The Gospel According to the Men in Jumpsuits

“…And the acolytes of the great Gods, NME and Melody Maker did heap scorn upon the men of Devo and did say unto their followers : Look at these blasphemers, in their yellow jumpsuits and their flowerpot hats and laugh at their banal lyrics for they are Not To Be Taken Seriously.”

“…And the men of Devo were wroth and did retire to their homeland across the water and plotted the downfall of the Conspiracy and produced some very good LP’s, soundtracks for some not very good films and did write the music for the PeeWee Herman show.”

“…And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth among their followers, and the doubters among them did throw away their plastic and became Spud Boys & Girls, or joined the Conspiracy, but those of true faith remembered the words of The Great Mothersbaugh when he said ‘Are We Not Men?’ and they kept the spirit alive.”

“…And many years passed, and the Beast with the three heads called Stock, Aiken and Waterman did bring fear and terror to all on the music scene and the people prayed for a saviour to deliver them from the Anti-Christ who was named Kylie.”

“…And The Great Mothersbaugh had not forgotten us and he said ‘Lo, let us tour Britain again’ and the other priests of Devo did verily say ‘Yeah’. So they played two nights at the Town & Country Club and one night in Manchester, which might not seem much of a tour but is better than nothing.”

“…And the Devo-tees did rejoice and brushed the dust off their unfashionable streetwear and did gather together. But they were nonplussed for the men of Devo were not on stage, there was a film show instead and the Elder Ones shook their heads and did remember Kraftwerk in 1981 when the band used plastic dummies as stand-ins .”

“…And then it became All Right when Markie (as The Great Mothersbaugh likes his followers to call him), Bob I & II, Gerry the Casale and the new drummer whose name we dare not speak (but I can remember it, honest) did come on stage and wax lyrical.”

“…And they did play “Whip It”, and they did play “Satisfaction” and they did play “Smart Patrol” and they did play “Shout” and they did play a lot of music from their new album which had been out in this country for about, oooh, five days so no-one knew the songs but all agreed they were damn good ones nevertheless.”

“…And at the end, The Great Mothersbaugh did pull handfuls of spring onions from his underpants and did throw them into the throng of his followers, who did cheer mightily. But the biggest cheer of the evening was when the Men of Devo did put on their flowerpot hats which are a sign of their favour with the Gods, if perhaps not the record-buying public.”

“…And everyone did say “That was a worthy concert”, except for the critics who wrote literary essays that failed to say anything of interest at all. But frankly, who gives a damn?”

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Lung! – “Having Fun in an Iron Lung”

There are certain occasions in my life, some pleasant and others I’d rather forget, that have taken on a sort of ill-defined, dreamlike quality, where reality gets distorted and it becomes impossible to distinguish what really happened from the products of my deranged imagination. This tape is the aural equivalent of one of those events: even after several listenings, switching off the cassette is like waking up from a nightmare.

Fortunately, I quite like this aural nightmare. How else could you describe a track like ‘Holiday Camp/Torture Chamber’, which starts off as a sound picture of Butlin’s before, yep, you guessed it, slipping sideways into the soundtrack to ‘Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S’. Other titles include ‘The Day My Brother Choked on a Hot Dog’, ‘We’re So Crap’ and ‘The Reason I’m in a Wheelchair is Because I’ve Got No Legs’. The last is probably the best track on the album. It features a paraplegic being run over by a train.

This dates back to 1985, when Lung! had some brief moments of infamy. It was recorded in the school toilets and features a large number of things being broken – windows, chairs, urinals an electric fire and lots of plates although precisely what the plates were doing in the toilets escapes me. Despite efforts to ban them, they managed to play live in front of the school (the notes are unclear whether this means the location of the concert, or the audience for it!) and upset a lady by hitting her on the head with a cardboard box. By accident.

