Crawl (2019)

When it comes to dangerous animals I’d never like to meet face to face, I always seem to forget about alligators, but that’s mostly because I’m never in the state of Florida, America’s penis. Regardless. the movie Crawl is a great reminder that, short of being a Cuban drug dealer, there’s really no reason to ever visit.

Sullen teen swimmer Haley (Kaya Scodelario), having recently lost another meet, drives a couple of hours to check on her deadbeat dad Dave (Barry Pepper), a sullen contractor, as a tumultuous Florida-style hurricane is hitting land. Unable to find him, when her smart dog barks a few times near the stairs, she goes to the basement to find him pinned in a corner by a couple of large alligators.

Instead of immediately running to find help, she swims deeper in and becomes trapped, too. Even more gators show up, all hungry or violent — I can’t tell. Various people also show up, from a trio of convenience store thieves to her sister’s cop ex-boyfriend, only to be brutally mangled by the leathery beasts.

Luckily, her dog is all right and makes it to the end, in case you were worried. I was.

Taking everything that is terrifying about Florida and turning it up to 11, Crawl is far better than it has any right to be, and I believe that’s mostly thanks to director Alexandre Aja and, of course, producer Sam Raimi being able to rise above the obviously schlocky material, including the entire state of Florida. That really says a lot. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Only the Good Parts (2015)

WTFWhen people talk trailers, someone inevitably scoffs, “They show all the good parts.” As if that’s a bad thing? It certainly isn’t in the world that exists underneath mainstream motion pictures. From blaxploitation to sexploitation with a whole heap o’ horror in between, Film Trauma’s Only the Good Parts dishes out a feature’s worth of proof — 39 trailers in all, roughly organized in themes that include badass broads, possession pics, killer kids, Italian ick and sacrilegious sinners.

Like the pair of Colour Correct My Cock compilations, the general selection is noteworthy for overall naughtiness and alternative versions. For example, prepare those loins for the one-two pubic punch of the French trailer for Jess Franco’s Barbed Wire Dolls and the German trailer for Franco’s Love Camp. Those are followed by the Franco-adjacent rump romp Rolls Royce Baby, in which muse Lina Romay is so naked so often, you’ll have (to quote ourselves) “an image of her vagina so thorough and vivid, you could accurately draw it from memory.” Look for Franco’s less dirty-minded but no less nude Demoniac later in the program.

For other name-brand directors, we get Ted V. Mikels’ 10 Violent Women and Al Adamson’s Nurse Sherri, heavy on comparing itself to The Exorcist. A rung — if not an entire ladder — higher on the credibility ladder stands David Cronenberg’s The Brood and Larry Cohen’s creatively effective campaign for It’s Alive and It Lives Again, matched in advertising genius only by whoever wrote the tagline for the X-rated slasher Evil Come, Evil Go: “She’s a Man-Hating, Hymn-Humming Hell Cat!”

Finally, when it comes to the grail of coming attractions — I speak, of course, of obscurities — Only the Good Parts giveth and giveth. I wouldn’t swear on this in the court of law, but I don’t recall even hearing of the likes of The Johnsons, Alley Cat and Beware My Brethren. That goes quadruple for Parts’ greatest piece, She Did It His Way, a 1968 vehicle for seriously stacked stripper Kellie Everts filmed at the Miss Nude Universe Pageant. I’m still not sure what the movie’s about, but it looks life-changing.

All this plus Roger Moore as The Man Who Haunted Himself, the pencil-eraser nipples of Werewolf Woman, a whip-crackin’ Coffin Joe and so much more. And remember, “You’ve not seen all of Marilyn Chambers until you’ve seen Angel of Heat.” —Rod Lott

Get it at Film Trauma or Amazon.

F.T.A. (1972)

Long hidden from the public eye for its supposedly controversial content, F.T.A. — translating to, in case you need to be riled up, “Fuck the Army” — is a documentary about the anti-military roadshow headed by Jane Fonda, already a controversial character in her own right, mostly for being a woman who dared to speak up against the war.

Filmed over a few years in the early ’70s, this alternate-universe Bob Hope special went right to the military bases — or as close as they possibly could — and performed dated skits and songs about America’s then-current war with Vietnam and this intense need to leave, featuring interviews with servicemen who have experienced racism and other ills while in the military.

