NAIL GUN MASSACRE (1985) - the "Robot Monster" of the power tool-sploitation genre, and yes, that's a fucking compliment

Here's a trailer. Pay special attention to the combination of the score and the killer's roboto voice, an aural assault that, over the course of the film's runtime, will peel a layer of paint from your subconscious.

I'm the dirtiest foosball player the world has ever seen.

I was once hanging out in a Sears store, challenging any and all passerbys to a game of foosball on the display machine (don't ask). I got an employee to take me up on the challenge and, since I hate to lose, I employed every trick in the book. I used my whole arm to spin all the bars at once, and would also grab the opposite ends of the opponent's bars so he couldn't spin his own. For an extra boost I would distract my opponent by telling him that his boss was fast approaching and, when things got really desperate, I would employ my ultimate foosball maneuver: lifting the table. After all, I have to protect my goal at all costs. After a couple of table lifts, the dude said "I don't like playing with you!", and sulked off back to work.

Hey, it's called SKILL. Boo fucking hoo. Deal with it. Well, by virtue of a forfeit, I have claimed victory. SWEET FUCKING VICTORY! Check out my array of fist pumps.

Well, I was reminded of this rewatching Nail Gun Massacre yet again, being that the theme song is "Foosballin'". While the song is sorta fun by proxy, I have to knock it down a peg for being shitty and repetitive. Having said that, it's filled with lasers, and any song filled with lasers has to at least be pretty good (and some people doubt my taste in music).

There are some similar laser effects within the "score", some crotch pummeling electro-travesty (in a bad way), peppered with a robot voice soaked in reverb. It sorta sounds like an evil version of either Zapp or Roger (whoever was the robot). Lo and behold, the killer speaks in the same voice, constantly opening his mouth to unfurl one-liners and hateful puns. For example, some guy starts pissing in the woods and accidentally hits the killer's shoes with his stream (one of those wrong place, wrong time deals). The killer retorts with "you really pissed me off!", displaying the sort of wit rarely seen in films where white trash folk are shot with nails. In fact, that line may have originated with Dorothy Parker, but I'm too lazy to Google it.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Why would someone want to run around with a nail gun and shoot nails at innocent bystanders? The answer lies in the rape prologue, although it initially didn't occur to me that an actual rape was going on the first time I saw the film. It really is the least convincing rape in cinematic history. At first glance, it looks like a group of rednecks are helping a fully clothed women rub dirt on her pants. So, while the rednecks' rape of this innocent woman is no doubt evil, two wrongs don't make a right (unless the second wrong means killing Hitler, then it's totally cool).

Well, the whole film is a wonderful pile of disjointed regional trash. There is a subplot involving three teens who are planning a weekend in a house in the woods. They stop by a convenience store, where the lady behind the counter reads the following line off of a piece of paper: "Do you remember when you could sit outside and not worry about the mosquitos and the killers?" No I don't. I guess I wasn't alive during the olden times, when the world was safe and life made sense. You'd think these kids would end up being stalked by the killer in the woods, leading to a final showdown, but no. They just hang out for a while and then disappear halfway into the movie. Maybe they wisened up and got the fuck outta dodge. Who says white trash kids are dumb. There is also a primo white trash chick at the beginning of the film who shows off her surprisingly nice tits, saying of them "they're lonely! They need someone to play with!". Don't they all, honey. Don't they all.


Well, there are two clueless porkers (a cop and an apparent coroner of some sort) on the trail of the killer, constantly bumping into bodies covered in nails. A creepy old timer asks the coroner about a female victim "what do you think made all them holes...sex?" Fuck you, C.S.I. Miami.

The killings, though, aren't overly exciting. A dude'll get plugged by a couple of nails and then fall over dead. What a bunch of pussies. On top of that, you can clearly see these rubber nails jiggling as the dead victims try not to move. I guess it's harder to play dead than it looks. My favorite example is when a dude is murdered by the killer (who was hiding in a fucking pool), and his corpse falls on top of a grill, but he grabs a nearby fence to keep from falling over. Not only are multiple couples "nailed" during sex (it's one of those "pun-based witticism" deals), but, in a monumental stroke of genius, the killer happens upon two guys having a nail gun fight and joins in. I guess that would make the scene a post-modern take on the nailgun murder genre. Or maybe not. Either way, the world is a brighter/dumber place for this random pile of horseshit, and I'm glad to be able to partake of it yet again. It sure beats spending time with the family.


P.S. This is the second entry in my spectacular "Lazy Baker's Dozen Halloween Horror Marathon". Only nine more to go! YIPPEE! What hellacious fun!

SLAUGHTERED VOMIT DOLLS (2006) - the "Passion of Joan of Arc" of the puke-sploitation genre

The following piece is the first part in the first annual "Lazy Baker's Dozen Horror Movie Halloween Countdown". Running from today (Oct 21) until Halloween, I will be reviewing a total of eleven horror films, approximately one a day. I have no plan as to what movies I'll review, so I'll wing it per usual.

***

here is a two minute clip that still manages to convey the lead character's "angst" (that's German for "fucked up emotional hullabaloo")

The thing about these “beyond the pale” cult movies is that it’s hard to get someone to join you in watching one of them. I remember once sitting down to watch Nekromantik with a girl who was game (at least verbally), yet quickly found herself in the other room, doing something more important (making a sandwich possibly). The offending scene was the part where a rabbit is skinned alive, and then replayed in reverse. She had signed on for some corpse fucking, yet the film broke it’s own unspeakable rules to explore territory beyond the bounds. That’s how the REAL cult slabs operate.