We’re talking very basic sound here – few live tapes include the sound of one of the band members pausing for a pee, but given its location, what do you expect? Post World War III, when the new cavemen are making music round their camp-fires by the glow of radioactive Basingstoke, this is what it’ll probably be like. It doesn’t all work – there’s an element of sub-juvenile humour which does grate annoyingly but even when this isn’t avoided, the tracks are so (mercifully?) short that you won’t have long to wait until it’s all over. The general result is a refreshing dose of anti-music, as in a quite unique version of ‘Rock Around the Clock’, capable of raising Bill Haley from the dead, or at least making him turn in his grave.

It’s all completely unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. Whether it’s something I ever want to hear much more of is a different matter! There was apparently a follow-up recorded, which was snatched in mid-air by a crow (don’t ask me, this is only what I was told!) and the recording of the follow-up to the follow-up is a little problematic as “one member is either in jail or dead”. It is unlikely to be an attempt to cash in on the current dance craze. Still, any group that can give a message to their fans of “You’ve wasted our time, I hope we’ve wasted your time and I hope you all die” has clearly got the right attitude to make it big in the megabucks world that is 90’s pop music.

[“Having Fun in an Iron Lung” is available for a blank tape and an SAE from Simon Wood, Fieldside House, London Road, Blewbury, Oxon, OX11 9NY. Ask for a few Lung! stickers while you’re at it.]

Improbable Excuses and Self-Incrimination

• A man suspected of holding up a jewelery store in Liege, Belgium told police he couldn’t have done it because at the time of the robbery he was busy breaking into a school…
• Gregory Rosa of Rhode Island was charged with a series of vending machine robberies after trying to run away from police who saw him acting suspiciously near a machine. He tried to post his $400 bail in nickels and dimes…
• Michael Leonard Jackson escaped from the courthouse while the jury were deliberating their verdict on charges of burglary and theft. Five minutes after he’d gone, the jury came back and found him Not Guilty, as well as Not Present…
• Christopher Plovic, on trial for possessing drugs, claimed to have been searched without a warrant but the police claimed reasonable grounds for suspicion, namely a bulge in his jacket. By chance, Plovic was wearing it that day and handed it to the judge for examination. He saw no bulges, but did find a bag of cocaine in one of the pockets…
• Herbert Freels was found guilty of rape despite producing a note from the victim saying “I was not raped. I did it under my own free will”. Freels claimed he always got his sexual partners to write such notes…
• Kevin L.Jones was arrested in a Richmond, Virginia police station after going to post bail for a friend and staring just a little TOO long at the wanted poster of Kevin L.Jones…
• “Well, officer, the money was in this bag marked SWAG”. Anthony Colella of Brooklyn made a clean getaway after robbing a New York bank of $1,300. Unfortunately, a passer-by stopped him and mugged him of the cash so what did Colella do? Go straight to the nearest police station to report the mugging…
• Another bungling bank robber was Elwood Nolden of Pittsburgh. Again, the robbery went smoothly but he left behind the note demanding the money, which he’d written on the back of a sub-poena addressed to him, ordering him to appear in court on another charge…
• According to the Weekly World News, an un-named suspect in an identification parade was caught after he blew his cover. The candidates were asked to say “Gave me all your money – and I need some change in quarters and dimes”, a phrase used in the crime. The first two said it ok, but the third blurted out, “That isn’t what I said!”…

Sheer Stupidity!

