DVD Review: The Tribe (2015)

We have never before had the experience of seeing a movie which sign language to tell its story instead of the spoken word, and in that respect, The Tribe is one of the most interesting and different movies that we've ever seen. Director Miroslav Slaboshpitsky deserves a ton of credit for not only having the balls to try and make a movie in such a different way, but in being able to pull it off as well as he did.

The Tribe is the story of Sergey; he's the new kid at a school for the deaf who is quickly initiated into the school's ruling gang, where he and his new pals run around mugging people, pimping young girls out to truck drivers, beating people, stealing, and having sex. Sergey ends up getting the hots for one of the girls he pimps out, Anya, and they end up "dating" each other.

That's really all there is to the plot. We're not trying to be dicks about it, but that's pretty much what it is. This movie is far more about the experience than it is any sort of narrative... although the overall narrative is pretty important to that experience... at least thematically. I don't know. It's a different kind of flick.

UKRAINIAN ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS.

The Tribe contains no spoken dialogue, its characters communicating via sign language only. There no subtitles or voiceover for the sign language either, so if you don't happen to be up on that particular brand of communication, then the movie will play for you as it did for us: as an almost silent movie of sorts.

It was a different sort of experience for us, watching a movie in which no one spoke. We probably missed a lot of plot development, and even nuance, throughout this one because of the our lack of understanding, though to his credit, director Miroslav Slaboshpitsky crafted this movie in a simple, straight-forward sort of a way, which actually allowed us to follow along with everything far easier than we ever though we'd be able to. After the first few minutes, the fact that everyone on screen was signing, and that we had no idea what they were saying to each other, didn't even register anymore.

THOSE ARE SOME PRETTY FUCKED-UP TOILETS.

The Tribe is a very violent and sexually explicit movie. There are multiple scenes of sex between teenagers; people get mugged, robbed, and brutally beaten; people get their heads caved in; there's a rape; and the ending was particularly WTF-inducing. Given the subject matter and mechanics of this movie, the scene with the truck backing up was pretty damned disturbing too.

Worst of all though, was the especially horrific back-alley abortion scene that was so fucking horrific, that we couldn't watch most of it. The fact that during that scene, we finally heard Anya's voice as she cried out in pain, made it even more horrific. Yes, we just used the word horrific three times in two sentences. Trust us, it's warranted.

JESUS CHRIST.

We had two real issues with this movie:

One, is that there really isn't any story to follow. The Tribe plays as more of a snapshot of the daily life of Sergey and a few of his troubled classmates, which is fine, but it doesn't really go anywhere. In that way, it reminded us a lot of the 1995 movie, Kids.

The second issue, which is made worse by the first one, is that none of the characters in the movie are very likable or sympathetic. Most of the kids, including Sergey, exist to do nothing other than beat, rob, rape, pimp ,whore themselves, and kill. We couldn't even feel all that much for Sergey, as he just shows up to the school, joins the gang, and starts doing some horrible shit like he was joining the football team or something. We did manage to feel some sympathy for Anya, in two especially fucked up scenes, but even she seemed to take the horrible things that they were all doing in stride, as if it was commonplace.

Then again, maybe that was the point of the whole thing.

LIFE IS ROUGH IN UKRAINE.

The Tribe is a great Arthouse Film that offers Horror fans plenty of realistic brutality, but not much in the way of story or character development. It's not a particularly enjoyable movie either, but it is one that makes a statement, and does so in a very powerful, bold, and unique way.

It won't be for everybody, and in fact, it may not even be for most people, but if you like experimental Arthouse movies that do something completely different from the norm, then it might just be for you.

B

The Tribe  is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD.

Yana Novikova is one brave, brave actress.

Blu-ray Review: Horsehead (2015)

Boy oh boy, is this movie ever going to divide audiences.

On one hand, Horsehead is a gorgeous, surreal, living nightmare that held us in an almost hypnotic state for most of its runtime.

On the other, it's confusing, scattered, and overly ambiguous at times, while being fairly simple to decipher in the same breath. I could easily see someone calling it pretentious and ridiculous, and they wouldn't necessarily be wrong for doing so.

We, however, didn't find this movie to be pretentious or ridiculous at all. In fact, we found it to be quite the opposite. 

