Piggy (2022)

PiggySara is an overweight girl who gets constantly bullied by a group of other teenage girls: Maca, Roci and Claudia. One of these girls even used to be her friend. They call her Cerdita (Piggy), and she can’t get a moment of peace no matter where she goes. On a hot summer day, she decides to visit the local swimming pool, where there’s no one else except another man who leaves shortly after. The peace doesn’t last long, though, because of course the three bullies comes along and ruins everything for her and also ends up stealing her backpack and clothes. Wearing nothing but her bikini, she has to walk home and gets harassed by a group of men who makes fun of her weight. Devastated, she escapes onto a side road, where she sees a parked van. Suddenly, a bloodied Claudia appears in the window of the van, screaming and begging for Sara to help her. Struck with fear, she freezes when realizing that the driver of the van has kidnapped those girls. Then, the kidnapper locks gazes with her, and she recognizes him as the man who was by the swimming pool earlier. He drops off her towel so she can cover herself, and drives off. Returning home, Sara finds herself conflicted as the kidnapper is one of the very few people in her life who have shown her some kindness and respect, and she decides to not tell anyone about what happened. Things escalate as the search for the missing girls are put into force, and other people are found dead. Sara is not sure how long she can keep her mouth shut in allegiance with the serial killer…

 

Piggy (original title: Cerdita) was released in 2022 and is Carlota Pereda’s feature film debut, and based on the short film by the same name from 2018. Both the feature film and the short film features Laura Galán in the leading role, and the shooting locations included the village of Villanueva de la Vera and the surrounding areas.

 

Now, looking at some of the posters for this film, where Sara is covered in blood on a hot Spanish summer day, and others where she’s been edited to be wielding a knife in her hand, one might think this is a typical revenge thriller movie. It’s not. Setting the film off by showing how Sara is bullied by people left and right while getting to meet an actual serial killer who – ironically – is the only person who shows her some kind of affection, really does set the mood. Yes, we sympathize with Sara and what she’s going through, and yeah…we don’t really feel too bad for those girls who are simply portrayed as a group of mean bitches. The exception is supposed to be Claudia, who used to be Sara’s friend, but who now enjoys being with the “cool” girls instead. We can see that she initially hesitates when seeing how the others treat Sara, but she soon joins in and does absolutely nothing to stop them. Despite being somewhat portrayed as the “lesser evil” among the girls, I honestly think she’s just as bad, maybe even worse. So yeah, we want to see Sara getting justice, but it plays out more as a drama thriller where the heroine is constantly plagued with differing feelings of both guilt and loyalty to the man who kidnapped her tormentors. And the majority of the villagers are also portrayed as people who aren’t exactly easy to like, including Sara’s own family, with the exception of her dad who seems to be the only person she’s got an okay relationship with.

 

Piggy aka Cerdita is a not a typical revenge film or slasher, but as a drama thriller about a bullied girl who ends up fighting quite the dilemma. Who to choose: the serial killer who saved you from your bullies, or the bullies and villagers who couldn’t really give a shit about you? In a regular slasher the answer to that question would have been obvious, but this movie is taking a more realistic approach. Sara never turns into some kind of badass heroine, but instead she’s coming to her own decisions despite her conflicting feelings. Definitely worth a watch, and an interesting take on how a bullied person would deal with having an evil savior.

 

Piggy Piggy

 

 

Writer and director: Carlota Pereda
Country & year: Spain, 2023
Original title: Cerdita
Actors: Laura Galán, Richard Holmes, Carmen Machi, Irene Ferreiro, Camille Aguilar, Claudia Salas, José Pastor, Fernando Delgado-Hierro, Julián Valcárcel, Amets Otxoa
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10399608/

 

 

Vanja Ghoul

 

 

 

 

 

I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016)

I Am Not a Serial KillerJohn Wayne Cleaver (yeah, not Gacy, this movie is not about that guy) is a teenager who’s struggling with homicidal impulses. He’s going to a therapist, a man named Grant, who has diagnosed John as a sociopath. John is also helping his mother with work at her funeral home, having a rather distanced and curious view on the bodies there. When there’s talk about a serial killer in John’s hometown, his interest is of course piqued. One day John witnesses his friendly elderly neighbour Crowley (Christopher Lloyd, from Back to the Future) asking a drifter to join him on an ice fishing trip, and he decides to follow them. The elderly man appears at first to be in danger, and the drifter is about to attack him when things take a sudden u-turn and Crowley ends up killing the man with only his hand. Surprised and full of awe, John witnesses the scene from behind a tree, seeing how old man Mr. Crowley is cutting out the drifter’s lungs. Well, now he knows who the serial killer in town is. Instead of heading straight for the police, however, the sociopathic boy creates a profile for the killer, noting how earlier victims also had organs removed. He starts spying on Crowley, and offers to help Crowley and his wife shoveling their walkway for snow in order to get a bit closer. What ensues is a kind of cat and mouse game, only this is more like a predator vs predator game.. and John has no clue what he’s started meddling with.

 

I Am Not a Serial Killer is a horror film from 2016, directed by Billy O’Brien and based on a novel from 2009 of the same name by Dan Wells. Funding for the film was provided by the Irish Film Board, The Fyzz Facility and Quickfire Films, and its budget was a meager $1.45 million.

