All posts by Louis Fowler

Viy (1967)

Genre enthusiasts will often champion Britain’s Hammer Films as the end-all-be-all of ’60s horror. After viewing Communist Russia’s Viy, however, I think it might be high time we start holding these hammer-and-sickle films up just a little be higher. Don’t tell Joseph McCarthy!

Sometime in the 19th century, a total jerk of a seminary student is attacked by a witch in the countryside; she actually climbs on his shoulders piggyback-style and rides him around the Earth. When they finally land in the soft grass, he gives her a few rights and lefts to the face, killing her instantly; it’s then revealed that she’s actually a beautiful local girl.

In deep borscht now, he’s forced to spend three nights praying with her corpse in a church. The first two nights, though rather spooky with her corpse flying around and such, is mostly all right because he has a protective chalk circle around him, creating a protective barrier. But that third night, the student — drunk out of his gourd, mind you — faces a bizarre cavalcade of diabolical imps, crawling ghouls and a globular blob that needs help from the emaciated zombies to lift his goopy eyelids up.

Viy is a well-done politburo of irreligious terror that, especially when viewed against the anti-Russian propaganda we Americans have been brainwashed with regarding Communism, it is surprisingly ahead of its time, filling the screen with more demonic imagination and unsettling imagery than most of the Western horror flicks that never made it past the Iron Curtain. —Louis Fowler

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Emanuelle in America (1977)

Have you ever wanted to voyeuristically watch as a woman gleefully masturbates a horse? If the answer is “yes,” then pull your pants down, take out your questionable member and liberally grease up for Emanuelle in America.

Notorious sexpot Emanuelle (the always alluring Laura Gemser) is back in New York, photographing nude models and calmly sexualizing murderers. With a hot tip from the sleazy periodical she dubiously works for, Emanuelle goes undercover on a sex farm, trying to raise some hard love. Thankfully, it comes (and cums) fairly easy for her.

From there, she’s traveling to all the pornographic hot spots in America to track down and graphically expose the sexual secrets of the rich and filthy. As a matter of fact, at one point, a Robin Leach-a-like licks creamy frosting off the body of a sexy model at an orgy. It’s a champagne wet dream that you wish you could wake from.

In the hundred-minute runtime, Emanuelle manages to bed most of the staff of every hotel she stays in, has a rather lascivious pool party with some girls on the payroll and, if the bestiality wasn’t enough for you — and it really should be — then how about some reasonably disturbing (but, I’m told, quite fake) snuff footage?

Yeah … you can probably pull your pants up now.

The always reliable Joe D’Amato directs (and erects) with the controversial flair that has made him and this film an outré fave amongst the horniest of film geeks for over 40 years, but it’s the stunning Gemser, an Indonesian model who outlasted and out-lusted Sylvia Kristel and her double-“m”s, that makes these smut films watchable long after the viewer has gone limp in hand-wiping disgust. —Louis Fowler

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The House by the Cemetery (1981)

Have you ever noticed that many of the children in Italian horror films are just as unappealing as the grotesque monster attacking them?

In his flick The House by the Cemetery, director Lucio Fulci puts yet another thoroughly unlikable brat through the rigor-mortis ringer by having him not only being trapped in a house by a cemetery, but one where the confusing zombie Dr. Freudstein — tell me about your mother, Mr. Fulci — is stalking and slashing its inhabitants with psychotic abandon.

Dr. Freudstein, by the way, is a 150-year-old medical man whose guts are filled with maggots and grue. He was notorious for performing human experiments that are apparently still going on, mostly via blades through the head and jaggedly sliced throats. How exactly that’s helping science is beyond me, but I heard he recently won a large grant.

Fulci favorites Catriona MacColl (The Beyond) and Paolo Malco (The New York Ripper) are Lucy and Norman Boyle, respectively, an upwardly mobile couple who uproots their hectic city life for a Massachusettsian existence in an unnecessarily spooky house by a cemetery. I hope they got a good deal, especially since Norman’s colleague apparently murdered a woman there the week before.

Their unattractive son, Bob (Giovanni Frezza), complete with an unnerving dubbed voice, is haunted by a somewhat helpful German girl who lives in a framed picture of the house by cemetery.

Full of all the realistic blood-spatterings, gut-spillings and throat-rippings we’ve come to know and love from Fulci — as well as another head-scratching ending that puts an uneasy layer of dread over the entire proceedings — House by the Cemetery is one of his career high points, full of stabby endpoints. —Louis Fowler

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Brewster’s Millions (1985)

Many would say that, during his vaunted career, Richard Pryor never found the right filmic vehicle for his considerable talents; having recently viewed Brewster’s Millions for the first time in nearly 30 years, I have to say … they’re probably right.

Here, Pryor is Montgomery Brewster, a down-on-his-luck minor-league pitcher who, along with pal Spike (John Candy), spends most of his time humping groupies on the road, which is quite understandable. Sadly, that fun-living casual sex comes to an end when he inherits $300 million from his dead “honky” uncle (Hume Cronyn).

The plot-worthy catch? He has to spend $30 million in thirty days, with nothing to show for it but the shirt on his back by the end.

This leads to a mildly amusing 90 minutes as Pryor buys a bunch of people lunch, mails a rare postage stamp and runs as the anti-mayor of New York. And while that sounds like it’s a surefire laugh-getter, most of the jokes fall sideways and, even worse, are just plain unfunny. I guess we could throw most of the blame on director Walter Hill; straight comedy, it seems, isn’t really his forte.

With such a strong premise and an even stronger comedian, it’s kind of sad just how comedically bankrupt the whole outing is — but at least it ain’t The Toy.  —Louis Fowler

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Gwendoline (1984)

French pervert Just Jaeckin must’ve gotten a museful erection while watching Raiders of the Lost Ark, because his adaptation of the cult comic strip “Sweet Gwendoline” — emphasis on the word “strip” — is full of all the swashbuckling action you love and, even more so, all the unbuckled belts you probably lust after.

Starring video vixen (and future domestic abuser) Tawny Kitaen as the titular Gwendoline, when we meet her, she’s being smuggled in a wooden crate to an absolutely offensive Asian setting, filled with flapping chickens, vegetable-slicing old women and raging Chinese thieves hellbent on rape and stealing, definitely in that order.

Along with her puckish pal Beth (Zabou), they make an uneasy alliance with sleazy adventurer Willard (Brent Huff), the ultimate man’s man who usually jokes about punching women in the face. He agrees to take these nubile teens (?) to the land of Yik-Yak to find a butterfly Gwendoline’s father was apparently searching for when he vanished.

Once they find the elusive flying bug, they’re thrown into a sadomasochistic world of pinched nipples and metal thongs, sexual traps and slave girls used to pull chariots. Even though I kind of lost track of what’s going on at this point, needless to say this is the part of the film where it’s probably okay to touch yourself.

Truncated to 88 minutes and retitled The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of Yik-Yak for American audiences — I guess distributors didn’t think Yankee audiences would “get” the not-so-subtle acts of erotic bondage continually onscreen — Gwendoline is a stupidly sexy take on a smutty comic strip, a movie that I’m guessing most of us grew up voyeuristically viewing on late-night cable. —Louis Fowler

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