaghetti westerny is if Ennio Morricone scored it, which unfortunately he did not.

HANGING FOR DJANGO follows the bounty hunter Johnny Brandon (Steffen) as he works to take out Mr Fargo (played by by Garrone's brother Riccardo), a people trafficker who has been smuggling Mexican's across the Rio Grande into Texas. His method is to take their money, load them into wagons and then eventually get rid of them by dumping them over the cliff into the river. He's not a very nice guy.
Brandon teams up with fellow bounty hunter Everett (Berger), a bible-toting man who dresses like a preacher and wields a seven-barrelled rifle. But although they're both bounty hunters the two couldn't be much less alike and soon when the prospect of a hefty amount of cash comes along all bets are off and its every man for himself.

Forget about Steffen, it's William Berger who steals the show here and his seven-barrelled rifle is the most badass gun since his brilliant banjo rifle in SABATA. And speaking of guns there are gunfights aplenty on offer here, and the body count is massive. There may not be much blood but there are bodies falling off hills and down ravines (By the looks of it this movie was shot almost exclusively in a quarry) all over the place. Garrone is far from the best Sergio when it comes to the genre (Leone and Corbucci are both far superior) but HANGING FOR DJANGO is a really neat entry to the spaghetti western landscape and easily one of the better 'Django' flicks out there. That's not to say that it's without it's flaws, the acting is mostly poor and the dubbing is distractingly bad and there are plot holes and inconsistencies aplenty (I'm pretty certain the English translation isn't 100% accurate either). If you can find this for $2 like I did then I urge you to pick it up and keep an eye out for Garrone's other brilliant western DJANGO THE BASTARD while you're at it.

CONTAMINATION (1980) Review

TODAY'S BARGAIN: CONTAMINATION (1980) - Part of a 20 Film Horror / Sci Fi Collection
PRICE: $20 / 20 Films = $1

Directed by: Luigi Cozzi
Written by: Luigi Cozzi, Erich Tomek
Starring: Ian McCulloch, Louise Marleau, Marino Masé, Siegfried Rauch

CONTAMINATION is part of that oh so special breed of pseudo-sequel cash-ins that Italian filmmakers seemed to love pumping out in the 70s and 80s. CONTAMINATION is to ALIEN what ZOMBI 2 is to DAWN OF THE DEAD or what CRUEL JAWS is to JAWS; totally unofficial, unrelated but nevertheless marketed as a sequel just for the promise of some quick cash. This is most certainly not the only one (Ciro Ippolito's ALIEN 2: ON EARTH was released only months earlier) but it is especially noteworthy for being immortalized as one of the UK's infamous 'Video Nasties'. In fact to be honest its inclusion on that particular list is probably the only reason this movie hasn't faded into complete obscurity.
As often as you might hear about this film being a 'rip-off' of ALIEN, in reality it really isn't all that similar apart from the inclusion of the alien eggs and the 'queen alien' towards the film's end. It also happens to be low budget and set entirely on Earth and the first 2 minutes are all you need to be certain that what you're watching is in no way related to Ridley Scott's movie.

While we're on the subject of Italian pseudo-sequels, the beginning of CONTAMINATION is suspiciously reminiscent of the beginning of Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE. A ship with no signs of life is spotted headed towards New York City. Police and medical experts board the ship (wearing respirator's which on one hand make their voices impossible to understand while on the other hand masking the terrible dubbing) to investigate and swiftly stumble upon a whole slew of dead bodies. But the bodies themselves aren't the most terrifying part, it's the way the bodies have been torn apart; as though they've exploded from within...
Soon they come across the ship's cargo which is comprised of boxes and boxes of coffee, except that it's not really coffee at all. One of the boxes has broken open, revealing a group of large, green egg-shaped objects. One of these has rolled conveniently under a warm steam pipe and has begun glowing and pulsating. One of the investigators picks it up (exactly what you should do with a mysterious object found on a ship full of dead bodies) and it promptly explodes, spraying it's juices all about the place. What's worse is that anybody who comes in contact with the goo also explodes. Cue some deliciously gory chest and face explosions (the gore is especially nasty due to the fact that real animal guts were used in some scenes).