 

The film is deliberately slow-paced with a combination of drama and thriller. Since we’re being shown exactly who the killer is on a very early stage there’s no real mystery about it, the boy spying on the killer doesn’t do it in investigative Summer of 84-style because he’s unsure, he knows. He literally witnessed his neighbour committing murder in broad daylight. He investigates him because he wants to know more, he’s simply fascinated! This makes you wonder what direction the movie will take, as we also got to know early on that the boy is more than just a little troubled. It often offers an interesting peek into the troubled teenager’s dark thoughts, and it works well as a variation of the youngster vs the serial killer neighbour. There is a kind of unusual vibe throughout, where certain things that happen are steeped in seriousness, while having a certain indistinct silliness over it. Max Records is also doing great in the performance of the sociopathic teenager trying to keep his urges in check, and seeing Christopher Lloyd as the seemingly charming yet very deadly elderly man certainly gives the movie a heightened efficacy.

 

There are also some fun easter eggs: Dan Wells, the author of the novel has a cameo near the end of the film, as a police officer. Crowley, played by Christopher Lloyd, is suspected of being a missing person whose name is Emmet (a nudge to Lloyd’s character in the Back to the Future films, as Dr. Emmet Brown). There’s also some gameplay footage where John’s friend is gaming, and this is from a game called The Order: 1886 by Ready At Dawn, which is a game that features a protagonist battling against a hidden evil, which is very much what is also happening in this film.

 

I Am Not a Serial Killer is a fun experience, and certainly one of those films where it’s best to walk in blind for the best experience.

 

I Am Not a Serial Killer

 

Director: Billy O’Brien
Writers: Billy O’Brien, Christopher Hyde
Country & year: Ireland, USA, United Kingdom, 2016
Actors: Max Records, Christopher Lloyd, Laura Fraser, Christina Baldwin, Karl Geary, Dee Noah, Lucy Lawton, Anna Sundberg, Raymond Brandstrom, Michael Paul Levin
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4303340/

 

 

Vanja Ghoul

 

 

 

Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door (2024)

TriangleI don’t think John Wayne Gacy needs much of an introduction, but I’ll give a quick one anyway. When we’re not talking about Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein or Henry Lee Lucas and numerous other well-documented psychos, he’s known for being the most notorious serial killer of all time in America. Yes, THE most of ALL time. Ever.

 

So we’re more or less talking about the king himself of the serial killers’ hall of fame – an average bulky and outgoing man living in an ordinary house in the suburbs who was loved by the community and who gladly entertained the locals with his iconic clown persona Pongo under festive circumstances. Also a top tier master manipulator who appeared like a wolf in sheep’s clothing like most of his like-minded in the life of serial killing. At night, he spent his double-life by living out his murdering fetish fantasies as a closet gay and picking up male prostitutes to take home and show them his infamous handcuff trick. He killed up to over thirty young men and buried them under his house crawlspace during the late 1970s, until the smell couldn’t be held back much longer. He got sentenced to death by lethal injection and got executed on May 10, 1994, notably the same day Jeffrey Dahmer was baptized in prison.

 

Gacy was 52 when he met his maker and his last words were short, sweet and simple: “kiss my ass!

 

There are three or four films based on John W. Gacy, as far as I know. And while we’re at it, I can mention two earlier films I’ve seen so far that are based on the killer clown. The first one is To Catch a Killer from 1992, a low-budget miniseries in two parts made for TV. This was made while Gacy was still alive, and he didn’t like hearing the news that a film based on him was in the works. And the one and only interesting thing here is that Gacy wrote a letter to actor Brian Dennehy and begged him not to portray him. Dennehy didn’t respond and, to Gacy’s relief, I suppose, the three-hour long miniseries hardly focuses on Gacy at all. What we have is a complete nothing-burger where we follow a dull, sleepwalking police lieutenant with the personality of a bread who tries to collect enough evidence to finally catch him. Gacy himself appears almost as a guest here and the whole thing is so dreadfully boring and something that David Fincher would make while being in a deep coma. Why this one is so highly praised by the majority is beyond me.

 

The second one is Gacy from 2002, here with Mark Holton in the title role. If he had a few pounds less, he would look exactly like Gacy. Nothing more to say about this one other than it was a boring, unfocused mess.

 

Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door

 

Gacy: The Serial Killer Next Door is the newest one, released back in January – written and directed by Michael Feifer, the unknown brother of Saul Goodman. And judging from the trailer, this one at least seemed to be entertaining with the funny-bad vibes bouncing all over the place. Good enough for me. Here we follow the teenager Bobby who lives across the street from Gacy in a quiet, boring suburb. Bobby knows that there is something off with this guy as he’s witnessing Gacy taking young men into his house at night, who never seem to leave. He’s glued to his bedroom window to spy on him and tries to convince his parents that the police have to check this shady neighbor. The parents just scoff it off and don’t believe any of it because he’s just a dumb teenager who has seen too many movies.

 

The plot starts to thicken when Gacy knows that Bobby knows and Bobby has to do whatever he can to finally expose him before becoming the next victim.

 

Even though the film has a polished look, the thick layer of amateurish overtones reeks all over the place as much it does from Gacy’s crawlspace. It’s very low-budget with acting that smells like wet farts filled with laughable NPC dialogue. The film’s protagonist Bobby (played by Mason McNulty) does the best he can while his parents are not believable for one second. And I could not avoid getting distracted by the over-sized upper lips of the actress who plays Bobby’s mom. I don’t wanna be mean, but seriously… Enough with that plastic surgery boolshit!

 

We have a couple of scenes where Bobby hangs out with his friends to convince them about Gacy, also after he has witnessed one of his murders. And woof, the acting here is really rough with some bonkers dialogues:

 

What is it like to see someone die?

It’s really… it’s not like the movies. It’s really sad.

 

Is it? Really? Aww. Bobbe also have the balls to sneak into Gacy’s graveyard crawlspace where he tries to take some pictures for evidence. Here we see some glimpses of the most fake, clean plastic Halloween prop skeletons lying around. I don’t think the police would be very convinced.