Along with Fonda, Donald Sutherland and a team of somewhat-comic actors perform mostly unfunny comedy bits written by the likes of Jules Feiffer and others, but the musical interludes by folk singer Len Chandler are rabble-rousing enough to forgive the inane jokes and lackluster parodies; I guess it was the only live entertainment anti-war protestors had at the time.

But where the film really succeeds is not only in the interviews with disgusted military men, but with the citizens in Asian countries where America kept (keeps?) its bases, as the local anti-war movement marches against soldiers being in their neighborhood; especially sobering and particularly moving is a trip to a Hiroshima museum.

The thing about F.T.A. that truly surprises me, however, is just how dangerous the American government considered Fonda and this film to be at the time — and probably even do now — attempting to stop the concerts and even reportedly forcing the doc to be pulled from theaters a week in its initial release. It kind of proves what a farce the First Amendment is, especially for the enlisted people who die to fight for it. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Irezumi (1966)

WTFFrom Japan’s venerated Daiei studio, Yasuzô Masumura’s Irezumi wastes no time in setup, as young lovers Shinsuke and Otsuya run away from their village to elope against parental wishes. Shinsuke (Akio Hasegawa, Navy Yokosuka Prison) is a lowly apprentice to a pawnbroker; Otsuya (Ayako Wakao, Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo ) is that pawnbroker’s daughter, arranged to marry another man. To hide for the night, they stay at an inn run by Shinsuke’s friend Gonji (Fujio Suga, Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in the Land of Demons).

Happily ever after? Hardly. Gonji hires an assassin to kill Shinsuke and sells Otsuya to the wonderful world of prostitution. Her pimp (Asao Uchida, Samurai Reincarnation) orders a tattooist (Gaku Yamamoto, Zatoichi and the Chess Expert) to chloroform Otsuya and ink her back. He does just that, pouring his literal soul into an elaborate, shoulder-to-shoulder tat of an orb-weaving spider bearing a woman’s fanged head — the Peeing Calvin of the samurai era, I’m sure. When she awakes, he tells her the spider will gorge on the corpses of her lusty clients.

Boy, won’t the memoirs of this geisha be something else!

Although definitely categorizable as a “weird tale,” Irezumi never becomes what you expect it be, so don’t come looking for horror. Even with the obvious influence of Edgar Allan Poe — and, in turn, Edogawa Rampo, whose Blind Beast Masumura would adapt within three years — the stab-happy film stops shy of entering Kwaidan territory, instead taking the guise of melodrama and dipping itself into a vat of the perverse. Fantastical elements are lined up, but never called onto the field; the spider supposedly moves and grows with each kill, but Masumura ladles not even half a teaspoon of the supernatural. At least Hikaru Hayashi’s eerie musical score finally finds a visual match in the chilling penultimate shot.

Regardless of expectations, the vibrantly colored Irezumi is well worth the watch, as picturesque as Wakao is luminous. Her progressive performance provides the magic at which the script continually winks. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

The Playbirds (1978)

If you’ve ever watched a Dirty Harry film and thought it needed some graphic sexual depictions as well as scummy violent content, I suggest Clint Eastwood in Tightrope. But, if it also needed some proper British comedy, I then recommend The Playbirds, starring the late sex goddess Mary Millington as a policewoman who goes way undercover.

And by undercover, of course, I mean fucking.

Here, she’s bobbie Lucy, a well-meaning copper working with some straight-laced detectives to find out who’s strangling the cover girls of the nudie mag Playbirds. Who could it be? Is it the horndog publisher? The anti-porn protestor? One of the policemen who called uniformed women into his office to arbitrarily doff their clothes for the case?

Agatha Christie, it’s not. Then again, I don’t remember Murder on the Orient Express having this much pubic hair.

Willy Roe’s directing style is the opposite of Millington: very flat. Still, you could tell he was trying to do something different with the British sex film and I guess it worked, man-cementing Millington as the ultimate Union Jack sex bomb. It’s something I can understand, but not necessarily endorse, as the blood flow to the penis is significantly decreased by the incredibly bleak ending.

Or even more increased, you vile pervert. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

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