The only survivor of the ship investigation , Lt. Tony Aris (Masé) eventually teams up with Col. Stella Holmes (Marleau) and ex-astronaut Ian Hubbard (McCulloch) to find out where the exploding eggs are coming from and what they are being used for, and just who is the mastermind behind smuggling them in boxes with 'coffee' written on the side (because that's a completely foolproof plan). The answer involves a cave on Mars, a South American coffee plantation and a whole lot of exploding bodies. We're also treated to some dumb dialogue, terrible dubbing and unintentionally funny scenes like my personal favorite when Stella is trapped in a bathroom with an egg about to explode. Hiding in the shower and throwing a towel over herself would probably be a good idea, but nowhere near as hilarious as sitting on the floor wrestling with the doorknob for a half hour. And then there's the inane 'logic' the film offers - "oh, heat causes the eggs to ripen and explode... bring out the flamethrower!". Brilliant.

CONTAMINATION is a bad movie in just about every way. The acting is bad, dialogue is awkward, dubbing is crap and its low budget is very obvious. So why the hell do I love this movie so much? Is it the impressive gore? The music by Goblin? The presence of Ian McCulloch? The certain mystique that comes with being a Nasty? I like to think that's its a combination of all of that and more. CONTAMINATION has almost all of the ingredients for a classic Italian exploitation flick (some nudity would have gone a long way) and if this kind of trashy cinema is up your alley I suggest you track it down, especially if you can find it for a decent price. Just make sure you get it in its uncut form so you get the benefit of all the movie's juicy mess.

CITY OF BLOOD (1983) Review

TODAY'S BARGAIN: CITY OF BLOOD (1983) - Standalone DVD
PRICE: $2

Directed by: Darrell Roodt
Written by: Mary-Ann Lindenstadt, Darrell Roodt
Starring: Joe Stewardson, Ian Yule, Susan Coetzer

CITY OF BLOOD is certainly an unusual horror film, mostly due to the fact that it isn't a horror movie at all. The title, cover art and synopsis on the DVD case all point to it being a South African slasher film with some sort of ancient evil stalking and slaying prostitutes. Unfortunately it's nothing of the sort.
The film starts off promising by taking us back 2000 years to witness two African tribesmen being murdered by a mysterious masked killer wielding a spiked club. It's an intriguing scene obviously designed to get your attention in the hope that you'll put up with the utter snoozefest that is the majority of the movie in the vain hope of seeing some more gore eventually. After the tribesmen meet their end we are brought forward to 1980s Johannesburg where pathologist Joe Henderson (Stewardson) is called out by his cop buddy to examine the body of a murdered prostitute. The body isn't the first and Joe is convinced that there is a serial killer roaming the streets. So far so good, but this is where things go downhill. Fast.

Back at Joe's office he finds a mysterious death certificate, completely filled out except for a name and his signature. The only problem is that Joe has no idea who the certificate is for or how it found it's way onto his desk. It turns out that a political prisoner has been killed in a bungled interrogation and certain authorities want the death covered up by having Joe sign the mystery death certificate. Joe refuses and spends the rest of the film being pressured into signing while dealing with his own dramas like his hallucinations, nightmares and his personal investigation into the prostitute deaths. He also develops a relationship with a whore named Abigail (Coetzer). By now you are totally justified in being pissed off by the film not delivering on anything that it promises, in fact the slasher / whore murder subplot makes up the smallest portion of the story, which would be fine if every aspect of the movie didn't try and pass itself of as a fucking horror movie.