 

The only slightly positive thing here is Mike Korich as Gacy. But that’s only on the surface level. His scenes where he’s dressed as Pogo and laughing in the victim’s face look more like a parody and there’s not much more character depth to explore. Still, Mike Korich is the only reason to give the film a watch, as he at least seems to have some fun here. I also see what they tried with Disturbia (2007) and The Summer of 84 spin, but it didn’t land well at all as the last portion of the film couldn’t be more predictable. Not the most memorable film, but lowbrow entertainment with enough of the funny-bad moments to kill some time with as long as it lasts. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door is available on Tubi.

 

Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door

 

Writer and director: Michael Feifer
Country & year: US, 2024
Actors: Mason McNulty, Mike Korich, Brock Burnett, Caia Coley, Gordon Hinchen, Shelby Janes, Nick Stellate, Michael Boutell, Izabellah Diez, Lilo Baier, Ashley Ray Keefe
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23736318/

 

 

Tom Ghoul

 

 

 

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Part 2 (1996)

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Part 2 There’s a lot of people who hate Henry and he can’t let them win.

 

Part 2 of Henry’s Portrait of a Serial Killer, or just simply Henry the 2nd starts off not so long after the first one ended (I assume). Ottis is dead as his headless corpse is floating in a river somewhere while Becky is chopped to pieces and stuffed in a bag suit, discarded at the side of a rural road. Nothing but happy memories all around. Now Henry is a homeless drifter wandering aimlessly through the streets of a nameless, midwestern town and sleeps at various homeless shelters. One day he’s applying for a job on a port-o-john company where he gets the lovely task to clean and empty the porta potties (or the shitters as cousin Eddie would simply say).

 

Here he meets Kai and his wife Crickets, a lower-middle class couple who allows Henry to stay at their house after they feel sorry for him for being homeless. They are a shady couple that fits perfectly within Henry’s beacon of bad vibes. They also have a mentally unhinged teenage niece in the house, Louisa, who suffers from some severe BPD and that starts to creep on Henry (not the other way around). We learn that Kai and Crickets has a pretty dysfunctional relationship as Kai is a moody alcoholic, who also practice some really shady side job as an arsonist to set up some insurance scam to make money for their slobby boss, Rooter. After Henry finds out and becomes a liability, he joins Kai to fire up one building after another as the nights goes on. Things seems to go smooth until they stumble upon a couple of squatters in one of the buildings. Henry finally does what he does best by pulling out his gun and killing one of them while he forces Kai to kill the other one. I’ve never killed anyone before, Kai nervously says. Sounds familiar? Can’t have any of that if you wanna be buddy with Henry, you know.

 

This relatively obscure sequel was a mild surprise, given that Michael Rooker declined to reprise his debut role and John Mc Naughton is not in the directing chair. Writer and director Chuck Parello (who also made Ed Gein and Hillside Strangler) was clearly a big fan of the original and manages to duplicate much of the same cold and downbeat tone, although the visuals are more flat and melancholic. Like its predecessor the film follows most of  the same narrative with slices of life and death and the psychological aspects with the tense buildup around the chaotic relationship between Henry and Kai, which is getting dragged more and more into the hopeless pit of empty and meaningless life of serial killing. Nothing more, nothing less. All actors were unknown faces for my part and the task to fill the shoes of Michael Rooker went to Neil Giuntoli, who does a good performance, far better than I expected. He has the same lost boyish look with empty death stares and the raw intensity when he kills random victims for the kicks. Here we also briefly see some new sides from him to learn some of his motivations.

 

Overall Henry the 2nd is nothing too special but an OK sequel at best with a sharp knife and dedicated actors.

 

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Part 2 Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Part 2

 

Writer and director: Chuck Parello
Also known as: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer 2 – Mask of Sanity
Country & year: USA, 1996
Actors: Neil Giuntoli, Rich Komenich, Kate Walsh, Carri Levinson, Daniel Allar, Marco Santucci, Rich Wilkie, Kevin Hurley, Richard Henzel, Fran Smith
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0116516/

 

Prequel: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)

 

Tom Ghoul

 

 

 

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)

Henry: Portrait of a Serial KillerHenry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole were two middle-aged fugly-looking serial killers, which I would never guess after glancing at a picture of them. Huh… looks can be deceiving. Henry had the distinct dead rigor mortis eye and his epic Bugs Bunny grin, while Ottis looked like a white trash side character from a Rob Zombie film that I would guess had liked to dip his mosquito-nibbled penis into a chicken’s butthole. And among most of the classic and glorified serial killers like Ed Gein, Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer and let’s also throw Fritz Honka in the club while we’re at it, they eventually got their hook in the mainstream pop-culture with a dedicated fanbase. Because serial killers fascinates us and we can’t get enough of them, it’s as simple as that.

 

Henry was especially a popular figure in Japan. A four-hour long documentary split into four episodes was released in 2019, titled The Confession Killer, where we see a film crew from Japan that were totally starstruck by finally meeting the legend. They even gave him a present after shaking hands and the ecstatic fanboys were all smiling ear to ear until Henry said I’ve been in your country, too. Har har. Henry was eventually proven to be a compulsive liar (wow, what a shocker) who hadn’t been in an airplane once in his life and didn’t even know that Japan is an island nation. The documentary is available on Netflix.