After the death of her grandmother, Jessica returns to her family home in the French Countryside to pay her respects. Going home isn't easy for Jessica, for a few reasons: she doesn't really like her Mother; her Mother doesn't really like her; and she's been having recurring nightmares since childhood that seem to revolve around her family, their old house, and a creepy dude wearing a Horsehead. So, it's pretty safe to assume that her weekend trip home is probably going to suck.

SWEET, SWEET JESSICA.

She arrives home to find that her Grandmother is laid out in the room next to hers for the wake (?!?), which not only gives her even worse nightmares, but leaves her bedridden with a fever. Like anyone else would do, Jessica grabs a bottle of ether, and repeatedly doses herself with it in an attempt to discover what her nightmares are all about, using the technique of lucid dreaming. Sounds legit.

OH LOOK, SHE MADE A FRIEND.

In her dreams, she makes out with her Mother; takes a sexy bath with the younger visage of her Grandmother; is chased around by Horsehead; makes friends with a wolf; and finds herself constantly submerged in water... all of which has to do with a horrible family secret involving bunch of things that we'd rather not spoil for you here.

A truly confusing and compelling experience that feels like an acid trip ensues.

WHY DOES THIS PICTURE REMIND ME SO MUCH OF MARTYRS?

If nothing else, Horsehead is a bold movie. We also happen to think that it was beautiful and hypnotic, as well as crazy and disturbing, but above all else, it's bold as hell.

Told mostly from the dream state of Jessica, Horsehead is a movie that isn't always easy to decipher. You can basically figure out what's happening from early on (the movie isn't very subtle), but it also made us ask plenty of questions, many of which were never clearly resolved. It's basically a movie about the relationship between a Mother and a Daughter which has suffered greatly due to something horrible that happened in their past. To say any more about the plot would needlessly spoil things for the uninitiated, even if it's not really the plot that moves this movie forward and makes it work so well anyhow. No, this is a movie where the visuals (and their aesthetic) reign supreme.

THAT LOOK IN HER DEAD EYES SAYS "RUN."

From the opening scene, until the credits roll, Horsehead is a visually stunning movie. It's definitely got a Neo-Giallo feel about it, what with the MANY close-ups of eyes, the visceral gore, and the Argento-like use of colors that set the tone and mark certain characters. Even the scenes set in the waking world have a sharp sensibility about them. It's almost like you're actually watching someone's nightmare come to life on-screen. To call it surreal and disturbing is putting it mildly.

The star of the show is Lilly-Fleur Pointeaux, who despite having 33 credits on her young resume, is a newcomer to us. If Horsehead is any indication, then she's as talented as she is beautiful, which is saying a lot, because she's really, really hot. She does a great job in this one playing the drugged-up victim who is constantly haunted by her dreams, and she does an excellent job at getting naked as well. Good for her, on all counts. 

SO, SO DIRTY.

Horror fans should instantly recognize Jessica's Mother (Catelyn) as Catriona MacColl; the star of Lucio Fulci's Gates of Hell Trilogy (City of the Living Dead, The Beyond, House by the Cemetery.) She does a solid job here, and it's great to see her face in something creepy again. Most people, however, will probably not recognize Murray Head by name though; back in 1984, Head released the massive pop hit One Night in Bangkok. Until now, we had no idea that he was an actor, let alone a good one. What a nice surprise.

If there was one thing abut the movie that we didn't like, it was Winston's voice: not only was it obviously dubbed, but it felt odd and out of place, almost cartoonish. Also, the big showdown between the wolf and Horsehead was rather lame, as it was over in what seemed like 3 unremarkable seconds..

AH, CATRIONA!

While it's not going to be for everyone, Horsehead both intrigued and entertained us for its entire runtime. It also messed with our minds, so there's that too. If you like the average surreal, cinematic mindfuck, then this movie should more than please you, as it is actually quite above average in many ways.

Like we said above though, Horsehead will not be for everybody, so watch accordingly.

B

Horsehead will be available on Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD from June 23rd.

Lilly-Fleur Pointeaux, Catriona Maccoll, and Gala Besson are the stuff of pleasant dreams, not nightmares.

VOD Review: The Human Centipede 3: Final Sequence (2015)

I'm honestly not sure what Tom Six was thinking when he made this movie. I know he's a maverick filmmaker who does what he wants, and doesn't care what anybody has to say about it, but there's a limit to how far up your own ass you can go with the "I'm an artist!" bullshit when you make a sorry movie like this.

