Piranha 3DD

Piranha 3DD

Directed by: John Gulager

Crap, 2012

USA 70min

“Welcome to Rock Bottom!”

                                            David Hasslehoff, Piranha 3DD

  

I didn’t want to write about this flick here, because it’s going to stand out like a sore thumb, a nail in my eye each time I see that it’s on here… but this terrible, terrible movie is kind of the of stuff I have to answer for when people question why I watch horror.  And that makes me mad.

So why the hell am I watching this flick to begin with? Well I was bored senseless, was at my house in the countryside, and didn’t have enough stuff with me that I wanted to watch. Looking thorough the pile of watchers I have out here, this one struck my eye… Oh, that one… that disc I picked up as a “filler” in a five for a tenner box last summer… So, I decided to see if it was just as terrible as people have said – and with that said, never forget that I’ve got mates who hold Texas Chainsaw 3D and Apollo 18 as great flicks, movies I through where at the best mediocre, and THEY said that this film sucked! But despite their warnings I ventured into this stinker filled with fake optimism and the idea of “Well Feast was kind of cool, can it really be that bad…?”

Yes, Piranha 3DD is bad. Really bad…this is the kind of shit that gives genre cinema a bad rep, the kind of movie that makes stuff like the Hatched films look like an arthouse movie! Why didn’t I listen to reason and not waste just over an hour with this crap?

So what was Ok?

I really liked the recap and use of backstory as Victoria Falls, once Spring break capital of US, has fallen into oblivion and abandonment.  Then the neat first five minute appearance of Clu Galager and Garry Busey and the dead cow… but then it all went the same way that the dead cow did…. It got slightly, slightly interesting when Christopher Lloyd made his appearance, but the lame-ass back to the future jokes don’t belong here. The single best two scenes, which probably where lost completely on the target key audiences, where : the brilliant Wes Craven Nightmare on ElmStreet bathtub dream sequence, which at the same time doubles for a Cronenberg’s Shivers homage, and the fun use of Spielberg’s “shark attack” camera/focus shift as Jaws becomes a fact. Here used as a gag featuring Hasslehoff and the piranha attack. But that’s just about it… it’s not even a fun quirky tease like the first one, just fucking dumb… and insulting.

So on to the bad… well, neither you nor I really have the time for that; let’s just list them down as this…

The neat first five minute appearance of Clu Galager and Garry Busey and the dead cow, which goes south when they start blowing stuff up with dead cow farts… and that totally non explanatory migration of “Piranha eggs!" Oh boy…

David Hasslehoff, who seems to be stuck in a nasty cycle of taking parts where he mocks himself and possibly thinks that he’s ironizing his classic Mitch role (or as here and in Sponge Bob Square Pants: The Movie amongst others...), himself, without realizing that the jokes on him!

Way tired use of the classic overused GREED over SANITY excuse, just like The Hoff’s “ironic” appearances it was fun the first time around, this far up the road it’s just lazy.

Cameos, just for the sake of cameos. Someone please put Ving Rahmes out of his misery… and what’s up with the totally stupid rip off of other better movies… as if none of us ever saw Rose MacGowan’s machinegun leg in Planet Terror?

A male character performs self-castration and doesn’t even hesitate, or show signs of pain, and the dick joke was used in first flick, so now you are ripping yourself off too.

The movie doesn’t even have real end-credits… there’s a stupid Hasslehoff shtick, then some outtakes and more Hasslehoff shtick for no real reason but to fill out the shitty movies runtime, as it’s not just barely an hour long without all the tagged-on-to-the-end crap. Sadly only proving even further that Hasslehoff is completely unaware that he’s being exploited too.

The totally lame-ass set up for a further sequel… Does John Gulager have no self-esteem? Is he happy playing middleman to what is definitely going to be a total failure of a franchise? Didn’t’ he have enough guts to get in there and make something unique with this… as Alexandre Aja does with every “reboot” or “remake” swizzle he get’s in on. Which is why his films constantly turn up on “best of the year” lists!