• Police called to a Boston suburb found Winston Treadway writhing in agony down an alley after a shoplifting attempt went wrong. The live lobsters he’d stuffed into his trouser pockets got a little nervous. A pair of pliers removed the crustaceans, surgeons spent three hours limiting the damage and charges were not pressed – “the poor guy’s had enough trouble for one day” said the store owner…
• In Mexico City, Luis Medina was arrested carrying a stolen TV down a street in the middle of the night. When he returned with the officers to the place from which he’d taken it, they discovered Medina had burgled his own house. He had planned to rob his next door neighbour but got confused because “it was a moonless night and very, very dark…My flashlight batteries went dead”. Obviously, no burglary charge was possible but he was hit with “going equipped to commit a felony” instead…
• Two 15-year old boys from Kansas City were charged with stealing cars after stopping off to make a phone call at a police station, which they’d mistaken for a convenience store. Due to the icy conditions, the boys’ attempted getaway was at the sedate pace of 10 mph.
• Donald Thomas faces up to 20 years in prison after escaping from a Rhode Island jail on day 89 of a 90 day sentence for disorderly conduct…
• Police charged Kenneth Lang with the robbery of a 7-11 store in Maine earlier this year. Lang initially entered the store in a stocking mask but took it off when he found he couldn’t see. He then forced the shop assistant to put money into a paper bag, but the bottom dropped out of the bag. Lang ordered the assistant to pick up all the coins. They then argued about whether the store safe could be opened. While this was going on, Lang also told the till attendant to serve the queue of customers carrying purchases which had built up. When told he had all the store’s change, Lang gave several customers the right money from his bag. On leaving the store, he took a wrong turning and eventually ended up back in front of it, where he was arrested…
• Earl Latham escaped from prison in Maryland, and went straight to his mother’s house. This was the first place the police looked. Earl answered the door and when told he was busted, replied “You’ve got the wrong guy, I’m not Earl Latham, I’m Earl…Smith”. Police arrested him anyway after he was unable to spell ‘Smith’…

Our (Un)lucky Day…

• Stephen Baker of Vancouver, Washington was hospitalised with a gun-shot wound in January this year – eye-witnesses said Baker had hit s man’s car with a snowball from a bridge. The man got out of his car, fired one shot at Baker from a rifle, got back into his car and drove off…
• Minnesotan police officer Angus Perkins arrested a 23-year old woman in a bar after she tried to pass stolen cheques belonging to her “boyfriend”, one Angus Perkins…
• A similar story is that of Raymond Snyder, who stole a blank payroll cheque and selected the name ‘Miles F.Huml’ from the local telephone directory to fill the space. Unfortunately, the clerk in the bank where he went to cash it was MRS Miles F.Huml…
• Leslie Steven Slovak was sentenced to a year in jail for aiding a felony despite having given police a perfect description of the man who held up the bank where Slovak was standing in line. He just forgot to mention that (purely by chance, I should add) it happened to be his brother…

Ten Least Justifiable Homicides

1. Victim didn’t want the fan on in their apartment.
2. 13-year old girl had squirted him in the face with a water-pistol.
3. Someone accidentally stepped on his toe at a disco
   (when asked about the murder, the suspect said “which murder?”).
4. Victim took too long using a payphone.
5. 3 year-old daughter wouldn’t finish her portion of chocolate cake
   (so her mother forced the entire gateau, piece by piece, down the girl’s throat!).
6. Argument over which pots and pans restaurant cooks use.
7. Neighbour had failed to clean up after her kittens.
8. Garage didn’t service BMWs.
9. Who got the larger portion of a plate of chips.
10. The correct way to serve a roasted pig
    (Papua New Guinea: 2,000 warriors battled for four days leaving five dead and dozens injured. The pig was due to have been served at a peace ceremony…).

The inspiration for this article came half-way through a film called ‘Mankillers’, after I suddenly realised it was such a good movie I’d spent the past ten minutes tossing a coin (for the record, 49 heads, 42 tails). In Trash cinema, boring does not mean the same thing as bad. Ed Wood Jr. may have made some monumentally awful movies (‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’ has become a classic) but they were boring. Being dull is the worst crime in the book: I’d rather watch a film that annoys the hell out of me for whatever reason (‘The Accused’ and most of Linnea Quigley’s movies, albeit for slightly different reasons) than one which sends me to sleep. So
here, more as a warning than anything else, is a list of ten films each of which is the cinematic equivalent of a handful of barbiturates.

Ilsa, the Wicked Warden

All time king of the B-movie (where B stands for ‘boring’) has got to be Jess Franco. Though occasionally capable of turning out a classy shocker, as he did with ‘Faceless’, this can be regarded as a fluke : given the man’s huge output, sooner or later he would make a good movie entirely by chance. This is just a sample, many other movies of his could have been chosen – it’s nothing but a succession of totally uninteresting atrocities (half of which are inflicted on the director’s wife, f’heaven’s sake!), and even Dyanne Thorne can do nothing to enliven it.

