Blu-ray Review: We Are the Flesh (2017)

"What in the Hell Just Happened?"

I'm honestly not sure how to even discuss this movie.

We Are the Flesh isn't a movie that you can really review in a traditional way, as it's not even really a traditional movie; it plays more like a surreal, abstract fever dream that offers equal doses of social commentary and exploitation. People are going to take away different things after watching it, and they're going to love it and hate it in equal measure.

I recently watched a German flick called Wetlands (it's on Netflix, if you're interested), and I was shocked at how fucked up and graphic it was. Well, We Are the Flesh may have just upped the ante in the WTF Sub-Genre.

The world has ended, becoming a filthy barrio in which people scrounge to survive. Mariano is an old, creepy man who spends his time in an abandoned building, making LSD out of chicken and banging a drum, so he's making the most out of the apocalypse. He's just lonely is all.

EL DIABLO?

A brother and sister (Lucio and Fauna) find their way into his makeshift home, where they seek shelter from the world outside. Mariano greets them with insane rantings, eggs, and poisoned meat. He also jerks off as the sister gives her bro a blowie, which leads to them doing some hardcore incestuous aardvarking, which leads the old man to dropping dead as he delivers the money shot, which leads Fauna to mount his dead corpse and ride him to orgasm, because she really misses him after only knowing him for a few days. Then she pees in the hallway.

And from there, things get even crazier and weird, to the point where I'm not sure what even happened.

It sure was something to see though.

KIDS TODAY!

This is a really weird movie.

We get a crazy old man who seems to be some sort of Post-Apocalyptic messiah, making drugs from chicken parts and chemicals; banging a snare drum like a maniac; and forcing a brother and sister to do all sorts of deplorable things while preaching all kinds of insane mumbo jumbo about the evils of society and the pleasures of the flesh, the pinnacle of which has to be the scene where he jerks off while watching the two of them have sex.

I'm pretty sure that the character exists to provide, we, the audience, with some scathing commentary about the social injustices of modern day life in Mexico.

IT'S A VISUALLY BOLD MOVIE.

The sister, played by the beautiful and very brave Maria Evoli, swallows her brother's pork sword in full, graphic view; stands above him and drips menstrual blood on his mouth; pees on the floor while chanting; forces a girl into having the creepiest threesome ever with she and her brother; and has sex with a corpse.

I'm pretty sure that her character was meant to show how easily young people are lead astray, or maybe how they have no morals and are destroying themselves with excess or something.

ARE THERE NO BATHROOMS IN MEXICO?

The bottom line is that this movie is surreal, sexually graphic, odd, nonsensical, disturbing on many levels, and possibly even brilliant. Then again, it may be self-indulgent trash. Either way, it's like nothing we've seen before, and anyone who watches it is bound to have a strong opinion on the matter.

And the ending -and I mean the very end, after the homeless gang bang (that's called a Soup Kitchen here in the U.S.)- well it puts a whole new spin on the entire thing.

LUCIO GENTLY WEEPS INSIDE OF THE GIGANTIC NEON VAGINA

Lots of blood in this one, including, but not limited to: throat slitting, cannibalism, and a severed head.

EASY, CONYO, YOU'RE ABOUT TO SERVE THE GREATER GOOD.

Everyone in this movie got naked, and they show everything in full graphic detail, including close-ups of private parts, oral sex, masturbation, lesbian sex, group sex, necrophilia,incest, and even a gang-bang.

FAMILIA POR SIEMPRE.

We Are the Flesh is either the most pretentious excuse to cram a movie full of gratuitous sex and violence ever, or it may be a work of genius that deconstructs the current state of Mexican society in a wildly visceral way, and I honestly don't know which one it is.

This is a stark and graphic movie, and it was interesting to see something so shocking and artistic, I just don't know if it was much else other than shocking. It sure hasn't left my mind in two days though, so that's saying something. I guess our middle-of-the-road grade directly reflects our indecision. 

If you like messed up, graphic movies that "go there," then this might be the best Blu-ray you've ever come across. We give it a

Maybe don't bring it to family movie night though.

C

We Are the Flesh is available now on Blu-ray and DVD.

Maria Evoli is as brave as she is beautiful.

DVD Review: Amityville II: The Possession (1982)

(aka Demonic Incest.)
Release Date: September 24th, 1982.
Country: USA.
Rating: R.
Written by: Tommy Lee Wallace.
Directed by: Damiano Damiani.
Starring:Jack Magner, Diane Franklin, Burt Young, and James Olson.