There’s not even any real disturbing gross-out moments here either! Remember that - hair tangled in the boat propeller and face torn off - moment from Aja’s original? Well that’s the kind of fun and shock horror that Aja brought with him. In this one there’s not one such moment at all, and No, a piranha in some fat stoners ass doesn’t count. If his whole goddamned system of entrails came pouring out of his ass along with the fish, then yeah, but no. Oh, and that’s the same character who several times fucks the “out water nozzle” because it’s “Insanely wet”. Just another reason to suspect that the writers are a bunch of fifteen-year-old geezers too clueless and in need of a wank for their own good…. But the final piece of evidence to prove this…

Piranha hiding in woman’s vagina, and biting her boyfriends dick! Come on, are they even remotely familiar with the female anatomy? I guess this is what you get when a bunch of “blokes” sit down to write a script and obviously don’t have a clue about how it works at all. I can get behind a lot of crazy shit for the name of genre, but a mutant monster fish hiding, and growing, inside a chick’s vagina and she’s not supposed to feel that it is up inside of her isn’t one of them.

The total lack of “tongue in cheek”, tease and play with genre conventions that the first film had. Whatever you may have thought of Alexandre Aja’s Piranha3D back in 2010, it at least had fun and toyed with the whole premise of chicks in bathing suits and female objectification, almost ironizing and mocking what sadly has become a genre convention. Just tossing a shitload of big-titted women and voyeuristic crotch shots on screen, is just a load of bullshit, and you know what, so is the seriously misogynistic “Cooch-Cam”. Before you shout hypocrite, just let me point out that there’s a difference in nudity in seventies exploitation and something deliberately made with in the system by a company once owned by Disney.

So now I guess we all know that the DD in Piranha 3DD really stands for Dumb-Dumb.

Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasure

Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasure

Original title: A Estranha Hospedaria dos Prazeres

Directed by: Marcelo Motta - (co directed, unaccredited, by José Mojica Marins)

Brazil, 1976

Horror/Surrealism, 81min

After a way to long, but superbly surrealistic, what-the-fucking-fuck opening, crosscutting seductively dancing women dressed in equivoque nightgowns, rhythmic beat club Congo-drumming and screaming shots of naked witches, apes and old wrinkly cronies – all the cheapest possible joke shop masks – this metaphorical stand off between Good and Evil where Coffin Joe stands, resurrected form the dead, yet again! (All of which can be seen in glorious colour below!)

Jose Mojica Marins makes his entrance in his Coffin Joe guise, and he does this for a reason. As customary, he kicks off the movie with some of his trademark philosophical ponderings.

“Live to die or die to live? Is there a correct answer? No! Only doubts! Only deductions. Only the certainty of the emptiness! Loneliness is desperately searching for everything or the nothing in the vastness of the dark. For the answer to this riddle would be the end of the mystery. The end of eternity’s secret, the apogee of happiness, before an accomplished mission because man would be face to face with his biggest conquest, the awakening of the own origin itself.”

Sounds fair right? OK, so his line of thought is not to easy to follow this time around, but you know what, it’s Marins trait, so just listen, take in what you can and who knows, someday you may make a connection or a link or something in what the said may make sense… until then, let’s just roll with it. So far you may be right to presume that this is a Coffin Joe piece, in some ways that’s right, but at the same time, and if you are familiar with his works you will know, that this is the way that most of José Mojica Marins movies start. With some food for thought, an appetizer, a clue to what the theme of the movie will be. Such as his existential ramblings and desire to find a woman fit to birth him a child, as to secure his bloodline, his being, his existence. His mark in time if you want, and definitive traits of the three films that make up the Coffin Joe trilogy: À Mela-noite Levarei Sua Alma (At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul) 1964, Esta noite Encarnarei no Teu Cadáver (This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse) 1967 and the final instalment, Encarnação do Demônio (Embodiment of Evil) 2008. Other than those films he merely acted as a presenter, a host, a figure of authority for Brazilian genre film in the same way as Alfred Hitchcock presents, perhaps at his finest in the excellent O Estranho Mundo de Zé do Zaixão (Strange World of Coffin Joe) 1968. From here on, as the main narrative starts, Coffin Joe is out of the movie. From here on Marins plays a complete different character, the landlord of the strange hostel of naked pleasure.

