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DanXIII

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Blu-ray Review: The Complete Lenzi/Baker Giallo Collection (1969 – 1972)

As you may infer from the name of this collection, Italian horror maestro Umberto Lenzi and Pennsylvania-born actress Caroll Baker worked on a film or four together… and my fabulous freaky fiends at Severin have boxed ’em up with plenty of extras and sent them out the diabolical door! Let’s kick off our look at The Complete Lenzi/Baker Giallo Collection with 1969’s Orgasmo! High-maintenance and horny widow, Kathryn West(Baker), heads down Italy-way to shack up in her rich late old geezer’s posh-ass Villa. And there she stays, painting, lounging, being annoyed by her perpetually bitchy maid Theresa (a fantastic Lilla Brignone) and generally being bored off her tits. All that changes when equally horny, sports car enthusiast Peter Donovan (Lou Castel) breaks down right in front of our heroine’s front gate; an event that leads to some soggy sexcapades in a steamin’ hot shower (the water of which, must be noted, is drank by Donovan before he starts a-drillin’… “just

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DanXIII

Jul 27, 2020

ForeignMoviesReviews

Blu-ray Review: Sukiyaki Western Django (2007)

1880’s Japan, but it’s like the American old West. That’s the main conceit of the blazing insanity that is Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django… a picture that has about as much to do with Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 epic Django as anyone of the four billion sequels-in-name-only that followed it. Along with that lil’ elevator pitch up yonder, the plot of this frenzied flick concerns two gangs; one coded red (the Heike clan), the other white (the Genji clan)… both lead by mentally unstable maniacs… who have a wild hair up their ass about having the biggest dick in the ol’ East, and to hell with the town caught in the middle. Enter: a mysterious unnamed gunman (Hideaki Itô) who’s none too thrilled about the gangs, or their effect on the community… hell, he’s just plain ol’ none too thrilled, and it doesn’t take long for the tensions and body count to rise… all in some of the most ludicrous ways

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DanXIII

Jul 26, 2020

ForeignMoviesReviews

Blu-ray Review: Zombie for Sale (2019)

A diabolical pharmaceutical company has been experimenting on college kids and turning them into the shamblin’ dead. One such unfortunate is Jjong-Bi (Ga Ram Jung) who has went on the lam and found himself the houseguest of a wacky-ass family that owns a rural gas station (though most of their dough comes from scamming motorists). Before long our undead hero bites the family patriarch, but instead of turning him into a flesh-eating ghoul, it fills the ol’ boy with vim and vigor! Ever the entrepreneurs, the family sells invigorating zombie bites to the geezers of the village for a profit. Of course this plan goes tits up when the folks he’s bitten actually do pass on the zombie virus… which also results in the family having to fend of the fiends as well as the authorities all while saving their own bickering asses from the fire! Let’s just get this out of the way; Zombie for Sale is mostly a

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DanXIII

Jul 23, 2020

MoviesParanormalReviews

Blu-ray Review: Dream Demon (1988)

Ol’ Diana (Jemma Redgrave) is all set to get hitched to a military hero, so everything is right as rain in her world, right cats n’ creeps? Fuck no! You see, she keeps having terrifying gore-drenched… and completely surreal dreams on the F’n regular! Along with that, she’s hounded by a duo of pervert reporters… and it’s an incident with them that leads to a meeting with Joan Jett clone Jenny Hoffman (Kathleen Wilhoite), she of the tough talk and mysterious past. Soon our heroes are off on a journey to explain Diana’s dreams… and their nasty habit of spilling over into the real world… but will they survive that eerie expedition? Possessed with a fever dream logic, some great visuals, and engaging leads, Dream Demon is a fantastically freaky fright flick adventure! at it’s core, we get a bit of the ol’ Gothic thriller; the innocent girl alone in a grande manse, plagued by dark family secrets… but the

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DanXIII

Jul 23, 2020

ForeignMoviesReviews

Short Film Review: Lili (2019)

Lili (Lisa Smit) sits in a pitch black room ready for an audition for a juicy role. As she tries out different approaches to the material, the man holding the audition (Derek de Lint) reveals he has some sinister ulterior motives… but, Lili may have more than expected to give the role! Now make no mistake, at it’s core this nine-minute short film is a horror biz piece, but it touches on some real life terror as well, as Lili’s personal space is invaded and her comfort shattered when things move from exploring acting to full on grabby asshole territory with disturbing ease (and illustrated perfectly thanks to the strong acting displayed by Smit and de Lint). As for the visuals, writer/director Yfke Van Berckelaer keeps it simple as putrid pie with a black background being the only setting… and for like 99% of the film, Smit’s expressive face fills most of the screen. It keeps the image clean and

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DanXIII

Jul 23, 2020

ForeignMoviesReviewsThriller

Blu-ray Review: American Rickshaw (1989)

