10 Things from 70s Times Square that exploitation movies need to bring back

Exploitation and grindhouse movies these days are no longer that exploitative. Sure Tarantino and Rodriguez can call their movie Grindhouse, but somehow if I'm not offended by it, it's not really exploitation. Planet Terror, Death Proof, Machete and Hobo with a Shotgun are all solid flicks but these as you would expect are sanitized Hollywood flicks for the masses.

70s Times Square could care less about the masses. They catered to the guy with the fedora, large sunglasses and trench coat. The true grindhouse films wanted to shock the shit out of you for 70 or so minutes. Bad dubbing, recut and edited foriegn flicks, and retitled films were the standard. But you'd have a wide selection of the WTF and outrageous. Movies that would offend you, test your limits and obliterate your tolerance for the absurd.

Clearly we've all grown up from our 70s scumminess and we'd hope to be a more tolerant and equal society. But a tiny part of me wants to see some exploitative absurdity, something that goes waaaay extreme that you can't believe what you just saw. A millennial Pink Flamingos if you will. 

Will we ever see any of these things/subjects ever made into a feature to call themselves real exploitation?

1.) Super duper racist films

Fight for your Life was completely nuts. Thing about this plot. 3 escaped inmates, a white trash redneck, a Mexican and an Asian violently assault a black minister. You've offended every race in America in one movie. Movies like Goodbye Uncle Tom supposedly cashed in on the blaxploitation craze but 70s grindhouse cashed in by being so offensive, you'd think a race riot would happen in the theater.


2.) Sexually violent deviousness

Ahhh clearly the 70s grindhouse could care less for women. Boobs, butts and skin all to be killed off in horrific fashion. I think of the ridiculousness of Patrick, a movie about a comatose man with psychic powers uses them to manipulate a hot nurse. The kills were wickedly hypnotizing and spawned an even more sexually violent sequel from Italy!

3.) Midgets and Freaks

Have you seen the movie Freaks? It was made in 1932 and starred actual midgets and freaks. Clearly we have to be PC about our little people and visually challenged these days. But the ironic part is this film is actually pretty good, shows them as normal people and featured a part of our society that would have been ignored.

4.) Pimps and Hookers (in Atlantic City)

The only time you see pimps and hookers is on HBO's AC Hookers. Oh what fascinating lives these two groups lead and somehow, yes somehow this could be exploited into some awesome movies if you think of it.

5.) Cannibals a Go Go

It's not like there are anymore cannibal tribes in the world anymore right? Right? I mean even if you stereotyped some tribe to be killer cannibals, it's not like they'd actually see the flick. It's the genre I miss the most. Devil white man gets comeuppance for trying to civilize the savages. It's the formula with a message and the gore.

6.) Mondo Schmondo

 Have you seen the footage of Filipinos crucifying themselves on Easter Sunday? No? Then YouTube it. This shit still happens. All countries still have some crazy, wacky rituals and I don't think we've seen them all.

7.) Experimental Surrealistic Nonsense

We all need a little Alejandro Jodorowsky in our lives.

8.) Something Japanese

Rule 34. If you've thought of something so fucked up, so nasty and so disgusting, chances are the Japanese have made a movie about it.

9.) Slashers who are plain old crazy

Luther the Geek was a movie about a carnival freak who bit the heads off chickens and drinks their blood. He then proceeds to kill random people while clucking. We need more films like this.

10.) The New Christina Lindberg

We need a movie where a girl next door vixen gets violated and then goes all revenge served cold. This is an untapped genre begging and pleading to resurface.

What 70s/80s subgenres from the olden days do you miss? Will we ever see any of these highly offensive subgenres/topics/things ever made in the Hollywood machine or the indie underground?

Chime in!

Categories: 70s grindhouse, Alejandro Jodorowsky films, blaxploitation, cannibal films, christina lindberg, exploitation, japanese exploitation, luther the geek, slasher films, times square

Obscure Horror Month: Luther the Geek

Over at Big Daddy Horror Reviews, Brandon is making July Obscure Horror month. He's got other horror bloggers going into the time machine to remember the forgotten horror of old. I've chimed in my pick for this series by contributing my review of Luther the Geek.

You can check it out by going here: CLUCK, CLUCK, CLUCK!!!

For my full review, head over here.

Categories: 80's horror, chickens, clucking, luther the geek, luther the geek review, stacy haiduk naked, stacy haiduk showe scene

5 Horror Movies that shaped my horror psyche

I had what you would call a regular horror childhood. Raised on your standard eggs, bacon and Friday the 13ths and Nightmares, it's the same ole story you've heard all before.

But it wasn't until I met Insano Steve in college and the beginnings of the Internets did I get more of a horror education. Faster than you could say "boobies", the internet sprung to life with porn sites with a degree of nastiness.

But with free web space like Geocities and Tripod you also got some horror sites that popped up. Insano Steve soon discovered a very cool site called Losman's Lair of Horror. (It's now defunct) but it had some awesome lists which Insano Steve and I used as a guidebook to discovering some great horror and exploitation movies.

Check out this site for a retrospective of this site.

The 5 movies we "discovered" that I have to admit shaped my horror wiki are below. Mind you, this was circa 1995-1999 and though most of these are common knowledge now, these were all new to both of us. Each of these movies had a profound effect on what I would watch years later, even up to today. Do you remember the first time you watched any of these?

1.) Cannibal Holocaust

My introduction to the cannibal genre was the best the genre had to offer. Never had I scene such horrific acts of violence by uncivilized savages (and on the big screen!).

Real life animal slaughter, scalping, intestine eating and documentary styilized drama.