From here on we go to a magnificent space model and a series of even more questions, unanswerable questions, before the story kicks in. It’s Friday the 13th, answering an ad in the paper for position as receptionist at a nearby Hostel several people gather with hopes of finding a job. After being hand picked and hypnotized by the Landlord [Marins] the workers are assigned to attending the “Guests” of the Hostel. One by one the guests of the evening drop in. It’s a real rogues gallery and amongst them we find a gambler, an “adulterous” couple, a suicidal man, a seductive con artist, a biker gang with a lust to party, get high, and laid and a bunch of bandits all pack into the hostel and its many rooms, up to the point where the Landlord has to refuse patrons entry to the hostel.

A storm rages outside and finally moral is tested when one of the staff finds a loaded wallet on the floor, but as she stretches out to grab it, it turns into a big terrifying spider. It may be one of the longest build-ups ever, but somewhere around midpoint the biker gang get naked, the adulterous couple start having it off, the gambler makes panic decisions and the bandits start to count their loot!

Well to be honest, the movie really only adds characters to the rooms of the hostel, without any real logic to who the Landlord let’s stay and not. A man who crashes his car get’s out of the wreck and wanders into the lobby. The Landlord rejects him, and despite the man’s stern warning of “Do you not know who I am?” Marins sends him on his way. This tiny of subplots evokes some kind of mini-threat as the man threatens to come back with officials to see to it that the establishment is punished for sending him back out into the rain!

So you have all these patrons going about their business in their respective rooms, shagging, drinking, gambling, wrecking others, and their own, lives… until the clock strikes doom and they are all interrupted, one by one, by the cold hard stare - accompanied by crash edit and screeching audio - of the Landlord, who questions their acts! The suicidal man get’s a second chance after seeing his fate as dead, the con-artist see’s how his ways lead to a deadly triangle, of jealousy and the bandits see how they are shot down in blaze of glory as police gun them down, bikers all have a fatal accident. All of it shown in stylishly surrealism with the most god-awful rendition of Auld Lang Thyme ever warbled out on the soundtrack.

But the real question is… Is the Landlord presenting the guests with foreboding visions of what’s to come, hence giving them the chance to redeem themselves… or is he in fact showing them the terrifying deeds and events that lead them to his little establishment!

Yes, you guessed it right, as so much of José Mojica Marins world; Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasure is all about symbolism and deeper meaning, the fantastic approach to the subject matters taken by Marins. The hostel is as you probably already figured out a metaphor for purgatory. Hardly surprising and a recurrent theme in all the Coffin Joe movies, the vision of what is to come! The visions we see here, are all renditions of what lead the characters to end up in purgatory, or the strange hostel of naked pleasure – because almost everyone there gets naked at one point other. But it’s not all gloom and doom, one patron, Miriam, is saved as the light comes and summons her out of the hostel.  As she steps towards the psychedelic lights, her name vanishes off the Landlords book of souls as she walks out the door accompanied by a really off kilter rendition of Handel’s Hallelujah.  

Finally, the last string to tie it all together, is pulled. The man from the car accident returns to the scene of the crime along with armed police. They exit the vehicle and the man stares confused off screen. “But it was here… I swear it was here…” he blurts as the coppers laugh at his confusion and explain that the old cemetery has always been there.  The landlord fades in as he walks the cemetery and up to the front porch of the hostel. The Vacancy sign appears and we understand that all’s set for the next batch of guests, although the Landlord has one last shocker up his sleeve for us…        

The movie moves at a slow pace, and just like the opening segment, almost every scene goes on for just a tad to long… but it’s Mojica Marins, and for that reason alone it never really gets tedious, as you never know where he’s going to take the next twist of the plot. Because even though it is a terribly thin plot, there is one and it does lead forth. Marins doesn’t get up to much mischief either, he’s just checking people in and shocking the life out of them with his stunning insights… so I can certainly see how people may see this as a rather bland José Mojica Marins movie, but at the same time, there is so much great stuff going on here. Much of the film is classic Marins, with reptiles, insects, fab lighting possibly taping into a Mario Bava-ish prime colours approach, the uncannily “to close close-ups” of Marins unibrowed eyes, super imposed images and a great, great mix of eroticism, horror and surrealism.