Apart from the sudden shift from quasi-horror to full blown political drama there are plenty of other flaws with CITY OF BLOOD as well. The acting may be decent but the characters themselves are all boring, two-dimensional cutouts with no backstory and no character development. I assume Joe is supposed to be having some sort of moral struggle about signing the death certificate but the consequences or doing it or not doing it don't seem like all that big a deal and also; are there no other competent fucking pathologists in the country? There's an obvious anti-apartheid message shining through but the question is; what the fuck do the prostitute murders and the 2000 years previous opening scene have to do with any of it? Is the demographic for slasher movies and political dramas the same? I don't fucking think so.

Surprisingly for a DVD which cost a grand total of $2 the transfer is brilliant, it looks about as good as a DVD can. It's completely vanilla with no special features though which is to be expected. The movie is good in a technical way; it's competently shot, edited and photographed, but no amount of good editing will make up for a lousy story and shitty characters. Parts of the soundtrack were kinda neat and there were a few nicely constructed scenes (particularly this one) but the departure from horror to boring drama was a fatal mistake. There's nothing wrong with political drama but for fuck's sake don't market it as horror when it's plainly not.

INFERNO (1997) Review

TODAY'S BARGAIN: INFERNO (1997) - Standalone DVD
PRICE: $2

Directed by: Fred Olen Ray
Written by: Sean O'Bannon
Starring: Don 'The Dragon' Wilson, Evan Lurie, Rick Hill, Jillian Kesner, Tane McClure

Brace yourself. Seriously. Are you ready for this? INFERNO (aka OPERATION COBRA) is a 90s martial arts / action flick filmed entirely in India, directed by Fred Olen Ray (HOLLYWOOD CHAINSAW HOOKERS), written by Sean O'Bannon (INVISIBLE MOM II) and produced by the one and only Roger Corman. It also stars Don 'The Dragon' Wilson (BLOODFIST I-VIII) and Evan Lurie (CYBORG III: THE RECYCLER).What a fucking combo. Surely the talented people behind such instant classics like TEENAGE CAVEGIRL, MAXIMUM REVENGE and TARZEENA: JIGGLE IN THE JUNGLE can pull of something special. Special or absolutely shit, either way I'm sure it will give me plenty to talk about.

Interpol agent Kyle Connors (Wilson) and his partner are hot on the trail of big-time criminal Johan Davaad (Lurie) who has stolen a disc containing powerful encryption software and planted a bomb in a museum. Why is he bombing a museum? Who the fuck knows, I sure don't and I'm not even sure the filmmakers do either. While disarming the bomb it explodes, killing Connors' partner and allowing Davaad to escape.
Back at the police station Connors' is told that he's been taken off the case and that he should probably take a vacation for a week or so. Refusing to give up on the case he takes his 'vacation' in India where he has located Davaad. With the help of a bumbling Indian police cadet he manages to track down Davaad and sleeps with a bunch of women along the way, just because.

I must admit I'm not all that familiar with Don Wilson's filmography apart from the first couple of BLOODFIST instalments but I always had the idea that the 'Dragon' part of his name probably isn't justified. INFERNO reinforces that feeling because in it Wilson's martial arts arsenal seems to consist only of a few high kicks, roundhouses and face-punches and not much else. And all of the fight scenes are shot and edited in that lame American style where it's all rapid cuts from one person punching to the other person blocking and then back again, because none of the actors have the ability to perform a properly choreographed fight.
And I'm pretty certain I saw the same actors playing different parts wearing different wigs. And it's surprising I even managed to notice that what with the boom mic dropping into view and distracting me all the time (I honestly saw that damn mic on at least four separate occasions). There are also problems with the audio, in some places the music peaks out and distorts horribly.