After watching Holocaust, Insano Steve and I searched for the best the genre had to offer (Ferox, Dr. Butcher, etc.)

This would easily spawn my Top 5 Cannibal Movies of All Time and give me impetus to create the Top 10 Ruggero Deodato Movies of All Time.




2.) El Topo

Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo was a midnight cult success back in the 70s. But when you first watch it, it's like watching what it would be like on LSD but sober.

El Topo was the first of Jodorowskys films that I would dabble into, soon seeing all the others, with Holy Mountain and Sante Sangre being awesome-fuckin-rific flicks.


3.) Darkness

Why this underground vampire gore flick?

Because it showed me the door into the world indie spatter gore movies. Leif Jonkers Darkness would be my intro into low budget indie horror filmmakers and their dedication and passion to the VHS dubbing genre of the early 90s.

Not a good film by any means, it has some top notch gore and makeup.

It's a simple film, but struck a chord in this jaded viewer.





4.) Luther the Geek

This film is mostly remembered because it has a scene of Stacy Haiduk taking a shower naked.

But a mute, clucking serial killer biting and killing innocent pedestrians is where I had my first WTF moment.

And it's so bizarre and off the wall, this was my first venture in the world of kooky, mostly foreign serial killer films (See Insano Steve's 11 Underrated Horror Movies of the Videotape Era)

He's a geek! He drinks chicken blood! And all he does is cluck like a chicken.

The WTF moment was thus born into existence.



5.) Nekromantik

Think about when you first saw this movie. (If you haven't, you should see this perverted and gore-ificly awesome flick) Didn't you feel all dirty and a little shameful that you were about to watch a movie about fuckin necrophilia?!?!?

C'mon. We all have our boundaries. Even us hardcore horror fans. Shit, I've seen movies about bestiality. I'll admit it. But we've all draw lines before.

And though Nekromantik is done very artsy fartsy, it's still about some sick shit. And that ending...oh man, it's the pinnacle of the WTF moment hall of fame.

This probably was the movie that got me as jaded as could be.

Disturbing but entirely breaking a frontier within my horror experience, you can say the movie was utter shit, but it definitely is memorable.


If you have seen some of these flicks, kudos to you. If you haven't, it's like a tutorial of shame and horror wonder. Most horror fans today (I'm talking to the tweens and Gen Y peeps) don't know what us "old timers" had to do to see some of these flicks.

Go to horror conventions, rummage through yard sales, trade in 2nd and 3rd generation dubs and eBay the crap to see some hard to find flicks.

So when we did see these flicks, they were like finding a wad of cash in the trash.

I can thank Losman and his list for introducing me to a wide range of genre flicks. Such a simple site that the jaded viewer would not be here today if it wasn't for that list.

Wherever you are Losman, thanks dude. I owe you one.

Categories: 5 horror movies that shaped my horror psyche, cannibal holocaust, el topo, leif jonker darkness, luther the geek, nekromantik

Rewind: Luther the Geek (Review)

Luther the Geek

Luther the Geek (1990)

Directed by Carlton J. Albright

[review was originally at Aylmer's Grisly Grimey Page of Unspeakable Horror, circa 1999]

Question: What happens when a young boy watches a carnival geek
bite the head off a chicken, drinks its blood, then grows up and gets imprisoned for killing towns folk, then gets paroled (?) and then is released on a small town?

Answer: Luther the Geek is born

From the first scene as rowdy rednecks start chanting "Geek! Geek! Geek!" as an inbred carnie rips off a chicken's head and chugs down the blood we all know this is going to be one odd zany film.

It was one of first movies I discovered from Losman's Lair of Horror. It features a crazy mute psycho going on a killing spree, some gratuitous nudity, a small mid-western town (with many helpless citizens) and had constant scenes of no dialogue.

What's not to love? This is why I watch horror movies.

And so the story unfolds.

Through a flashblack, little Luther watches this atrocious display of carnival monstrosity, bites his own lip and tastes his own blood.

Yum.

Luther, instead of going to school decides to go geek full time.

In do course he is paroled from jail because of good behavior?! Later, he terrorizes a mother, her daughter and the daughter's boyfriend.

The daughter is played by Stacy Haiduk (the chick from Seaquest and that old Vampire show on Fox).

Her naked shower scene fulfills the the horror requirement and reveals she has big boobies.

Yay...here's a clip you pervs (more like outtakes but with 50% more nudity!)



Stacy Haiduk - Shower Scene from 'Luther The Geek' - Amazing videos are here


The best part of the film is the lack of dialogue. All we hear is Luther's disturbing clucking (yes like a chicken)

You know you want to hear him cluck......





Other scenes include Luther killing an old lady by biting her on the nose. Many people die, plot is totally removed and the ending is so anti-climatic I could have been eating KFC with Luther as I watched the film.

Luther is filled with twisted scenes, disturbing characters and sometimes unrelenting gore. Luther the Geek has many of these and that's why all I have to say after watching this film was: What the fuck?

Luther the Geek is so weird, its great. You will not have seen anything like this before.

It could have been titled chickenfucker, the Clucker, Luther: My insane uncle.

But with a sort of fucked up sense of humor it made me laugh.

In doing so it reaches into that plateau where you come away saying..shit that was weird. And that's all it was trying to be.

Rating:

Tags:
luther the geek, luther the geek review , stacy haiduk naked shower scene , troma, chicken geek, carnie, top horror movies, clucking, gratuitous nudity, splatter films, gore movies,

Categories: carnies, chickens, clucking, geek, luther the geek, luther the geek review, stacy haiduk naked, stacy haiduk showe scene