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Mira Sorvino on
Martha Stewart (There's a quick sample below from the Gent, but the video
quality is a bit better because I found an upgraded video as deadline time
approached.) I'm not sure what we can see, but it is suspicious that Sorvino
puts her hand down there to block the view. I have my fingers crossed, but I
don't suppose we'll get this in 1080p. Even Hank doesn't TIVO Martha Stewart.
Hell, we're lucky anybody noticed it in the first place!
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OTHER CRAP:
Catch the deluxe
version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles,
here.
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I Spit on Your Grave
1978
One of the most controversial films of the seventies, this brutal
rape/revenge film is still transgressive even by today's standards of
heightened tolerance for screen brutality. It's not a good film in any
normal sense of the world, but it's an unforgettable one, and a
surprisingly powerful (if totally unpleasant) experience.
Here is Roger Ebert's complete zero-star review.
"A vile bag of garbage named "I Spit on Your
Grave" is playing in Chicago theaters this week. It is a movie so sick,
reprehensible and contemptible that I can hardly believe it's playing in
respectable theaters, such as Plitt's United Artists. But it is.
Attending it was one of the most depressing experiences of, my life.
This is a film without a shred of artistic distinction. It lacks even
simple craftsmanship. There is no possible motive for exhibiting it,
other than the totally cynical hope that it might make money. Perhaps it
will make money: When I saw it at 11:20 a.m. on Monday, the theater
contained a larger crowd than usual.
It was not just a large crowd, it was a profoundly disturbing one. I do
not often attribute motives to audience members, nor do I try to read
their minds, but the people who were sitting around me on Monday morning
made it easy for me to know what they were thinking. They talked out
loud. And if they seriously believed the things they were saying, they
were vicarious sex criminals.
The story of ''I Spit on Your Grave" is told with moronic simplicity. A
girl goes for a vacation in the woods. She sunbathes by a river. Two men
speed by in a powerboat. They harass her. Later, they tow her boat to a
rendezvous with two of their buddies. They strip the girl, beat her and
rape her. She escapes into the woods. They find her, beat her, and rape
her again. She crawls home. They are already there, beat her some more,
and rape her again.
Two weeks later, somewhat recovered the girl lures one of the men out to
her house, pretends to seduce him, and hangs him. She lures out another
man and castrates him, leaving him to bleed to death in a bathtub. She
kills the third man With an axe and disembowels the fourth with an
outboard engine. End of movie.
These horrible events are shown with an absolute minimum of dialogue,
which is so poorly recorded that it often cannot be heard. There is no
attempt to develop the personalities of the characters - they are,
simply, a girl and four men, one of them mentally retarded. The movie is
nothing more or less than a series of attacks on the girl and then her
attacks on the men, interrupted only by an unbelievably grotesque and
inappropriate scene in which she enters a church And asks forgiveness
for the murders she plans to commit.
How did the audience react to all of this? Those who were vocal seemed
to be eating it up. The middle-aged, white-haired man two seats down
from me, for example, talked aloud, After the first rape: "That was a
good one!" After the second: "That'll show her!" After the third: "I've
seen some good ones, but this is the best." When the tables turned and
the woman started her killing spree, a woman in the back row shouted:
"Cut him up, sister!" In several scenes, the other three men tried to
force the retarded man to attack the girl. This inspired a lot of
laughter and encouragement from the audience.
I wanted to turn to the man next to me and tell him his remarks were
disgusting, but I did not. To hold his opinions at his age, he must
already have suffered a fundamental loss of decent human feelings. I
would have liked to talk with the woman in the back row, the one with
the feminist solidarity for the movie's heroine. I wanted to ask If
she'd been appalled by the movie's hour of rape scenes. As it was, at
the film's end I walked out of the theater quickly, feeling unclean,
ashamed and depressed.
This movie is an expression of the most diseased and perverted darker
human natures, Because it is made artlessly, It flaunts its motives:
There is no reason to see this movie except to be entertained by the
sight of sadism and suffering. As a critic, I have never condemned the
use of violence in films if I felt the filmmakers had an artistic reason
for employing it. "I Spit on Your Grave" does not. It is a geek show. I
wonder if its exhibitors saw it before they decided to play it, and if
they felt as unclean afterward as I did.
Camille
Keaton film clips
Sample captures below.
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"Bloodmoon"
1990
In the death throes of the initial 10BA funding
scheme, around the late 80s, a whole heap of shitty films got made in
Australia as people became desperate to get the tax offset. Two such films
were amongst the last of the initial scheme, Dead Sleep and Bloodmoon,
both horror films, which were made in Queensland by the same producers and
director and starred similar casts. Both are also considered amongst the
worst Australian films ever made.
Bloodmoon has the extra special distinction of
ripping off an idea from the 'great' horror producer William Castle. When
released in the cinema (unlikely as that seems), the producers borrowed
his idea of the 'chicken walk', in which before the ending of the film, a
title card came up telling the audience that if the are scared, they can
take the chicken walk to an actual coop. I'm wondering whether anybody
turned up to the film in the first place.
Anyway, in a small coastal town, there are two
Catholic boarding schools, one for the boys, one for the girls. When a boy
and girl from each school, who are lovers, go missing, it starts a chain
of events which affect the entire town. First, another couple are murdered
and are presumed missing by the rest of the town. The science teacher at
the girls school starts to act strangely, while his wife, the headmistress
of the girls school continues her Sunday afternoon philandering, much to
the science teacher's chagrin. And of course, the science teacher is the
killer, that's not really a spoiler as it's revealed before the halfway
mark.
Bloodmoon is a film that actually attempts to
have loftier intentions than the usual teen slasher, but is betrayed by a
completely rambling script, some utterly appalling acting, some of the
most terrible kills ever committed to the screen (the one where the killer
bashes the head of the girl on the table is clearly a dummy...) and how
entire story arcs go missing for a long time or are completely abandoned.
Thankfully, the film has quite a number of naked
ladies, most of which is just gratuitous. Sadly, the Christine Amor scene
seems to be better in fullscreen than in 2:35 widescreen, ah well, maybe
if I can find a cheap fullscreen version...
Personally, I would say that Dead Sleep is
actually a worse film than Bloodmoon, even if I haven't seen Dead Sleep in
over a decade, but I would need to see that film again to make a definite
answer. But, Bloodmoon is definitely in the top 20 worst Australian films
ever. Have I told you about Cut... (oh, and by the way, Houseboat Horror,
highly recommended!)
Christine Amor film clip. (collage below)
Samantha Rittson film clip.
(collage below)
Suzie McKenzie (and Samantha Rittson) film clip.
McKenzie collages below
Tess
Pike film clip.
Karen Miers film clip.
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