The story is completely disjointed and makes almost no sense and I'm trying to figure out if there are an ass-load of key scenes missing or if the filmmakers just didn't give a shit about having a coherent story. I'm betting on the latter. On the plus side all of the women inexplicably throwing themselves at 'The Dragon' throughout the film make for some entertaining softcore scenes, like the wet t-shirt scene (above) and not one but two scenes where Tane McClure lets her ample sweater puppies loose. Jillian Kesner (FIRECRACKER) is a nice addition too although she doesn't get anywhere enough screen time. In any case the boobs and sweating and moaning don't even come close to making up for all of the bad points and so I'm relegating this chop-socky disaster to the shit list.

THE LAST BORDER (1993) Review

TODAY'S BARGAIN: THE LAST BORDER (1993) - Standalone DVD
PRICE: $2

Directed by: Mika Kaurismaki
Written by: Mika Kaurismaki, Alexandra Deman, Pia Tikka
Starring: Jurgen Prochnow, Jolyon Baker, Fanny Bastien

THE LAST BORDER has a pretty gnarly looking cover, almost like a throwback to those brilliant trashy Italian post-apocalyptic flicks that were popping up all over the place in the 80s (seriously go look them up there's some sweet shit out there, even Lucio Fulci tried his hand at one). Except it turns out that this film is actually from the 90s and comes from Finland of all places. Is that a good sign? Maybe it gives a fresh perspective on the genre. Or maybe it's just going to suck a huge dick. Read on to find out.
It's the far flung future of 2009 somewhere in the Arctic Circle. The world has been cleansed by nuclear war and as you'd expect the wastelands are ruled by violent motorcycle gangs. Guerilla fugitive Jake (Baker) is on the run when he comes across one of the aforementioned gangs fronted by the fearless leader Duke (Prochnow). He has a slow-motion flashback attack and realizes that Duke killed his father. Revenge time motherfucker.
Oh and there's also the obligatory romance subplot between Jake and the escaped female prisoner Doaiva (Bastien).

THE LAST BORDER carries all of the hallmarks of those classic Italian dystopian films, except that it takes place in Scandinavia with (mostly) Scandinavian actors and its soundtrack seems to be comprised primarily of Finnish heavy metal. Bizarrely this all kind of works to an extent it's just a shame that the film is too long, too slow and too boring. The running time (around 105 minutes) could easily have been cut down and streamlined into something much smoother and the entire middle section probably should have been left out especially the whole relationship between Jake and Doaiva which didn't really go anywhere (a little bit of boobage would have helped immensely). But the worst part was definitely the fact that the inevitable showdown between Jake and Duke (the only thing that really kept me watching through to the end) was a serious anticlimax and could have (and should have) been a lot more action-packed and badass.

But it's not all bad news and the film does have a decent amount of interesting elements to make it at least a little interesting. First is the landscape which isn't your usual post-apocalyptic city ruins or nuclear dustbowl, it's a more barren, cold and earthy environment. The soundtrack is another point of difference as well, instead of the grooving synth and electronica I'm used to hearing in films such as this it's predominantly heavy metal which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.
The things that really hold the movie back are the pacing, the awkward dialogue (I'm certain English isn't the first language of a lot of the actors) and the lack of some really great solid action. Duke's gang are supposedly the most feared group in the wasteland so I was expecting some really depraved shit from them but apart from shooting a couple of people nothing really happened. On the bright side Jurgen Prochnow makes a decent badass, it's a pity he was so underutilized.
THE LAST BORDER isn't great but it certainly is interesting. If you're like me and you dig any kind of post-apocalyptic trash then you should probably check it out, I'll bet you've never seen anything quite like it before.