Wings of Desire

Wim Wenders’ movies are never very exciting at the best of times – ‘Paris, Texas’ takes two hours to build to the highpoint of Nastassja not taking her clothes off – but this one takes the biscuit in the Art-House category because a lot of invisible dead people walking around Berlin just isn’t in the slightest bit interesting. It’s shot in B&W too, for that extra added dimension.

Driller Killer

A sample ‘video nasty’ – most of the ones on the list are bad, at least in the artistic sense, but this is one we ought to be grateful to the police for suppressing. Watching someone slowly go insane accompanied by a gratingly dull sub-punk soundtrack isn’t my idea of fun, nor is watching down and outs getting cheap special effects inflicted on them.

Transylvania 6-5000

Most horror comedies sacrifice the horror element and play everything for laughs. ‘Transylvania 6-5000’ adopts the unique approach of not having any humour in it either. Jeff Goldblum has no talent for comedy at all (cf ‘The Tall Guy’ for proof) and once you strip away the sheer ludicrousness of the plot (leaving it ludicrousnessless?), what have you got? Geena Davis in gratuitous lingerie. This is not quite enough to sustain interest for 90 minutes.

The Streetwalker

Walerian Borowczyk is another director who didn’t make it onto the short list for ‘Robocop 2’. Plot is usually sacrificed on the high altar of sex, nowhere more so than in this movie, but whaddya looking for
from a film starring Sylvia Kristel and Joe d’Allesandro? Hell, it’s even normal sex which is not what we’ve come to expect from Borowczyk – where’re the nuns?

The Comic

Mention this film to anyone who was at the Splatterfest in January 1990 and watch them blanch. Never before has a film had a leading man so devoid of charisma, talent or wit. This is the only film in the list that I’ve seen twice, purely because I couldn’t believe it was that dull. It was, solely due to this lead performance. When I was in primary school, we used to put on plays that were acted with more venom.

The Trip

Like wow, man! A really beautiful experience, you dig? Is it hell! Perhaps I approached this film with a bad attitude i.e. without a kilo of Columbian talcum-powder up each nostril. Far more effective than ‘Just Say No’, try to imagine a bad acid house promo video played very slowly and you’ll begin to appreciate what Roger Corman’s psychedelic cash-in has to offer.

Assault of the Killer Bimbos

The ultimate case of a movie failing to live up to the title. Two vacuous, talentless go-go dancers (art imitating life here?) go on the run, pick up a vacuous, talentless waitress and meet three vacuous, talentless surfer dudes. One of the bimbos looks slightly (but not enough) like Wendy James. A vacuous, talentless ripoff of Russ Meyer’s ‘Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!’.

Mondo Topless

Speaking of Russ, he’s made some duff stuff in his time, beside diamonds like ‘Faster’ and ‘Supervixens’. This dud is a ‘documentary’ with some not especially pretty go-go dancers strutting their stuff and discussing their work. Those that know Meyer won’t need telling the girls are top-heavy babes but if that’s not your scene, forget this bit of social realism.

555

One of the problems with the easy availability of video-tech is that any jerk can now go out and make a movie, without having to demonstrate any competence whatsoever. Hence the appearance on the scene of a lot of shot-on-video turkeys – again, this is just a sample, it could just as well have been ‘Redneck Zombies’. Never mind gun control, we demand licences for video cameras!

The Case for (the) Prosecution

Ok, so let’s be perfectly open about this. Assuming it’s all real (a point open to some doubt), ‘Faces of Death’ contains the following ‘highlights’: lots of autopsies, a man being eaten by an alligator, concentration camp footage, car accidents, people committing suicide, seal clubbing, more autopsies and criminals being executed by gas, electric chair and beheading. This is accompanied by a thin veneer of philosophical moralising on the voice-over and a jokey music track that ranges from ‘Peer Gynt’ to ‘Old MacDonald had a Farm’ (for the headless chicken sequence). This is all real, folks, and it’s supposed to be entertainment. Stop the human race, I want to get off.