 

Henry Lee Lucas Henry has already been in and out of prison like a ping-pong ball, once for killing his mother at age 24, before he met his boyfriend and partner-in crime Ottis Toole in the mid 1970s. Their victims were mostly women as Henry hated them with a passion. If we put on the Dr. Phil glasses for a second we can assume that his hatred for women may stem from him allegedly being abused as a kid by his mother. Together the couple killed over hundreds of people, which Toole claimed after being arrested in ’83. When Henry got arrested some months after, he took the confession a bit further, to put it mildly, by claiming he’d killed well over 600 (!) people and went on a quiet bizarre confession-circus tour around the country with the law enforcement dangling clueless by his tail, all of which left more questions than answers. Only three (yes 3) of his victims were found and the whole thing happened to be a big, monumental prank/scam by Henry just to get more juicy media attention by falsely confessing a bunch of killings while the police wasted god know how much time, money and resources. A complete shitshow. Ottis died in 1996, age 49 while Henry got his last laugh in 2001, age 63.

 

Fun fact: Henry was one of the very first who got the serial killer description after the FBI Special Agent Robert Ressler coined the term in the 1970s.

 

Henry: Portrait of a Serial killer starts direct and brutal with some graphic images of Henry’s recent victims who’s suffered painful deaths, as we dive straight into his grim world filled with depravity, rage and nihilism. We spend the first ten minutes with Henry (played by the young aspiring actor Michael Rooker in his first movie role) as he’s roaming the suburban streets of Chicago with his rusty car, scouting for his next victim like an emotionless Terminator. He finally catch a victim when he picks up a hitchhiker, a young lady with a guitar. And that’s good for the day. The next thing we see is Henry entering his apartment – a crampy, stinky shithole he shares with his friend Ottis (Tom Towles). He’a an older dude with a comb-over and bad teeth. They’re not a gay couple here though as they were in the real life, just some buddies who met in prison. When they’re not out to fuck some hookers in their car, who normally ends up getting killed by Henry’s lack of impulse control, they have at least a TV to watch, only until Ottis, that clumsy buffoon, smashes it.

 

Anyway, Ottis’ sister Becky (Tracy Arnold) comes to stay for a while after being on the run from a violent relationship. As Henry and Becky both shares trauma, they connect and she gets aroused by hearing how Henry killed his mother. This monologue alone, which starts with she was a whore shows what a top tier and intense actor Michael Rooker is by displaying his inner, explosive rage just with facial expressions while showing vulnerability like a lost child.

 

Ottis has never killed anyone but that’s about to change when he one day gets punched in the face by a teenage kid. I wanna kill somebody he says to Henry who then takes him out for a killing spree to teach him how to be a serial killer. It builds up to a home invasion scene where Henry has gotten the absolute worst out of Ottis as he snaps some woman’s neck like a deranged caveman in a pure gleeful psychosis and starts to show some tendencies of necrophilia, which even gets too much for Henry. A nasty scene that truly rips, much because of how we see the whole act through the grainy lens of Ottis’ camcorder like a snuff film.

 

The film is not heavy on plot, like most of the films in this subgenre, as it works more like a slice of life and death, and a psychological study of serial killers’ empty and nihilistic existence from their own perspective. We see the daily (and nightly activity) with Henry and Ottis as the time goes by, all filmed handheld on 16mm like a pseudo-documentary with a layer of unfiltered grittyness, surrounded with urban decay and dark, piss-smelling alleys – where also two serial killers happen to be lurking around, killing people just for the thrills. Nothing but bad vibes all over the place and not so far from William Lustig’s Maniac (1980) when it comes to the vacant tone and the overall grim atmosphere. Both Michael Rooker and Tom Towles are just fabulous in their role as a deadly and self-destructive duo, the one more sick in the head than the other, with a fucked-up dynamic which makes them amusing and entertaining to watch, just like two train-wrecks coming together with Ottis’ poor sister Becky being a clueless passenger.

 

And like Henry would say to sum up it all up in only three words: Fuck the Bears.

 

Henry - Portrait of a Serial Killer Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

 

Director: John McNaughton
Writers: Richard Fire, John McNaughton
Country & year: USA, 1986
Actors: Michael Rooker, Tom Towles, Tracy Arnold, Mary Demas, Anne Bartoletti, Elizabeth Kaden, Ted Kaden, Denise Sullivan
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0099763/

 

Sequel: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Part 2 (1996)

 

Tom Ghoul

 

 

 

Night Killer (1990)

Night KillerNight Killah … cool title, though. And by taking a look at the tasty cover art for the dvd, you get the impression of some body-horror going on. We also see a house in the night with a big full moon. If the cover itself couldn’t lie more, the title is as misleading as it can get. But this is first and foremost an Italian produced low-budget schlock film. And with that being said, Italian distributors have for a long time been notoriously known for using some of the most misleading titles possible and promote genre films in the home country as a sequel to a more known franchise in hopes of cashing in some more bucks. The most known example is probably Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 (a great film, by the way) which tried to cash in on Dario Argento’s cut of Dawn of the Dead, released as simply Zombi in Italy. I can also mention fake clickbait titles as Cannibal Holocaust II (1988), Changeling II: The Revenge (1989), Terminator II (1989), Evil Dead 5 (1990) and the list goes on.

 

In this case Night Killer was promoted as – and I kid you not – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 in Italy, just prior to Leatherface: The Texas Chaisaw Masscare III which was already released seven months before. So, watching this film must have been like being pranked or Rick Rolled for 85 minutes straight. The distributors must think that the Italian horror audience have mushy pasta for braincells and they should be glad that the internet wasn’t a household thing back then. And of course we have the unofficial sequel of the more obscure 80s horror/fantasy Troll, completely overshadowed by Troll 2 which was made by the same director as Night Killer. We’re of course talking of no one other than the man, the myth and one of the legends of Italians so-bad-it’s good-movies, Claudio Fragasso himself. (Applause)

 

The film starts off in the middle of an aerobic dance practice where the stressed and unhinged female instructor is far from impressed by the dancers. She has a quick hilarious meltdown, then goes to the bathroom where she encounters a person with a black coat and a face covered by a cheap Freddy Krueger-like mask. He’s already killed one of the dancers by shoving his rubber claws straight through her torso. While it sounds brutal on paper, the effects are, how should I even try to describe it…it’s pure hot garbage and not even on an amateur level, it’s beyond that and filmed in such a close-up and edited down to a split-second, that you’ll miss it if you blink.