As American Rickshaw begins, we are treated to an image of a strange idol filmed in a manner that made your’s cruelly think “This is like some Boxer’s Omen style shit right here”… and I wasn’t wrong cats n’ creeps! The overall vibe of this pic has much more akin to those black magic shockers Shaw Brothers were crankin’ out in the ’70s than the western and sci-fi fare director Sergio Martino is known for… and that is an unexpected, and wonderful thing believe you me! The long and short of American Rickshaw goes as follows: Florida-based college kid Scott Edwards (Olympian Mitch Gaylord of all people) is a rickshaw driver (that most popular form of transportation in the States) who manages to get in the good graces of aged Chinese witch Madame Luna (Michi Kobi… giving off serious )… which is good because he ends up being framed for the murder of a pervert that filmed him having sex…

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DanXIII

Jul 22, 2020

ForeignIndieMoviesReviewsThriller

Blu-ray Review: Abrakadabra (2018)

A magician (German Baudino) finds himself at the mercy of a sadistic killer in Luciano Onetti and Nicolás Onetti’s (aided and abetted by co-writer/cinematographer Carlos Goitia) love letter to ’70s giallo flicks; Abrakadabra… one of the debut offerings from Cauldron Films, and what a debut it is cats n’ creeps! Now if the names of those two dudes up yonder sound familiar, they are the ones responsible for two other giallo-style flicks; 2013’s Sonno Profondo and 2015’s Francesca… and as they did with those flicks, they attempt to not merely homage the genre, the seek to replicate it 110% in Abrakadabra! To that end the screen is filled to bursting with what a giallo fan would expect, namely: bizarre fashions, outre set dressing (dolls, puppets, and more seek to unnerve the viewer), strange camera placement, a dash of kinky sex and gore, a painterly use of color and shadow… hell, they even make the film look as though the film

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DanXIII

Jul 22, 2020

MoviesReviewsThriller

Blu-ray Review: Possession (2009)

Newlyweds Jessica (Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Ryan (Michael Landes) are diggin’ on being hitched, but there’s a snag… they share their home with Ryan’s psychopathic, ex-con brother Roman (Guardian of the Galaxy‘s Lee Pace), which is a stressful sitch in-fuckin’-deed… Long story short; Roman ends up hitting his brother with a car, and the two sibs end up balls deep in Comaland; population: them. Anyhow, Roman wakes up, Ryan does not… but here’s the fun part; Roman now claims he is Ryan. Now our heroine isn’t exactly ready to swallow that plate of what appears to be gourmet bullshit… but, Roman knows shit only Ryan could, ya dig? This eventually leads her to believe that whopper may indeed be the truth… but is it… is it? Well, Possession looks slicker than shit through a duck’s ass, that’s for sure. Directors Simon Sandquist and Joe Bergvall have a keen eye… four in fact, and they know how to get

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DanXIII

Jul 22, 2020

IndieMoviesReviews

Movie Review: Blood Vessel (2019)

Peep this; it’s the Second World War, and things are gettin’ violent as fuck! Don’t believe me? Well, those dreaded Axis powers have hucked a torpedo at a military hospital ship… resulting in a motley crew of military personal being adrift on the open sea in a lil’ life raft. Fortunately for them, they are soon within spittin’ distance of a huge German vessel… okay, that’s not fortunate at all… but possibly a p.h. better than starving to death in a rubber raft… debatable. Anyway after an action-packed boarding of that beastly boat we get down to brass tacks; namely that the ship is mostly full of corpses… mostly… I mean there’s a pretty unreasonable amount of vampires on board as well… I mean, one would be more than enough to qualify as “unreasonable”, but there’s at least a few more than that. So it’s Das Boot by way of the ‘Demeter’ sequence from Dracula as our harried heroes attempt

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DanXIII

Jul 21, 2020

ForeignMoviesParanormalReviews

Movie Review: Impetigore (2019)

Toll booth workers Maya (Tara Basro) and Dini (Marissa Anita) spend their shifts shootin’ the shit with each other via their cellphones, but that normalcy is shattered when a mystery man keeps givin’ Maya static before being shot dead by security after delivering a a bit of “doom-saying” that hints at our heroine having a dark family secret. After some investigation, Maya, with Dini in tow, believes she was born to a rich family, and to that end treks to a remote village in the hopes of inheriting the family’s home. Instead she finds out she’s inherited the hatred of the local villagers that believe her family has brought a curse to the village that condemns children to be born without skin… and the locals want Maya dead! Indonesian writer/director Joko Anwar (most known for his update of Putra’s 1980 cult classic Satan’s Slaves) once again delivers a disturbing yet slickly-produced fright flick with Impetigore; a deft blend of rural

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DanXIII

Jul 20, 2020

DanXIII

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