I also know that art (and its worth) is a subjective thing, so let it be known that I'm not dismissing the guy out of hand just because he made a movie that I didn't like.

You can say what you will about the first two Human Centipede movies, but at least they were fairly straight-forward Horror flicks that made some sort of logical sense.

This third, and hopefully final, entry in the gross-out series though, seems more like an in-joke that we weren't privy to. Like we were late getting to the party and we only caught the punchline of an elaborate joke, and while everyone else is laughing, we're just wondering what in the hell we missed... and we'd like to think that we're smart enough to get most jokes.

"Taking inspiration from The Human Centipede films, the warden of a notorious and troubled prison looks to create a 500-person human centipede as a solution to his problems."

I took that synopsis from the movie's IMDB page, because I just don't have the strength in me to try and break down the plot like I normally do for most movies. I'm not even sure that you can say that this movie has a conventional plot to begin with, so who am I kidding. A behind-the-scenes "making of" would probably make for an interesting documentary though
 
At least there's that.

YEP. THAT'S A BIG CENTIPEDE.

There's really not a lot that we can say about The Human Centipede 3: Final Sequence that is good. It didn't actually feel like much of a movie at all to us, rather than a 100-minute improv exercise for Dieter Laser, that was interspersed with some gore gags every now and then. I honestly wonder if there was even a script for this movie, and if there was, just how much of it actually made it to the screen.

The biggest problem that we had with this movie, was Dieter Laser. As much as we enjoyed him in the first movie, we couldn't stand him in this one. He overacted in such an over-the-top way in this one, that it was not only distracting, but it ground our nerves to dust by about 10 minutes in. Maybe even less than that. 90% of the movie focused on him screaming, acting crazy, or trying to look sadistic, and none of it was convincing at all. There was nothing scary or funny about him or his performance, and his heavy accent doesn't do him any dramatic favors in such a dialogue-heavy movie. By the end of it all, we honestly felt bad for him.

As for his character, Bill Boss, most of the movie was nothing more than him screaming, ranting, calling people "Nigger" "Tits" "Cunt" and a bunch of other random, offensive names, which made us wonder if Tom Six let a group of teenage boys write the script. As an adult (simple-minded as I may be), a bunch of nasty words don't make something feel edgy or gritty to me anymore, although I'm sure I would have been fairly shocked by such things when I was 12. I'm sure that it's all meant to shock, but that doesn't make it any more enjoyable, or even tolerable, to watch.

WHY?!?

The movie itself is abysmal, and not because of its premise, and not because it's an artistic statement that most people (including us) aren't going to get, but because it was a genuinely bad movie. The first hour and twenty minutes are spent watching Bill Boss talk, scream, yell, and act crazy, in-between scenes of him waterboarding people with boiling water, abusing prisoners verbally and physically, waving his gun around while screaming about respect, cutting a prisoners balls off and eating them for lunch, mouth-raping his hot secretary, being raped in a hole in his side by a group of prisoners, raping his comatose secretary... There was a lot of rape in this movie. And racism. And misogyny.

I can't imagine that Tom Six is a hateful person that wants to hurt certain groups of people with ugly words or horrific acts, and even if he was, we're not interested in soapboxing about how wrong he is, so we'll just chalk it up to him using such controversial tools to make a statement of some kind. Statement or not though, it all felt fairly absurd. 

RAPE, TORTURE, OR BOTH; SOMETHING BAD IS ABOUT TO GO DOWN.

The acting in this one is bad across the board. It's not like we were expecting Masterpiece Theater from a Human Centipede movie, but man it was all just so bad. Then again, actors can only do so much with what they're given, so it's not really the fault of guys like Robert Lasardo or Tiny Lister that things turned out so horribly. When you look at someone like Bree Olson, who is a Porn Star by trade, and think "she's actually pretty good in this," then you know something is really wrong. That's no knock on her specifically, but she's not "really" an actress, and she was a standout here. And what Eric Roberts was doing in this movie, we have no idea. Dude was nominated for an Academy Award, and yet here he is in this shit-pile. Maybe he owed someone a favor?

YOU'RE BETTER THAN THIS, ERIC ROBERTS!

The gore is actually pretty good in this one, and is really the movie's only saving grace... although it doesn't save it at all. As violent and gory as it does get at times though, there isn't really a lot of Human Centipede action until the end of the movie. They show a lot of the cutting and sewing that creates the massive prison yard centipede, but it doesn't last all that long, and we only see the actual centipede in action for a few quick minutes. There's also a Human Caterpillar in this one, so...