 

Anyway… the instructor gets her throat slit by the killer’s rubber claws. And if you want blood, just forget it. There’s hardly any blood pouring from her throat, as if someone just squeezed the last drops from a ketchup bottle and used the cheapest prosthetic make up one can buy from the discount bin at Walmart. It’s the laziest shit ever. And the funniest thing is that this opening sequence was directed by Bruno Mattei because the studio wanted more gore. He didn’t add anything new other than more inept filmmaking and a perfect foretaste of what to expect for the next 80 minutes. The most notable thing in this opening is that we clearly see that the fresh cut on her throat is magically gone when she is supposed to bleed to death. Continuity error on its finest.

 

Night Killer

 

The “plot”, which could be hidden here somewhere, goes something like this: After the extended opening scene we’re in the sunny beachside of Virgina) in the holiday season (oh, how convenient) where we meet the middle-aged Melanie (Tara Buckam) living in her upper-class house. She is soon to be one of the targets of our mysterious Freddy Krueger-masked serial killer. But first she gets a phone call from her ex. He’s drunk and sitting in a bar. She hangs up. Then she stands in front of a mirror with a blank stare, talking to herself while she’s touching her breasts. The phone rings again, this time by the masked killer that has picked her as the new victim. He then says with a slow and cheesy distorted voice “I won’t kill you straight awayyy, first I’m going to fuck your braaains ooouuut. ” She calls the police and the police do what the police does best: nothing. He invades her home, backs her against the wall while pointing a knife to her face. She screams while looking at the camera and… we cut to the next scene where she wakes up in the hospital. Her daughter asks her, with emotions like a robot, when she’s coming home. Soon, she says. When Melanie is suddenly out from the hospital, she’s being stalked and kidnapped by some random dude (Peter Hooten) which I thought was Steve Guttenberg as first glance. While she seems to develop a bizarre stockholm syndrome to this guy in which they have several cringy scenes together, the masked killer continues his business with other victims. It’s like watching two separate movies from here on: a soap opera and something that tries to resemble a slasher film. Confused? There’s also a sideplot with a policeman trying to finally catch the killer.

 

Claudio FragassoBruh … What the fuck is this whack bullshit even supposed to be, you may ask. According to the director himself, who made it under the pseudonym Clyde Anderson, this is actually a psychoanalytical, intimate horror movie, didn’t you already know that? He’s also so proud of the idea of the film which he calls “a brilliant idea, an incredible mental masturbation.” During the interview on the DVD’s extras he says with a straight face that he wanted to make something like an Ingmar Bergman film. I’ve seen some interviews of Mr. Fragasso and there’s just something about him that doesn’t make him easy to read, yet I can catch glimpses of sharp, ironic detachment within his eyes. I’m not a body language expert nor Dr. Phil, but I’ve had this theory that he’s quite self-aware and just trolling us (no pun intended). Because there’s just no way a director in his age can sit and reflect on a complete demented and incomprehensible schlock 30 years later and view it as a flawless piece of cinema work while putting the cherry on top by comparing himself to Steven Spielberg. I just can’t buy it. Sorry. I believe more in Loch Nessie having a baby with Bigfoot.

 

We can also just speculate how Mr. Fragasso instructs his actors, or if he just pours some green shrooms from Nilbog in their drinks before shooting. The way he makes them perform and convey emotions is nothing but absurd, if not unique, and nothing you see everyday. It’s like watching a bunch of retarded aliens in disguise trying to behave like normal human beings, or human beans like Tommy Wiseau would say. Just like Troll 2, it’s the acting that really does the film with the bonkers line deliveries, stiff, delayed reactions like Oh My GoooooooOOOOD while the actors can’t hide their confused facial expression of “what the hell did I really sign up for? Will this be my legacy?” Fragasso knows exactly what they signed up for and he has the first laugh while he thinks to himself: I now own you forever, bitch.

 

And then we have the title itself, Night Killer. There was no chainsaw to be see in the Italian release but here we at least have a killer, even though there isn’t much killing to see. There’s only three body counts (as I remember) and they are as tame, weightless and ridiculously ineptly shot that they could easily fit in as segments in Sesame Street between Elmo and Abby’s Flying Fairy School. There’s not a single night scene here either, not even close to it. Every scene is shot like it was either a soap opera or a sitcom with its heavy use of light where in the outdoors scenes the sky is always blue and the sun is shining. Not a single shred of atmosphere or the feeling of looming threat. And then there’s a twist. No spoilers, of course, but when you thought you’ve seen it all and just thought the film couldn’t be more absurd, the twist will make your brain and head shrink (like the Goombas in Super Mario Bros) and leave you speechless. Not even M. Night Shyamalan in his wildest fever dreams could make this shit up. The film also ends with a cliffhanger, or sort of. And since Fragasso are hinting about a comeback as Clyde Anderson in the DVD interview, well, what are you waiting for, maestro? Gives us the sequel so I, among others, finally can recover and grow our heads back, per favore! Until then: Merry Christmas.

 

Night Killer Night Killer Night Killer

 

Writer and director: Claudio Fragasso
Original title: Non aprite quella porta 3
Country & year: Italy, USA, 1990
Actors: Peter Hooten, Tara Buckman, Richard Foster, Mel Davis, Lee Lively, Tova Sardot, Gaby Ford
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0401696/

 

Tom Ghoul

 

 

 

Angst (1983)

Angst
I just love it when women shiver in deadly fear because of me. It’s like an addiction, that will never stop.”