This sequel to the 1979 Haunted House classic apparently took some liberties with its story telling, and was only loosely tied to its predecessor. At least it featured the adorable Diane Franklin; that made it way more watchable for us. Kinda.

*This review is a re-do of one we did back in 2008. It needed an update.

Finally, the story of the Defeo family is told... wait, it's the Montelli family? Well, at least the house is the same... hold on, the exterior is the same, but the interior looks way different in places. Alright, well the murders happen the same way as described in the original, and that's... no, that's different too. Whats in the hell is going on here??? this is a prequel, right?

"YOU EXPECTED THIS MOVIE TO MAKE SENSE?"

Paulie from the Rocky movies, plays the un-lovable and abusive husband of the Montelli clan; smacking the wife and kids around and demanding discipline! In a fun little coincidence, his creepy-ass son, Sonny, ends up smacking the whole family around with a shotgun, and demands death! It's all a really nice, completely accurate portrait of the American family.

THE ALL-AMERICAN KID.

Sonny has a hot jailbait sister, played hotly by the 80's-hot Diane Franklin, who is really hot (despite her eyebrows needing a good trim.) Speaking of trim, a now-possessed Sonny decides that he needs some trim, and so he sets about seducing his doting sister. Depending on which side of the Mason-Dixon Line you're on, this is either really nasty or super hot. I live in Georgia, so... Yeehaw!

I COULD EAT A PEACH APPLE FOR DAYS.

Later, Father Karras shows up, fresh off of his Exorcism in Georgetown gig, and the Direct-to-Video sequel to The Exorcist begins in earnest. No pea soup though. I won't ruin the ending for you here, but suffice it to say that by the end of the movie, we had kicked our TV screen. Twice.

YEAH, THAT'LL HELP.

All of its issues aside, Amityville II offers up some genuine moments of creepiness throughout. I personally remember this movie absolutely scaring the hell out of me when I was a kid, but it doesn't quite play that way anymore. It definitely still has its moments though.

80's QT supreme, Diane Franklin, is as much as we loved her in classic movies like The Last American Virgin and Better off Dead, we really wish that she had done more high profile movies after them. Temptress.

TEMPTRESS INDEED.

Though the movie is supposed to be set in 1974, it looks like Walkmans were invented early, and 80's cars already existed, because there they are, right on-screen. It's also obvious that the inside of the house was different in places, which irks us, because this movie is supposed to take place a year before the first one, and yet the house isn't the same.

Worst of all, it's a bit disconcerting how the movie seems to shamelessly rip-off The Exorcist too; not only because both movies have a showdown between a caring Priest and a possessed "child," but because they even did the old "Come into  me, and leave the kid alone!" bit. Sure, they did it all differently, but it absolutely smacked of the whole Father Karras/Regan MacNeil bit.

INCEST. NOT EVEN ONCE.

Brother/Sister sex. Does it get much creepier than that?

WE WATCHED THIS ENTIRE SCENE IN MORAL PROTEST. SIX TIMES.

This movie has far more disturbing images in it than it does any sort of blood and gore, but there's a little bit of that spread throughout.

LOOK, THERE'S SOME BLOOD.

There's one scene that shows Diane Franklin briefly naked, but most of it was done tastefully and teasingly. Now, the incestuous relationship between brother and sister... there was nothing subtle about that at all.

OH, THINGS GET NAKED ALRIGHT... NAKED AND CREEPY.

If you're going to make a sequel/prequel to a great movie, try not to crap all over its memory in the process.

THIS PICTURE SUMS UP THE WAY THAT WE FEEL ABOUT THIS MOVIE.

Amityville II: The Possession has some redeeming qualities, but overall, this movie is a mess: it's only loosely tied to the first movie; it makes use some obviously out of place items for its supposed time period; the ending devolves into some sort of an Exorcist ripoff, and it just isn't as scary as the first one was. It has its moments, but most of it is underwhelming.

C-

Amityville II: The Possession is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD.

If you were a kid in the 80's, then you know that Diane Franklin was all over the place for a brief while, and then she just kind of fade away. She'll always be one of our favorite crushes though.

Here Comes the Devil (2013)

If you've ever seen the 1979 Peter Weir classic, Picnic at Hanging Rock, then you basically have an idea what awaits you in Here Comes the Devil.