My first grouch is on artistic grounds. IT TAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SKILL AT ALL TO MAKE A MONDO MOVIE. A good documentary can make a dull subject interesting by visual skill and intelligent interpretation but the leaden style of Mondo makes even the most interesting of subjects, life itself, dull. Anyone can make a Mondo – all you do is find something unpleasant and point a camera at it. They’re not judged on plot or characters, because they don’t have any. The only thing that people are interested in is the depiction of the most gruesome, grim and downright sickening sights, no matter how pedestrian the technique or leaden the commentary and that’s what distinguishes the most notorious Mondos from the also rans. They are exploitation at it’s most crude – you don’t have to pay for a script, you don’t pay for any actors, all you need is access to newsreel footage. ‘Faces of Death’ is so crude, it fails to even make it into the so-bad-it’s-good category (and if you want that sort of thing, there’s plenty of examples of schlock cinema out there that don’t find it necessary to torture animals), it just becomes sad.

The crucial thing that distinguishes Mondo from documentary is the sense of purpose possessed by the latter. While Mondo is there primarily to ‘entertain’, a documentary’s first priority is informative or educative, though as mentioned above, the best do so in an interesting manner. Far too many Mondo movies tell us nothing that we didn’t already know or couldn’t work out for ourselves. They have a sense of gratuitousness missing in real documentaries: no doubt a Mondo about child abuse would feature actual footage of a child being abused!!!, albeit with a disapproving commentary.

This doesn’t stop documentaries being graphic. I recently came across a newsreel, dating from the very end of World War II, rejoicing in the title of ‘Nazi War Atrocities’. It simply depicted the conditions in, and inhabitants of, one of the concentration camps. Very Mondo stuff, not least because of the tacky video cover (the company releasing it rejoiced in the name of ‘Waldheim Productions’!) but it had a purpose, to let the rest of the world know what had been going on in Germany. This purpose remains unaltered even now – it certainly brought home to me the reality of what had gone on in Belsen & Auschwitz.

Some people argue that an interest in death is natural, and this is true – you only have to watch people slowing down as they go past a car-crash to see ghoulish tendencies in action. However, mankind has lots of tendencies that we shouldn’t be proud of and mondo movies are the modern equivalent of the Roman circus, throwing Christians to the lions. It’s guilty of encouraging us to believe violent death is normal and it’s this desensitization which is the most worrying thing, and for me the biggest argument for banning Mondos.

It happens in fictional movies as well – listen to the perpetual cries of ‘Bigger! Bigger!’ from Hollywood, or watch effects that seemed incredible at the time elicit stifled yawns when repeated in other movies. However, it poses no moral problems and is a good stimulus to film-makers who must constantly exercise their imaginations seeking new ideas for the FX team to simulate with latex and food colouring. But with Mondo movies, the directors have to sneak ever closer to the boundary, which no documentary should cross, between recording events and arranging them. There’s plenty of evidence certain Mondos contain deliberately set up footage and even if the result isn’t included in the final movie, how would it feel to know that someone was deliberately killed for your viewing pleasure? And what, in the final outcome, is the difference between that and the ultimate Mondo, a snuff movie?

(Jim McLennan)

But on the other hand…

When I told Jim I’d like to write something on mondo movies for TC, he wrote “Mondo movies have no appeal for me whatsoever. I don’t believe them to be entertaining or informative and it takes no artistic skill to generate disgust by pointing the camera at firing squads”. I disagree, I find mondo movies often entertaining, occasionally informative and generally well-directed. To deal with each point individually;