That’s a real quote said in front of the judge by the Austrian triple-murderer Werner Kniesek, which this film is based on.

 

In Angst we follow a young man on a crispy day in November as he gets released from a ten years-prison sentence after killing a 70-year old woman. We don’t know his actual name, so we just call him K (short for killer). And prior to this he’d already been behind bars for four years after a failed attempt to kill his mother with a knife. The film starts with his last minutes in prison before he gets released to the society. We hear a voice-over narration that speaks his thoughts while he walks through the streets of the local town. We learn about his dark past, how he started off killing animals as a kid, and that he’s the same killer he always was. And he’s eager as a kid on Christmas to find a new victim. That’s all that matters. To torture someone.

 

Not a single form of treatment seemed to have been given to this man. It’s as if Ed Gein was to be released the day after he got prosecuted, only with a quick slap on the wrist, hoping he would behave and finally clean up his house. Ha-ha! If this was a subtle message to the psychiatric healthcare in Austria, I don’t know. But I wouldn’t be surprised if so.

 

Anyway: Mr. K is already scanning the surroundings for a new victim. There’s no time to waste other than visiting a coffee shop to eat a big sausage with a chunk of mustard (serial killers have to eat too), while giving two young ladies some creepy death stares. He then jumps into a taxi, and after a clumsy and failed attempt to strangle the female driver with a shoelace, he runs out and flees hysterically through some wooded area, like a headless chicken. As most of the serial killers come across as calculated and with a certain sense of control, and a manipulative charm to their great advantage, this guy is the straight opposite. He’s a frantic loose cannon with zero social skills, driven by a legion of inner raging demons, probably on crystal meth mixed with a toxic cocktail of explosive compulsive disorders and the intense urge to terrorize whoever he can – and make his victims feel what he chronically seems to feel: Angst.

 

But it seems to be his lucky day, after all, as he breaks into a house where his three new victims live. Needless to say, it gets really ugly from here on.

 

On paper, Angst seems as a pretty straight-forward home invasion thriller/slasher with few surprises. That being said, what makes this one stand out is much thanks to Erwin Leder as Mr. K. I haven’t seen a more perfect individual playing a role like this. He makes an electric performance and looks like a sickly and more ghoulish version of Bill Skarsgård, and his face alone with its intense, creepy eyes is an epitome of horror. An interesting trivia is that Erwin grew up in a mental institution where his parents worked. Throughout his childhood he would play and hang around with several patients, and there’s no doubt he must have taken some inspirations from these experiences. The most surprising thing is that he was able to keep his sanity. Or did he, really..? He has before and since this film been a dedicated working actor, most known on the mainstream surface with Das Boot as an mental unstable mechanic, and as a mad Lycan scientist in Underworld.

 

Another strong aspect is the visuals. Director Gerald Kargl and the cinematographer Zbigniew Rybczyński experiments a lot with the camera which is mostly handheld. In several scenes the camera is attached to the antagonist which gives us a view of him in all angles. A pretty unique technique that also gives us a sense of the chaotic, frantic nature of the killer. The soundtrack by Klaus Schulze (RIP) from Tangerine Dream enhances the bleak and isolated atmosphere with the use of ambience and electronic tunes.

 

Overall, Angst is a raw, nasty, morbid  and frantic experience with not a single moment of peace. It’s filled with an atmosphere of bleakness from the very start, which expands quickly into a downward spiral of dread, nihilism, misery and pure hell with uncontrolled mental illness on full display. It will, regardless of how prone you’re to the genre, trigger one or another angst-related emotion in you. For my own part, as the cynical misanthrope I am, I couldn’t avoid to feel mostly for the dog, the family’s little dachshund. He sporadically shows waddling around in the house while the killer is causing hell. He’s just a random, defenceless observer, trapped in the middle of the mayhem, and all you can do is hope for the best. That dog seemed to be a champ during filming, and also earned his own IMDb page, credited as Kuba. The rest of the few actors also does a great, convincing job, by the way, considering buckets of pig blood was used during the most brutal scenes.

 

Director Gerald Kargl stated that he did his very best to avoid any form of entertainment since his view is that such elements through stalk & slash would be cynical. Huh, okey… if this is entertainment or just pure anti-entertainment, is always up the the viewer to decide. Gaspar Noé, the master provocateur himself, is a huge fan, if that tells you something. But anyhow, if the sub-genre of home invasion is your thing, this will for certain entertain and thrill you for sure. If Henry: Portrail of a Serial killer (another great film in its own right) was more than enough for you to handle, you wouldn’t sit through this one, I can bet my angsty, sweaty balls on that.

 

The film has been an obscure rarity for decades, but is now available both on Blu-ray and DVD from Cult Epics, packed with extra stuff. Note: The booklet only arrives with the Blu-ray.

 

Angst

 

Director: Gerald Kargl
Writers: Zbigniew Rybczynski, Gerald Kargl
Country & year: Austria, 1983
Actors: Erwin Leder, Robert Hunger-Bühler, Silvia Ryder, Karin Springer, Edith Rosset, Josefine Lakatha, Rudolf Götz, Kuba, Renate Kastelik
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0165623/

 

Tom Ghoul

 

 

 

Murder-Set-Pieces (2004)

The film starts off with a quote from Jack the Ripper that says The Jews are not the men to be blamed for nothing.”  Then we see some silent and grainy black and white documentary footage of the September 11 attacks, as we hear a little girl’s voice saying “Just you wait a little while, the nasty man in black will come. With his little chopper, he will chop you up!

 

And after this quick, cryptic segment we see some images of some freshly dead young women, drenched in blood, in some kind of torture room, just to gives us a foretaste of what to expect during the next 90 minutes.