PRINCESS OF MARS (2009) Review

TODAY'S BARGAIN: PRINCESS OF MARS (2009) - Part of a 5 Film Sci Fi Collection
PRICE: $4 / 5 Films = 80c

Directed by: Mark Atkins
Written by: Mark Atkins, Edgar Rice Burroughs (novel, characters)
Starring: Traci Lords, Antonio Sabato Jr, Matt Lasky, Chacko Vadaketh

It seems that The Asylum beat Disney to the punch in adapting Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter novels and as usual they have delivered a far inferior product. I'll admit that JOHN CARTER was an absolute turd but compared to PRINCESS OF MARS it is a fucking tour de force. I've never read any of Burrough's Barsoom series (my experience with ERG's writings begins and ends with THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT) so I have no way of comparing this film to its source material but there is one thing I noticed and that's the fact that nowhere in the entire film is Edgar Rice Burroughs given any credit for the story or characters. That might seem a bit low but I'm sure that if he was alive today the author would rather his name not be attached to this piece of utter excrement anyway. Even worse is the fact that the filmmakers have covertly tried to take credit for inspiring AVATAR by placing the line "the classic story that inspired James Cameroon's Avatar" and yes on the dvd (at least the copy I have) they even managed to spell James Cameron's name wrong. Great job. Burrough's novel may have indeed inspired AVATAR but believe me when I say that PRINCESS OF MARS had absolutely nothing to do with it.

The Bold & The Beautiful's Antonio Sabato Jr plays John Carter, a soldier who gets double crossed and then shot to pieces before being offered another chance at life. The catch? The military is going to use him for an experimental exploratory trip to Mars in a new body, the DNA for which is handily stored on a 16Gb flash drive. And no I'm not making this up.
Oh and by the way this isn't the regular everyday planet Mars just down the road from Earth we're talking about here, no that would be too easy. That would make too much sense. No, this is another Mars in another galaxy, a Mars that nobody really knows anything about yet, in fact they don't even know if it has a breathable atmosphere they just 'think' that it might. Good luck John Carter, you'll need it.

So the deed is done and before long John awakens on Mars, lying naked with Traci Lords standing over him. I could think of much worse ways to wake up. Traci (the titular Princess of Mars) and another humanoid man leave John lying in the dirt and climb aboard a ship and fly off. He gets up, walks around for a bit, wraps a towel around his naked self and then finds himself surrounded by Tuskan Raiders, er I mean Turians, no wait a second... I can't remember what they're called but whatever they are they look like they fell right out of Mass Effect and grabbed some guns from Star Wars on their way. They chain John up and take him prisoner, but don't fret; he eventually proves his warrior prowess to them and forms an unbreakable bond with one of them. We then find out that the green dudes and the human-looking race are at war with each other and John Carter takes it upon himself to sort everything out. Along the way John spends his time jumping real high, eating some gross bugs and having an incredibly boring relationship with Traci Lords who doesn't get her gear off.

It's pretty impressive how many references to popular culture The Asylum have gathered and crammed into this movie. Apart from the aforementioned Turians and Tuskan Raiders there is also the Princess' metal 'Leia' bikini, a form of speeder bike ( although it does look much more like a kayak with a windshield attached), a ship which looks suspiciously like Jabba the Hut's sand barge, John's 'Russell Crowe' Gladiator outfit, and the iconic Vasquez Rocks location where Captain Kirk famously fought the Gorn. In fact it seems that PRINCESS OF MARS ripped off just about every movie except for the one it was trying to capitalize on in the first place (that's AVATAR by the way). There are a lot of CGI beasts in the film so why not cram in some 6-legged horses? Or make the aliens blue instead of green? Oh who the hell knows, it's not like logic is The Asylum's strong point.

The CGI is bad but the acting is worse. Sabato Jr couldn't act his way out of a urine-soaked paper bag and Traci Lords turns in a very disappointing turn as the (rather old looking) Princess. It's astonishing how she could go from something this bad to putting in a brilliant performance in a brilliant movie like EXCISION, but I digress.
Pizza and beer (especially beer, lots of it) are your best friends if you decide to take the plunge and watch this movie, and speaking of friends you should probably have a couple of them with you as well, so you can all join in at laughing about how ridiculous this piece of Asylum shit is. And if you think watching Traci Lords traipsing around in her Leia outfit sounds good, don't even bother, there are plenty of other flicks where she puts on a much better show.