a) Entertainment I do not enjoy watching people suffer. I do not condone animal slaughter in the name of entertainment. I’m rather disturbed that it is in the sphere of human nature to want to watch people dying. But I like mondo films. I don’t really see this as an anomaly – all you d’Amato and Deodato fans watch the same stuff (what makes ‘Buried Alive’ famous – it’s autopsy scenes. And, ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ fans, here’s one mondo fan who thinks you’re a lot sicker than me). The simple fact is that either through morbid curiosity or a desire for bizarre entertainment, most mondo films are fascinating. I’m able to watch ‘Faces of Death’ again long after I’ve given up on even trying to watch a Freddy film, and I’ll certainly not forget it in a hurry. Mondo films are the ultimate in horrific entertainment. Moreover, if you don’t watch mondo films then you’re missing out on some of the funniest scenes ever committed to celluloid. No, I’m not going into an aren’t-road-accidents-amusing routine; there genuinely is humour in these films. ‘Fear’ takes us into the magical world of the placenta-eater, as grainy footage of a birth cuts to a man holding a frying-pan. “We’re vegetarians, but this is OK because it’s so natural”. Apparently you have to take off all your clothes to fully appreciate the placenta; an interview with the dining party afterwards reveals that the meal ended in an orgy. “Vive la placenta” says his good lady wife.

‘Let me Die a Woman’ features Dr Leo Wolfman, a trainee Francis Gross, who introduces grainy black-and-white stock footage from old porno movies. Several (genuine) transsexuals attend Dr Wolfman’s group therapy classes as he sits in front of an ever-expanding array of certificates. We’re given dramatic reconstructions of men performing their own sex-change operations and diagrams showing the difference between men and women. I could go on (the ever-so-convincing seance in ‘Faces of Death’ that involves a superimposed blue ring, an echo chamber and much lip quivering springs to mind), but the point is made. When they’re not being stupid, however, mondo movies are being shocking, and that, when there is so much safe and reassuring rubbish being peddled as entertainment about, can only be a good thing.

b) Informative. Well, we all know (or can guess) what a dead turtle looks like, and I’ll be the first to admit that the mondo movie uses the shield of “information” as an excuse to show shocking material, but these films are often genuinely informative. ‘The Killing of America’ gives us a potted history of American assassins, with facts and figures that I’ve checked out and are accurate. ‘Mondo Magic’ has incredible scenes of psychic surgery, something I’d read about and had previously assumed was some kind of hoax. Even the ridiculous ‘Fear’ takes a look at people’s hangups that is an eye-opener.

c) Artistic Skill Now, we’re not talking about artistic merit here – even most mainstream horror films fall down there – but surely artistic skill is the ability to deliver what is promised by the type of film that is being made: ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ is grainy, roughly made and all-too-obviously budget-less, but it succeeds in it’s intention, which is scaring you stupid. Mondo movies have a higher hit-rate than conventional horror films – they almost always succeed in their intention of grossing out the viewer. Therefore the maker’s skill is evident. It is indeed easier to get a “cheap” shock by filming a firing-squad than by faking something up, but that is the point of the genre – the viewer knows (or is supposed to believe) that it is real.

My own objection to mondo movies is not concerned with their quality, but their presence. I don’t think they are intrinsically harmful, but I do think that it’s a shame that they need to exist. I enjoy them, and don’t mind defending them, but I think I’d be happier if everything had stopped with, or preferably before, Mondo Cane. I’ve seen a man reduced to tears watching Mondo Magic and a woman vomiting watching ‘Faces of Death’ and I think that is too far to go in the name of entertainment. If censorship is necessary then mondo films are (were) the first to go. You may not have the option of watching ‘Mondo Magic’, but at least this time you’re missing something you really shouldn’t need to see.

(David Thomson)


Bloodhounds of Broadway (Howard Brookner) – Flinging together nearly every genre under the sun, and possessing a different subplot for each, this musical-comedy-drama-gangster-melodrama movie takes place on Broadway on New Year’s Eve, 1928. An all-star cast: Rutger Hauer, Matt Dillon and Madonna (who could do with singing less and acting more) but Randy Quaid steals the show as a perpetual loser who hits a winning streak just after selling his body to a mad doctor. While I can see why this was an expensive flop in the States, it’s still a lot of fun, with snappy dialogue and a nice sense of period. Let’s be charitable, assume it’s not intended to be serious and give it 7/10.