 

In Murder-Set-Pices we get the pleasure to meet The Photographer, played by the German actor Sven Garrett. He’s a muscle-build pussymagnet, who during the daytime spends his time with his airhead of a girlfriend, and by night roams the streets of Las Vegas to photograph young naked models. And from what we saw in some glimpses of in the opening sequence, The Photographer is a cold-blooded, emotionless serial killer who, after having threesomes, rough sex orgies and anal-raping his models like a gorilla, ends the ritual by murdering them in some grisly fashion, and sometimes tortures them in his basement.

 

And if that’s not enough to shock and disgust you, he also mutilates them and eats their flesh. And just to place the rotten cherry on top, he’s also a neo-Nazi who listens to speeches of Hitler while he’s pumping iron and thinking about his next victims. Doesn’t sound quite family friendly, but even though 55 gallons of fake blood were used on a kill count of 30 victims, Murder-Set-Pieces is way too amateurish to do its purpose.

 

Gunnar “Leatherface” Hansen pops up in a quick cameo as a car mechanic so The Photographer can buy a gun. He then goes to a stripclub so we can enjoy some fresh nudity before it cuts right over to a rape scene. Then we see some flashbacks of The Photographer as a kid where he cuts off the dress of a barbie doll. Then it jumps to a scene where The Photographer is getting a blowjob in his car by using a severed head. Then we see Tony “Candyman” Todd in a cameo as a desk clerk in some adult book store, which escalates into a messy robbery scene, and it’s the only scene here that’s got some tension and entertainment value. But guess what happens next: more rape scenes, a pornographic photo session with two lesbians, a drawn-out torture porn scene that seems to last beyond the running time, before we the film completes The Unholy Trinity of Cameos by Edwin “The Hitchiker” Neil.

 

And as you’ve probably figured out by now, there’s is none to zero plot to find here. The film is a mishmash of a bunch of random scenes that are stitched together with no relation to each other. There’s no start, middle and end, no track of time, no progress, and the whole film feels more like a 90 minutes montage of deleted scenes from a film that never got finished.

 

The most noteworthy and head-scratching thing is that writer and director Nick Palumbo managed to raise 2 million dollars from investors, which at that time was the highest budget to an independent slasherfilm. Quite impressive, though, for a young underground filmmaker. But then the big question is: where did the budget go? There’s zero style or any form of production value to see here, and The Human Centipede, which had a lower budget than this, looks like a David Fincher production in comparison.

 

Murder-Set-Pieces is also filled with controversies. Palumbo claims that this is the first film in the history that’s been thrown out of three laboratories, producers were arrested, and cast and crew were arrested numerous times. Sounds like one of those disastrous film productions where a four hour long behind-the-scenes documentary would be far more interesting and entertaining than the movie itself. But if this sounds interesting enough, be sure to avoid the US release from Lions Gate where 20 minutes have been cut out, and instead look for the European director’s cut version.

 

Murder-Set-Pieces Murder-Set-Pieces Murder-Set-Pieces

 

Writer and director: Nick Palumbo
Country & year: USA, 2004
Actors: Sven Garrett, Cerina Vincent, Tony Todd, Gunnar Hansen, Edwin Neal, Jade Risser, Valerie Baber, Destiny St. Claire, Maria Keough, Renee Baio, Lauren Palac, Andrea Mitchell, Jessie DeRoock
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0422779/

 

 

Tom Ghoul

 

 

 

Cat Sick Blues (2015)

cat sick blues

It’s a quiet evening and two young ladies are chilling, smoking bong and watching cat videos on YouTube, like most of us do. Then they hear some noises on the roof that sounds like their cat. When one of them goes up to check, she gets surprised by a tall, skinny person wearing a cat mask. She’s too high to get scared, of course, and laughs it off as if it was a prank. He chops her head of with a shovel and throws it down the stairs, and strangles the other one.

 

We then learn that the person behind the mask is a young man named Ted, who’s turned into a homicidal maniac after losing his beloved cat.  When he’s not out killing, he spends his nights jacking off to a cam girl, who’s dressed as a cat. Of course. And he really worships his cat more than anything and wants it back. And to do so, he got the genius idea to kill nine people, collect their blood, to resurrect his cat. He later extends his cat persona by adding a big strap-on dick with spikes (supposed to be penile spines, I guess) because … well, why not.

 

We then get introduced to Claire, who owns one of the many viral cats on YouTube. She gets an unexpected visit from an obsessed “fan” that you wouldn’t want to get near to. Stupidly enough she invites him in, and he (take a wild guess) rapes her, after he accidentally breaks her cat’s neck and tosses it out the window. She attends to a pet grieving group where she meets Ted. They start dating, fucking, and they have a chemistry like two lobotomized potatoes with a relationship that goes in a bizarre direction which you’ll never see coming. And when Ted is not dating Claire, he’s out body counting.

 

As a cat-person myself, I was hoping to get an antagonist to feel or at least root for. But no, Ted proves to be just a deranged and complete soulless, cold-blooded serial killer from the very start, who clearly enjoys raping and killing innocent young ladies for the hell of it while feeding his morbid, obsessive fetish fantasies. And when even fellow cat persons gets body counted by him, that’s a big  no-no, from me at least. He also kills the cam cat lady we saw earlier for no reason. There’s a lot of sadistic cat killers out there, by the way. Why not hunt some of them, in Dexter-style, which no one would miss anyway? Before I take this shit too seriously I’ll just point out that the idea itself for Cat Sick Blues is pretty genius and unique, just too bad we don’t get any depth or backstory of the killer.