Co-writer Rubens F. Luchetti had previously worked with Marins and would again on a few occasions along the road, all of them collaborations with the common denominator that they where something of celluloid quilting’s of fragments held together by the wraparound stories that bookended the movies.

The soundtrack to Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasure sounds like woozy discarded Residents filler, but delightfully catchy and brooding! Marin’s regular cinematographer Giorgio Attilli comes up with some spectacular in-camera effects, blood rain, fire on screen, and that great lighting. There’s spiffy and effective editing! Audio that crashes into the soundtrack like a train wreck, all to that effect as this is most certainly what Mojicas and editor Nilcemar Leyert where after. The edits where intended to shock the audience, and keep them on their feet, which is exactly what they do. Nudity, freaky lighting, insects and reptiles, and open-heart surgery shots and a skull that cries blood in guilt are just some of the sights that José Mojica Marins serves up in this low budget, but at times, highly impressive piece of suggestive surreal horror!

As far as I'm concerned, either you get behind José Mojica Marins visions and support it full-hearted, or you stick to watching ludicrous mainstream generic bullshit and never dare walk the alternative side of genre cinema again. 

VIVA JOSÉ MOJICA MARINS!

La mujer murciélago [The Batwoman]

The Batwoman

Original title: La mujer murciélago

Directed by: Rene Cardona

Mexico, 1968

Lucha Libre/Horror/Sci-Fi, 80min

Many where the collaborations between Rene Cardona and producer, screenwriter, actor Alfredo Salazar, and many a great film did their many collaborations birth, movies that make up the cream of the crop of Mexican genre!

A passion for mixing and meshing luchadores and luchadoras against any monster conceivable, Salazar’s story for The Batwoman basically reuses the same plot as he’d used several times before (and would again)  - a mad scientist playing God, which becomes the enticing incident for our protagonists to get involved. Mexican lucha libre flicks had in the last couple of years been inspired by James Bond spy escapades and the success of William Dozier’s Batman TV series. Salazar had already proven that he had quite a talent for penning movies that featured strong female protagonists, Las luchadoras contra el medico asesino (Doctor of Doom) 1963, Las luchadoras contra la momia (Wrestling Woman vs. the Aztec Mummy) 1964, La mujer murciélago and later La horripilante  bestia humana (Night of the Bloody Apes) 1969 – all directed by Cardona Snr. All movies have in common that they lead is a strong female character, wrestling takes place both inside and outside of the ring, and villainous scientists with a fiendish plan to take over the world!  Oh and none of the women take any crap from any man.

Batwoman’s alter ego is rich society chick Gloria. Gloria’s secret is that she moonlights as a masked luchadora in the ring, but is also a renowned secret agent who hides her identify behind the mask of Batwoman. None other than the gorgeous Maura Monti plays Batwoman. Monti, another one of those fantastic women who made something of a micro career in Mexican movies, similar to that on Elizabeth Campbell, starred in more than thirty films before retiring when her husband asked her to. So even though she had a short and intensive career, the movies she left behind are great pieces of work.

A string of mysterious murders, leaving strong hefty athletes of Acapulco washed up on the shores, have the police left clueless. Detective Tony Roca [Cardona regular Armando Silvestre] has noted a series of similar crimes in Macao and Hong-Kong. Special agent FBI Mario Robles [Héctor Godoy] is also on the case and has brought in a secret weapon: Batwoman! [Monti] Swanky jazz flows over the soundtrack and a lengthy introduction to Batwoman is given showing her in various sport and physical activities such as horseback riding, and free diving, before she’s into the ring for a few shots of her fighting skills. Making a show stopping entrance only suitable of a secret agent, Batwoman parachutes into town in full outfit, cape, mask, and bikini…

With Batwoman presented, it is time to introduce the antagonists. On a boat called Reptilicus, Mad Surgeon Dr. Williams [Roberto Cañeda – certainly no stranger to playing mad scientists in Mexican genre pieces] complete with loony assistant called Igor, is busy at work trying to create a hideous Fish-Man hybrid! Failing miserably again, he sends out his minions to kidnap yet another athlete – because you kind of know that Dr. Williams is the murdering maniac responsible for all those dead athletes washing up on the shore. Tricking a wrestler known only as “Swedish” [Manuel Cappelito] out on a fishing trip, he’s kidnapped and strapped tightly to Dr. Williams operating table. Triumph at last – although we never see any of the operation, we do get to see the dodgy fish-man swimming along the ocean floor on a monitor as Dr. Williams laughs sardonically and proclaims his experiment a success!