So, unable to convince another human being to join me on this journey, I am forced to watch it with my cat. Expecting a non-judgemental night of shared disgust, I am surprised to hear him speak up.

“You’re watching THIS?!? Of all the things you could be viewing, all the cinematic tales of beauty and love, you choose something called Slaughtered Vomit Dolls?!?“

“yeah, well…”

“Yeah, what? It’s not like you don’t have a choice. You've got those opposable thumbs, you can use them to put any kind of movie you want into the DVD player.”

“Well, this looked kinda interesting…”

“Interesting? VOMIT?!? I didn’t realize that vomit was a vague concept that needed edification.”

“Well…you’re watching it too…”

“Yeah, cause I’m sitting on your lap. I don’t exactly have a lot of options for tonight. I was gonna thumb a ride and maybe…oh yeah, no thumbs. I’m fucked.”

Well, I wouldn’t say that exactly…”

“Really? You have MONEY. You can spend your free time however you please. Instead, you’re watching some stripper chick getting beat up and throwing up and...WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!? Christ only knows what the hell is supposed to be going on. You could be making the world a better place, or be gaining knowledge, or developing a worthwhile relationship. Instead, you’re sitting around watching this trash. I don’t really have any options.”

“Sure you do. You can…”

“YEAH. Let me ask you this. How much money did I make this year? ZERO. How much money did I make the year before. Uhhhhh…zero. And the year before that? Let’s see...oh yeah. FUCKING ZERO. My entertainment dollar has been and continues to be exactly NIL.”

“Shhh…I’m trying to follow the plot…”

“YEAH. Big fucking plot. Twists and turns up the wazoo. You know what, fuck this, I’m gonna stare out the window.”

“You do that…”

“I WILL!”


***


Well, the “story" essentially revolves around a stripper/hooker (Angela) mentally having a bad go of it. She's a runaway who escaped a dysfunctional home life (which including some molestation, always a hallmark of childhood dysfunction), and suffers from bulimia, as well as a tortured brain (or whatever the fancy Freudian name for that it is). She seems to be going about her daily stripping and hooking, but suffers from disturbed visions and occasionally throws up in a toilet. These visions include some dude who vomits repeatedly, and also some girl being sexually tortured. Keep in mind that I might be completely wrong in my summation of the film. Hopefully they'll release one of those paperback novelizations that used to always accompany the release of a horror film. That'll help clarify the narrative and what not.

The whole film is edited with rapid fire jagged cuts, taking material that could been told as a straightforward story (or maybe not), and attempting to convey it as an emotional onslaught of image and sound (not unlike an industrial metal video, with spatterings of ambient noise and distorted dialogue instead of a Rammstein song or whatever), and not as a collection of scenes. While it does sort of work in a non-narrative emotional sense, it also makes it unnecessary to drag this experimental music video style short film out to 70 odd minutes. An onslaught of horrific and disturbing images doesn't require an extended passage of time to be effective. It would have made more sense to me to have Angela’s modern day story unfold realistically, in scenes that unfold in semi-real time, intercut with the disturbing, rapid fire experimental stuff, sort of representing her tortured psyche (both as memories and visions). This would also make the disturbing stuff more effective, as it would be placed in better context to Angela’s current life, and also render the rapid cutting more disarming, as it would contrast greatly with the extended scenes of realism. In it's current state, the film becomes a dulling onslaught.

But, then again, maybe I’m just a giant pussy. When I complain that a film lacks breathing room and character development, maybe it's just an excuse to cover up the fact that I can't handle real "extreme" filmmaking. Here is the Cannibal Holocaust of it's generation, and I'm just a 30-year-old geezer who doesn't "get" the kids of today. I guess I'm still living in the dark ages of the 90’s, with my Quentin Tarantino movies and Soundgarden compact discs. There are even two sequels of sorts which supposedly up the ante even further. Here is Fangirl Sarah's Youtube review of the second film, Regoregitated Sacrifice, which apparently includes a scene where a tarantula is shoved into a vagina, which is then sewn shut (the vagina, not the spider). While the very sight of a tarantula is enough to make me scream like a girl, Sarah "hearts" this movie. God bless the youngsters of the world and their balls of decrepit steel.

I, for one, can't even begin to comprehend vomit fetishism, so that "angle" is lost on me. I'll masturbate to pictures of naked chicks and that's about it (and maybe the occasional episode of Bewitched). Of course, it could be that this vomit stuff isn’t supposed to be fetishistic at all, but rather a thoroughly repellent manifestation of the horrors of Angela's bulimia. After all, it's not like she enjoys puking, but it’s nevertheless a part of her life. Either way, this “extreme” angle is what a lot of people talk about when discussing the film, that it only exists to push the envelope. However, for me personally, the overriding aspect to the film is it's exploration of Angela’s emotional state, and correspondingly Amarea Lavey’s central performance. It might be gratuitously disgusting and cinematically erratic, but I sense an unmistakable air of human truth. Then again, I'm just a big pussy. What the heck do I know about anything.