MAYBE IF THE MOVIE HAD FOCUSED MORE ON BREE OLSON INSTEAD...

Tom Six should have let this series end with Part 2, and moved on to something else.

AGAIN WITH THE YELLING!

As much as we liked the first Human Centipede, and thought that the second one was at least a great gore-fest, this third, and hopefully final entry in the series leaves us wondering what in the hell happened. Maybe Tom Six had his one moment in the sun, and now he's just retreading the same old ground in far worse ways, because he's got nothing else to give us. Maybe he tried to do something radically different with this movie, and make an artistic statement of some kind. Or maybe, and this one is probably it, The Human Centipede 3: Final Sequence is just a really shitty movie.

Rent it if your curiosity gets the better of you, but know that this is a massive step down in quality even from the 2nd movie in the Human Centipede series, which itself was a pretty big step down in quality from the first one. Depending on how you feel about either of those films, that's saying an awful lot.

D- (and that's being generous.)

Let's not act like Bree Olson hasn't been involved in at least one Human Centipede in her real life, alright?

DVD Review: Macabre (1980)

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

THE IRONY HERE IS THAT HE'S BLIND.

Love. This movie is about love; the love that a 10-year-old girl has for her 4-year-old brother (ages approximate), and the bathtub that she drowns him in while her mother is out whoring. Is anything sweeter?

LOOKS LIKE LITTLE GIUSEPPE MISSED THE BOAT! ZING!

It's also about the love of a woman (the one out whoring) and a man, even after a traffic accident kills him and severs his head from his body. That doesn't stop the love, nor the lovemaking... no way. True passion can not be denied. 

FRED THE HEAD, CHILLIN'.

It's also about the love of a blind man, and his ancient mother who still loves to bathe him... slowly, with a hard bar of soap. Sadly she dies, because she's 103-years-old, so no more creepy baths for Blindy, but he quickly falls in love with the whore who still loves a dead guy's head, and he accepts her in all of her bat-shit crazy splendor. Love eventually drives the crazy whore to kill her other kid, mentally abuse the blind guy, and repeatedly make love to a severed head. Really.

MY QUESTION IS: WHAT'S UNDER THE REST OF THE  BLANKET?

The best thing about Macabre, is that it's a disturbing flick that will make you feel like you need a shower after watching it. It's not a great movie, nor is it the best example of quality 80's Italian Horror, but it has its good points; the bathtub scene, the creepy daughter, and the ending. It's also the directing debut of Lamberto Bava (Mario's son), which is more notable than the actual movie is.

If you want to watch something truly morbid that's full of all kinds of WTF moments, then this is the flick for you. Be aware that this one has one of those crazy, nonsensical, "WTF just happened?!?" types of endings that are so common in Italian Horror flicks of yesteryear, and yes, that is a good thing. Mostly.

FRED'S NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO LOST HIS HEAD...

There were times during this one where I would have taken a "Screaming Seagull" from someone if they would have stopped the movie. Maybe even an "Alabama Hot Pocket."

It was really painful to endure at times.

PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.

Seriously mom, he's like 30-years-old, he can bathe himself, so drop the soap! Now!

Also, what's with the horrible southern-accent dub? And why are you making out with a decomposing head?!? And why would a little girl kill her brother like that? And what's in that soup? WTF is with this movie?!?

HE'S BLIND, NOT CRIPPLED!

The, um... "sex" scene towards the end is fairly gross... as is whats in the freezer. Other than that, Macabre is really light on the blood, but very heavy on disturbing scenes.

SHE KINDA HAD THAT COMING.

This movie offers up a little bit of cheesecake, but it was more creepy than it was hot.

STANKO AND STANKY.

"So you're against me too! You told her my secret! Ah ha ha ha ha!" lol

Kids are evil. Also, severed heads breathe, fly, and bite. Yep.

Q: WHICH ONE IS CREEPIER, MOTHER OR DAUGHTER? A: BOTH.

Macabre is morbid and disturbing, and it's effective enough, but it's also at times a rough ride to endure. A Blade in the Dark and Demons are far better Lamberto Bava films, but for a first effort, Macabre is decent enough.

C-

Macabre is available now on DVD and VOD.

If you're feeling particularly brave/adventurous...