The Brave Little Toaster (Jerry Rees) – Cutesy cartoon feature, in which a group of household appliances embark on a quest to find their master. The animation is simple but really quite effective, managing to give inanimate objects more personality than certain actors I could name, making the idea of a desk-lamp having a flashback plausible enough. Despite possibly religious subtexts, about the appliance which died in order to save us, and did rise again, it rarely descends into schmaltz. Be warned : the musical numbers totally overload the soundtrack! 7/10.

The Exorcist III (William Peter Blatty) – Based on Blatty’s ‘Legion’, this follows the trend, started in TCM III, of pretending part II didn’t exist (probably wisely here). And while it ain’t up to the original there are some neat moments, including probably the shock moment of 1990, albeit accompanied by more cliches-per-minute than any recent movie. One benefit of devil-movies is that divine (or other) intervention solves a lot of plot problems: how else could an audience swallow a serial killer taking over a priest’s corpse and using it to possess nurses? The ending might just remind you of another movie… 6/10.

Ghost (Jerry Zucker) – All my fears about this film were confirmed with the opening shot: Patrick Swayze without his shirt on. Things didn’t get better – the only saving grace of the celebrated ‘potting-wheel’ scene was that it’s the closest we’ll ever get to seeing Demi Moore mud-wrestle. Then Swayze’s character, Sam Wheat, gets shot and things, understandably, begin to improve. I’m no real fan of Whoopi Goldberg, but as the fake psychic Sam uses to contact fiancee Molly (Moore) is really very good and with a great sense of timing. A few problems with the plot (if ghosts float through walls without trying, how can they sit on chairs and stand on raised floors?) are niggling, but overall it’s not nearly as bad as I feared it might be. 6/10.

The House Where Evil Dwells (Kevin Connor) – Susan George and Eddie Albert move into a Japanese house where, unbeknownst to them, the previous occupant had committed murder i.e. finding his wife in bed with his best friend, hubby chops off both their heads and kills himself. When Doug McLure turns up, history looks like repeating itself… A good story is drawn out too long, and the ending is hardly worth the wait. 3/10. (MM)

Hell Island (Dimitri Logothetis) – Low-grade, low-budget, mutilate-the-teenagers movie but possessing some charm, a few messy effects and an irreverent atmosphere. For reasons too complex to explain, a group of kids end up on Alcatraz getting offed by the spirit of a cannibal who has possessed one of their number. Toni Basil plays a dead rock star, Devo provide the music, the teenagers bicker realistically and the BBFC take out 1 min 14 secs. Nothing spectacularly new but pretty good for the genre. 7/10.

I Hired A Contract Killer (Aki Kaurism„ki) – Those expecting the follow-up to ‘I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle’ will be disappointed, as this is no gore-fest. Instead, it’s a quite wonderful, dotty little black comedy about a French clerical worker in London who hires an assassin to help him commit suicide. Jean-Pierre L‚aud is superbly dead-pan as the clerk and Kaurismaki has a good foreigner’s eye for London, which never looked so grimy. Hearing some of the stories about the film’s making (Ken Colley, who plays the assassin, claims tongue-in-cheek that the only directorial instruction he got was “Act better”), you wonder how it got made at all – alcohol apparently played a large part! Unlikely to get the release it deserves, Channel 4 helped fund it, so it’ll probably turn up there at some point. Definitely worth watching. 9/10

In The Line of Duty (Yuen Wo Ping) – Those in the know predict Donnie Yen may be to the 90’s what Jackie Chan was to the 80’s and Bruce Lee to the 70’s: the martial arts star. On the evidence of this film, originally titled ‘In the Line of Duty 4’ (confusing, huh? The first three didn’t get released here), they may well be right as it’s serious kick-ass, beating-up-the drug-dealing-CIA-agents, which keeps the plot zipping along on a stream of incredible action sequences. But never mind Donnie, even more impressive to this novice was Cynthia Khan, known to her friend as ‘Sheer’ (ok, she’s not, I made that up). Forget Cynthia “China O’Brien” Rothrock, Cynthia Khan (are all Cynthias experts in Martial Arts?) is prettier and a far more entertaining fighter. Perhaps this movie should be retitled ‘The Wrath of Khan’? 8/10.