Gloria  - Batwoman to you and me - meets up with Tony Roca and Mario Robles who quite clumsily bring us up to speed – as if you didn’t get what you’d seen in the last ten minutes – and after realizing that they have come to a stand still, as prime suspect Dr. Williams, refuses to let them enter his boat, Batwoman has to don the mask and sneak onto the aquatic laboratory! Sneaking around the place, she just about discovers Dr. Williams’s secret lab and sees what she think might be a Fish-Man hybrid before she’s discovered. Is the end nigh? No my friends this is merely the end of act one, as Batwoman grabs a jug of acid and splashes it across Dr. Williams face and makes her escape as he, bleeding and in pain from his melting face, commands his men to catch her at any cost, she will be his piece de resistance – Fish Woman!

As far as the art of storytelling goes, The Batwoman is something of a delightful mess. It’s terribly straightforward and there’s never really any mystery, as we know from the start whom the villain is, and what his fiendish plan is. But at the end of the day, it’s not really the depth of the story you are here for – albeit extremely psychotronic indeed – you are here for the wild ride, the amazing fish-man experiments, the fiendish villains, the car chases, the quirky surf rock soundtrack and for Maura Monti!

Halfway in, Fish-Man finally makes his appearance, and it’s almost a cheap kaiju feeling to his presence, but by gosh does the action pick up, Fish-man fighting Batwoman underwater is fascinating and certainly rings Creature from the Black Lagoon. He may not have received the credit he was due, but Alfonso Bárcenas Fish-Man is rad, and without any doubt the centrepiece of the movie, along side Monti’s swanky Batwoman that is!

As the climax approaches, Roca, Robles and Batwoman all find themselves captured by Dr. Williams who seems to be getting away with his plan of using Batwoman to create a better Fish-human hybrid, and you’ll never guess who comes to the rescue...

The Batwoman is a butt-kicking funfest filled with some really fantastic moments of Salazar/Cardona madness. Swinging surf music, swirly scene transitions, speedy car chases, underwater action and loads of cheesy fights! Although I’m not sure that it’s Monti in the Batwoman suit during the actual Luchadora sequences, as body shape somewhat changes! Monti totally rocks the as the suave, sexy, tongue in cheek, ass whipping Batwoman, and she most certainly is one of Salazar’s strong female characters, although one odd detail closes the movie. A last minute gag, perhaps included to assure the male audience that they still had the upper hand, a sign that Batwoman has her weakness too… In the vein of classic horror, going for one last shock, Salazar and Cardona go for one last kick as Gloria (Batwoman out of suit) leisurely stands at a bar taking in a drink with the two leading men as they celebrate their victory (as in the male detectives, not Batwoman’s as they still don’t know Gloria is Batwoman) and suddenly Gloria belts out a high pitched scream queen scream at something off screen… you may think it’s Fish-Man coming for one last attack, but you are wrong. It’s a mouse. Contradicting everything that Salazar has built up with the strong female character, Gloria is in that last scene, reduced to nothing but a stereotypical woman, weak, needing the help of strong men, and terrified of mice.  I chose to read it as Gloria staying in character, sticking to the façade of her alternative persona, keeping the men in the dark, that underneath all that hair, makeup and chic designer dresses, she is THE BATWOMAN!

The Batwoman is top-notch Mexican psychotronica! A must for fans of hot chicks kicking ass, rubber-suited monster men and lucha libre! All hail Alfredo Salazar and Rene Cardona and the cinematic legacy they left behind for fans of wild and crazy cinema. Viva!