Mark of the Devil - Lisa's Review

*** Spoilers ***

I'm not going to spend a long time on this one.  For me the high point was that it had Udo Kier in it!  A very young Mr Kier, but the intensity is still there.

If you think Witchfinder General with gore and tits and you've pretty much summed this one up.

The movie basically centers around the torturing and murder of what seems any attractive young person, both male and female (but mostly female) who is suspected to be a witch.   These acts are ordered by an evil Lord Cumberland, all under the guise of religion and god.  We also have one of the most horrid men I've ever set eyes on - Albino, who concocts acts these poor women are supposed to have carried out (all untrue) just so he can brand them as witches and rape and torture them.

Udo plays a very young apprentice/pupil Count Christian Von Meruh.  He is the supposed 'good guy'... well as good as you're going to get in this movie.  Kier inevitably falls in love with one of the accused young women and starts to question the practices and what is going on.

What follows is what you would expect from this sort of movie.  Tortures depicted include: Flogging, water torture, stabbing with skewers, chair of torture, the rack, thumb screws, burning at the stake and a tongue being ripped out. There are also rapes depicted.

Reviews I've read of this movie seem to rate it quite highly and feel that it is much more than an exploitation movie.  True, there is more to it than that.  It does depict the individuals responsible as horrible creatures and does point the finger very squarely at religion, so I suppose there is a moral message of sorts, but I just didn't enjoy this movie.

I didn't like how it 'felt'.  To me, the way it was shot, the lingering on the suffering and the unnecessary nudity in places, which added nothing to the scenes or story, just felt a bit exploitative in the wrong kind of way to me.  Maybe it was just how I saw it.  Maybe I was in 'one of those moods', but the movie just didn't sit well with me.  I felt like I was watching torture scenes which were filmed with the intention of being arousing.  It certainly felt like the director had purely a male audience in mind when he put this together.

Aside from all of this, it was hideously overacted and hammy in several places.  I just found myself feeling impatient and irritated by it.

I think this is just one of those movies that was a matter of personal taste for me.  I'm more than willing to accept a lot of people may enjoy this movie, I am just not one of them.

Won't tag this as 'avoid' down to purely my own personal taste, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it.

Flesh For Frankenstein - Wills Review

Udo Kier (last seen, by us at least, in Esposé), along with the rest of the cast, completely hams his way through this one, chewing so much scenery that it HAD to be a deliberate choice; we know he can do better!

I struggled long and hard trying to work out how seriously we were supposed to take this; it’s not belly laugh funny, but lines like “Finally, we have the right head, with the perfect nazum for my male zombie” really only belong in a comedy. Sure enough a quick look online tells us that this is, indeed, supposed to be a comedic take on the Frankenstein story. 

But this is no Young Frankenstein; this dark and unorthodox take on the tale bares little resemblance to the book or, as far as I know, any other filmed version.

Here, the baron is not only a mad scientist, but a perverse megalomaniac. Married to his sister, he has a quiet contempt for his children (who, technically, are also his nephew and niece) a strong dislike for humanity, and a sexual fetish for girl’s internal organs.

“To understand Life, Otto, You must fuck life in the Gall Bladder”

Frankenstein’s plan is to build a Male and Female ‘zombies’ and have them mate, thus creating a new race. When we join the tale, the male creature is still missing a head; one which the baron insists must have a strong Serbian nazum (nose) and come from an incredibly horny man.

The usual “abnormal brain” device is here substituted with a case of mistaken identity. In a mix-up worthy of a carry-on film, Frankenstein and his hapless assistant, Otto, manage to select an asexual man who wished to become a monk. Meanwhile the Baroness hires the real horny man as her ‘personal’ manservant…

You may have gathered by now that there is a lot of sex in this movie, any you’d be right, the sex is frequent, but inexplicit. In-fact, it would take few (if any) script changes to re-film this as “Frankenstein: A XXXParody”.

Originally in 3D, the movie does suffer from a few “Comin’at Ya!” moments, where things are held out towards the camera for prolonged periods and/or unnatural ways (including a preserved heart, held in forceps at arms length) thankfully most of the depth was added to the movie by placing certain objects and pieces of scenery in the foreground, while keeping the action midground, and so you don’t get too many moments where you feel cheated to be watching the 2D version. (no 3D version is currently legally available, although a Field Sequential version was released on Lazerdisc, and DVD bootlegs of this can be found, also Channel 4 showed it in Blue and Amber Anaglyph in 2009).

All in all a fun movie, that almost makes up in sheer bonkersness what it lacks in intrinsic quality. Oh, and the ending is great!

Body Count: 10
Boob Count: 5 pairs
Animal Body Count: 0
Most Memorable Death: 3D Curved Shears of Death!

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Exposé - Will's Review

Sorry for the late review, when I'm not doing this, I'm self employed, and I've been battling my accounts ready for the end of the month deadline...

Anyway, This weeks movie; Exposé is the only British movie on the DPP list, it's also the first one (at least alphabetically) to star horror mainstay Udo Kier (we'll be seeing him again in 'Flesh for Frankenstein') - indecently, Udo was offered the Japanese profits in exchange for his appearance, he instead insisted on an actual fee; almost inevitably, the film was a massive hit in Japan...

So, is it any good?

Meh!

There's nothing wrong with it as such (apart from the hideous tit's of 'sex symbol' Fiona Richmond) but it's not terribly exciting either, and the structure is slightly odd - It is made obvious early on that Udo's new secretary is stalking him (we see her masturbating to his picture, which she had before she met him) - something which feels like it aught to be a twist, and although the killer is (for the first kill at least) unseen, there is never any reason to suspect anyone other than the secretary / stalker.

The Movie's 'twist' revolves instead around WHY she is stalking him... but it doesn't really shock the way I think it was supposed to, and doesn't gel at all with the (frequent) masturbation.

The highlight for me had to be the fact that a rapist (Jacko, from 80's sitcom Brush Strokes) seemingly survives days in a cornfield with shotgun wounds to the face, without actually crawling away, and then continently dies immediately after doing the thing the scriptwriters kept him alive to do.

Not bad, but a bit dull, and with terrible stabbing effects (which are still more convincing than those tits - shudder)

Body Count: 5

Boob count: 2 pairs (if you count those god-awful falsies as 'boobs')

Animal Body Count: 0

Most Memorable death: Shower scene revisited (badly)

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