Night Sun (The Brothers Taviani) – Nastassja’s latest movie confirms her post-“Revolution” retreat from Hollywood, with another classy French-German-Italian co-production. Also starring Julian Sands (dubbed into Italian), the first third is the part of most interest to Kinski-watchers as she plays the woman who causes Sands to enter a monastery. The rest of the film deals with his struggle to achieve peace and tranquility in the face of all that fortune can hurl at him, as despite his efforts he becomes a living saint. Art-house fodder, certainly, and while more Kinski and less clothes might have helped, it’s another film she needn’t be ashamed of and should help her commercial rehabilitation.

ART : **** ENTERTAINMENT : *** KINSKI CONTENT : ** FLESH : None!

Nikita (Luc Besson) – After the big yawn of ‘The Big Blue’, Besson goes back to his ‘Subway’ roots with this thriller, which could easily be titled ‘Assault of the French Killer Bimbos on Smack’ for the video market, tho’ to be honest there’s only one bimbo. Her death is faked by the government, who train her as an assassin and then let her hang around for months between hits. Very stylish, as you’d expect, very blue (in the colour sense – the nipple count, at one, is the lowest in ages for a French movie), a little overlong at 116 minutes and nicely violent with a warped twist, as with the government’s ‘cleaner’ who carries a case of sulphuric acid around to help tidy up the corpses… 7/10.

Sex Androide (Alain Braud/Marina Weingarten) – French, low-budget, sex ‘n’ death film in several segments, of greatly varying quality. The first takes voodoo as it’s theme, with a man stripping and abusing a Barbie doll, while a woman in a bar suffers the effects – it’s neatly handled, with nice camerawork. In the most effective one, which after a slow start is the best bit of low-budget nastiness I’ve seen, a zombie mutilates, bends, folds and tears a victim (female and without much clothing, naturally!). Eye gouging, breast slicing and tongue piercing are among the delights on offer, and provide a highly dubious 20 minutes with the unsynched sound and cheap video working to provide a grimly realistic feel.

The zombie make-up gradually started to look like an executioner’s mask: it was a great relief when the corpse of the victim sat up at the end, and the two zombies wandered off arm in arm. Unfortunately the following piece is just stupid – a grieving widow at her husband’s coffin is attacked by his vampiric corpse, has her clothes ripped off and is bitten in the neck. She then becomes a vampire (or at least, gets some white makeup on her face) and does a sexy dance to two Tina Turner songs. Absolutely pointless, though after the preceding segment anything would be an anti-climax. 2-10/10 for the varying segments.

Stripped to Kill (Katt Shea Ruben) – Take your pick, this is either a murder thriller with gratuitous strip-tease sequences, or a soft-porn video with “subliminal plot” [phrase courtesy D.Drake]. Even if they stop before things get too steamy, it’s probably better to concentrate on the nekkid ladies since the identity of the murderer is obvious from the video box. Average thriller with nothing to recommend it beyond the bimbos. 5/10.

Zombie 90 (Andreas Schnaar) – ‘Zombie 90’, subtitled ‘Extreme Pestilence’, is no ‘Nekromantik’ – it’s not even ‘Rabid Grannies’ – yet as an exercise in Euro-excess it has some cheap & cheerful charm and thankfully lacks the misogynistic feel of their earlier ‘Violent Shit’. Undead on the rampage is a full plot description, and the movie is very nearly sunk early on by the worst dubbed soundtrack I’ve ever seen, which tries to be funny and fails miserably. Fortunately, after about 30 minutes, nearly all the dialogue stops and the rest of the film is a series of set pieces of effects work, of varying effectiveness from laughable to impressive, all of which use a lot, and I mean a lot, of arterial spurting. The camerawork is shaky, with things and people getting in the way too often, but hell, it’s heart’s in the right place – right out in the open being waved at the camera and chewed on by zombies. Don’t expect ‘Total Recall’ and you’ll quite possibly enjoy it. 7/10.