 

On the more positive note, the film is overall  pretty entertaining for what it is, a pure demented serial killer slasher. If you’re in for the gore and kills, you will not be disappointed. As a low-budget film, and the debut feature of Dave Jackson who made it by crowdfunding from Kickstarter, it looks pretty impressive. While there’s some clearly experimental stuff going on with slow motion and scenes that slip into some out-of-place artsy moments, the killing scenes are straight to the point, with some nasty visuals that will probably get your dick as hard as Ted’s strap-on. Also a great use of practical effects with heads smashed to pieces, and chopped off, and of course some throat slashing with some sharp cat claw gloves. Even Selena Kyle would be intimidated by this maniac. And as little as there is to wrap one’s mind around Ted’s deranged head, I have to give actor Matthew C. Vaughan some credit for his acting-style and use of energetic cat body language while he goes hunting for victims.

 

Cat Sick Blues is available on DVD from Wild Eye Releasing.

 

Cat Sick Blues Cat Sick Blues Cat Sick Blues

 

Director: Dave Jackson
Country & year: Australia, 2015
Actors: Matthew C. Vaughan, Meg Spencer, Jeni Bezuidenhout, Danae Swinburne, Rob Alec, Mahalia Brown, Shian Denovan, Smokey, Rachel Rai, Noah Moon, Matthew Revert, Andrew Gallacher, James Arnold-Garvey
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt4185862/

 

 

Tom Ghoul

 

 

 

 

The Golden Glove (2019)

The Golden Glove (2019Hamburg, Germany in the early 70’s. It’s a regular day at the tiny, cramped pub Der Goldene Handschuh (The Golden Glove). A playlist with depressing German schlager songs are being played in the background as we get introduced to a group of outlived and wrinkled prostitutes, and hardcore alcoholics. One of them likes to suck on used tampons, by the way. Yuck. But the worst of them is probably Fritz Honka, a hideous, disgusting, crooked aberration of a man, who brings hookers to his filthy horror chamber of an attic apartment that has not been cleaned since the last century, and stinks worse than you probably can imagine.

 

Fritz is a deranged, greasy homicidal maniac who develops a bad habit of killing the women he brings home with him in the most brutal ways, in pure volcanic rage like an orangutan on speed, if they don’t meet his sexual standards. He then cuts the bodies in pieces with a saw while listening to German percussion music, wraps them in newspapers, and hides them in a crawl space attic that only he has access to through his apartment. Although Fritz is trying to hold back the corpse stench by hanging tree-shaped air fresheners (wunderbaums) around his attic apartment, the neighbor who lives underneath him is constantly complaining that it stinks. And it’s only a matter of time before there are so many decomposing body parts dumped in there that maggots starts to find their way between the cracks and says hello to the neighbors.

 

This film is based on the true story about serial killer Fritz Honka, who killed up to four prostitutes from 1970 to 1975 in the red light district of Hamburg. The one we see in the brutal opening scene was 42-year-old Gertraud Bräuer. A hairdresser and part-time prostitute who refused to have sex with him, and ended up as his first known victim. She was sawed into small pieces, and dumped in the bushes in the local area. The remains were found by the police, but Honka escaped. For this time. It would take four years before Honka killed again. The infamous bar, Der Goldene Handschuh, is still open with the new banner “Honka Stub”. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a cheap statue of the guy inside as well. A stage play of Fritz Honka has also been performed in Hamburg. It’s also worth mentioning that writer and Director Faith Atkin grew up in the same area in Hamburg during the same time period Fritz Honka was finally captured by the police.

 

The most remarkable thing here is how raw and downright authentic everything looks. The technical aspects, all from set-design, sound, photography, editing, is top notch. The costumes are right on spot, and they really did an impressive job to reconstruct Fritz Honka’s horror attic. The 1970s-look is flawless, and the grim, thick atmosphere of pure despair and hopelessness  in The Golden Glove pub reeks all over the place, and feels like it was shot in a real pub with real hookers, alcoholics and whatnot. All the actors here are hundred percent dedicated, no matter how far the scenes go and what endless humiliations the actors have to put themselves through. It all seemed like a pure nightmare to shoot, especially for the poor ladies. If they all got away with their mind in check and no need for any therapy sessions after this grueling experience, then just be impressed and give them a big applause.

 

Films such as Maniac and Henry: Portrait of a A Serial Killer comes to mind, but our friend Fritz Honka takes it on a whole new level. It’s brutal, yet absurdly hilarious at the same time. I haven’t seen anything like it, really. It’s a pretty unique and distinctive look at a madman’s everyday life, living in a hellish, chaotic, stinky downward spiral of an environment where you almost expect the stench of piss, shit, sweat, booze and other extreme body odors dissipating from the screen to attack your nostrils at any moment. Thanks to Honka, that bastard, I can’t enjoy the smell of wunderbaums the same way again, that’s for sure. And speaking of the star himself, Jonas Dassler, he’s just absolut fantastisch as Fritz Honka.  An eleven of ten-star performance. Cheers for that, or as they say in Deutschland: Tost!

 

So, make yourself welcome to The Golden Rabbit Hole. Just be glad you’re only witnessing this from a screen, and is free to take a shower when you’re starting to feel too itchy.

 

The Golden Glove

 

Director: Fatih Akin
Original title: Der goldene Handschuh
Country & year: Germany | France, 2019
Actors: Jonas Dassler, Margarete Tiesel, Adam Bousdoukos, Marc Hosemann, Katja Studt, Martina Eitner-Acheampong, Philipp Baltus, Hark Bohm, Greta Sophie Schmidt, Tristan Göbel, Laurens Walter, Victoria Trauttmansdorff, Tom Hoßbach, Jessica Kosmalla, Heinz Strunk
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt7670212/

 

 

Tom Ghoul