Of course, Here Comes the Devil is filled with graphic sex, nudity, hints of incest, and a liberal amount of bloodletting (none of which were at all a part of Picnic at Hanging Rock), but aside from that, they're basically the same movie.

It's also fair to point out that the kids in one movie make it home after having gone missing, while in the other movie, they do not. One movie is also filled with Mexicans, while the other is populated by Australians.

So in the end, maybe they are not basically the same movie at all, though there are some definite similarities. Maybe Here Comes the Devil is the movie that Picnic at Hanging Rock always aspired to be, but could never be, because The Devil lives in Mexico or something...

Sounds plausible to us.

Here Comes the Devil opens on the most promising of notes, by giving us a fully nude lesbian scissor-kissing session, which is really the way that every decent movie should hope to open. Sadly, following a knock on the door, one of the sexy Sapphic Senoritas is beaten to a pulp by a crazed madman, who ends up running off into the mountains, stripping naked, and collapsing in  a heap. We're pretty sure that he died up there.

Taco-flavored kisses.

Cut to a family vacationing in Tijuana. While the preteen children venture off into the very same mountains to explore whatever it is you explore in the Tijuana mountains, Mom and Dad stay behind in the car, where Dad proceeds to finger-bang Mom into a stupor. When the children don't return from their hike, Mom blames their disappearance on Dad for being a perv, while Dad blames it all on Mom for being a whore. Nice family.

So this is what passes for fun in Mexico...

The next day, the children return as if nothing has happened, and all is well... or is it? No, things are not at all well, which leads us to believe that either the kids ran afoul of the naked madman (from the prologue) while in the mountains, and were molested by him, or that they found Satan, and were molested by him. Either way, the children are not the same as they were before their little excursion, which leads to all sorts of creepy shit going down.

That cave looks like a thong.

As the children's behavior grows increasingly odd, Mom (and eventually Dad) start to investigate what really happened to them while they were missing. That of course leads to some crazy violent retribution, lots of nudity and sex, hints of incest, and of course, The Devil. Because here he comes.

Some things just can not be unseen...

This was an odd movie. At times, Here Comes the Devil is an eerie and unsettling affair, its atmosphere being one of genuine dread and foreboding. At other times, the movie borders on being cheesy and nearly laughable. We have to believe that the cheesier parts of the movie -such as the awful levitation scene- were intentionally cheesy, though we couldn't imagine why Adrian Garcia Bogliano would want to gunk up his otherwise solid works in such a way, and especially intentionally.

From the outset, this movie reminded us a lot of Picnic at Hanging Rock (read our Review); a classic movie about a group of young girls that go exploring a mountain, only to never return. Where Hanging Rock is an ethereal exercise in minimalism, though, Here Comes the Devil becomes more of a revenge movie. Then again, the ending of HCTD negates the need for any sort of revenge, so, maybe it's really more of a different spin on your average "possession" flick.Maybe it's both.

She's obviously possessed by the need for revenge.

There's all sorts of nudity and sexuality on display here, as well as a few truly disturbing scenes of gory violence, so on a visceral level, this movie definitely delivers the goods. It's also a very creepy movie throughout, even if there was no supernatural reckoning at the end as we'd hoped there would be.

Where the movie does lose some points, is in the fact that for all of its great atmosphere, and a pretty solid set-up, there's really no big payoff at the end. We liked it just fine, but with all of the craziness that had come earlier in the movie, we just expected it to finish just as crazy, but instead were left feeling a bit underwhelmed by where the story ended up going.

Why so blue?

We don't want to spoil the movie's reveals, but once we understood what was going on with the children (and the story in general), we just wished it would have lead to something more. There was really no nefarious endgame to what befell the kids and their family. Well, there was, but maybe we just wanted some sort of crazy and creepy finale or something. Maybe it was all just more subdued than we had anticipated.

Maybe we just wanted The Devil to show up, because they did, after all, tell us that he was coming.

No, the kids are most definitely not alright.

Here Comes the Devil is an entertaining and effective movie, even if it didn't deliver in the way that we expected it to. It's on VOD now, and is definitely worth the $7.99 you'll pay if you can't wait until March when it hits Blu/DVD. However you choose to see it, it's definitely worth a few hours of your time.

B

In addition to being an actress, the muy caliente Laura Caro is apparently quite the singer as well. Who knew?