Barf Bunny (2021)

Barf Bunny (2021) - United States
Directed by: Jonathan Doe

ABOUT THE FILM:

I would like to give Jonathan Doe a big thank you for providing me with a screener copy for review! This review is based on the "Fetish-Gore Cut" of the movie.

Jonathan Doe is a filmmaker and is the mind behind the Cinema's Underbelly YouTube channel, as well as the Uneasy Terrain Explorers Club Podcast and many other creative endeavors. Barring a few short films he made over a decade ago as school projects, Jonathan has only recently gotten into producing and directing short and feature films. Barf Bunny is not only Jonathan Doe's first (barely) feature-length film, but it is also the first entry in what will become his "Erotic Grotesque Nonsense" series.

Barf Bunny stars Felicia Fisher, a fetish-gore actress known for her roles in various A Baroque House films, as the eponymous barf bunny. We join the bunny in the garden as she endlessly stuffs her face full of berries, carrots and grapes, and then pukes everything back up on the table, all the while teasing and attempting to seduce us. She doesn't like to play by the garden rules however. She tells us she doesn't like being told to play with her food and disobeys orders, thinking she's not being watched. But unbeknownst to the little barf bunny, she is being watched and she's about to pay...

REVIEW:
Barf Bunny is Jonathan Doe's love letter to grotesque fetish cinema along the lines of Lucifer Valentine's Vomit Gore series and the notorious Terrible Meal. Not once does the camera shy away as Felicia gorges herself on fruits and veggies, gags herself with a huge rubber carrot and pukes up everything she eats into jars. At some points she even picks up food from the jars with her toes, sucks on them and then eats them. Occasionally she spouts a funny line of dialogue, but the first 30 minutes is just puking and carrot deep-throating. So with that said, if you have a vomit or a foot fetish, you will enjoy this. I don't care for puke, snot or feet however. Although I have seen far worse things with vomit, this movie was pretty gross at points. My biggest complaint (and this is just a pet peeve) is the sound. Felicia constantly talks with her mouth full and smacks on her food a lot, which I personally can't stand. If I'm in public and someone is loudly enjoying their food, I'm quick to plug my ears and/or move away. But obviously grossing the viewer out was the point, so good job there.

The entire film takes place in one setting. Felicia sits at a table before what looks to be a hand-painted background of a garden, which looks quite nice. The colors are also very rich and the scene is lit well. The camera work is all handheld and is very smooth and steady, intently focusing on the grotesqueries unfolding before us. And the camera man isn't afraid to get in the splash zone, if you will. Speaking of splash, let's get into the gore effects. The gore and make-up was done by legendary make-up artist Marcus Koch and Jesse Seitz. Alongside James Bell, Marcus Koch is one of my favorite indie make-up artists and once more, along with Jesse Seitz, knocks it out of the park with Barf Bunny. The gore is incredible, it's detailed and gooey and the blood shines a beautiful, brilliant deep red as it sprays from the Barf Bunny's open neck cavity. The gore is all shown in slow-motion, which is made even better by the choice of music. Barf Bunny's soundtrack consists entirely of classical music, which I'm a huge sucker for. The ending of the Fetish-Gore Cut is amazing , and it made wading through all of the puke and snot worth it.

This film is definitely not for everyone, as it fits into one of the smallest niches possible. But if you're a lover of vomit, or gore, or both, then I highly recommend Barf Bunny. After seeing this I'm excited to check out new films from Jonathan Doe and the rest of the Erotic Grotesque Nonsense series. In the meantime, I highly recommend you check out the Cinema's Underbelly YouTube channel and Jonathan's podcast as they offer tons of great content!

RELEASES:
-Barf Bunny was released on DVD by Vile Video Productions in 2021. The movie comes in a very high-quality 2-disc set with amazing cover art from Martin Trafford. This set comes with both the Fetish-Gore Cut and the Emetophilia cut of Barf Bunny. Both cuts are mostly the same, but each one has a different ending. We also get a Making-Of featurette, interviews and a few trailers.

-The 2-disc set also comes in the Barf Bunny bundle, signed by the cast and crew. In the bundle you also get an exclusive Barf Bunny barf bag signed by the director, a piece of the table cloth used in the film, and also an 11" by 17" poster. If you're interested, I recommend checking out the Putrid Productions website here!

-The film was also released on limited runs of VHS and Blu-Ray in the United Kingdom by Dead Format Films.

Pot Zombies (2006)

Pot Zombies (2006) - United States
Directed by: Justin Powers

ABOUT THE FILM:
After reviewing tons of underground German splatter and odd, obscure shot-on-video titles, I'm finally taking a jab at a Troma film! ...Even though the movie in question barely deviates from the kinds of films I've already reviewed.
Pot Zombies is a film made in 2006 by up-and-coming amateur filmmaker Justin Powers, and it was soon picked up and distributed by Troma as part of their "Young Filmmakers Series" line, a line that didn't last very long. In fact it's hard to find any other titles released under this line, but I digress.
I remember buying this movie in 2015 from Hastings (RIP), as an ex-rental. It hadn't been rented for years and years, so the shop sold it to me for $2. At the time, I was getting more and more into Troma flicks, and I was building a sizable collection. I've seen some of the best the studio had to offer, like the Toxic Avenger, Poultrygeist and Redneck Zombies, to name a few. I've also seen some absolute trash like Rock 'n' Roll Space Patrol, Madigan's Millions and anything from Giuseppe Andrews. But then, there are films that are so bafflingly horrible that I don't know how to feel about them. Undeniably, Pot Zombies falls into that latter category.

REVIEW:
The "plot" of Pot Zombies, if you will, is about a barrel of toxic waste that makes its way into marijuana as it's being shipped to a small town, and anyone who smokes this toxic ganja turns into a green zombie with bouncy green CGI eyeballs and with the munchies for warm human innards. Of course, this "plot" is nothing but an excuse to showcase some of the most ineffective and laughable gore effects ever captured on videotape.
The entire movie rinses and repeats the same scenario over and over again across its 54 minute runtime. Smoke weed, zombies, death. Occasionally they change it up a bit, like in a scene at a venue where the bands the Dwarves and Damage Case are playing. Secondhand smoke fills the air and turns the crowd into zombies, and then carnage ensues. There's also a very gratuitous lesbian sex scene, but that's kind of par for the course in movies from Troma.

I will admit that there are things I enjoyed about this movie. There's a lengthy scene where a cop pulls over a hippie after he suspects him of being high off his ass. The hippie tries to convince the cop otherwise, but this devolves into a pointless anecdote about how he thought a raw chicken wasn't actually a chicken (?), and then the scene dives right back into bottom-of-the-barrel splatter territory. Funny enough, the guy playing the hippie is the only "actor" who put in something close to a good showing. Almost everyone else's performances are on par with low-budget porn, except for Lloyd Kaufman, who hams up his performance as a mentally handicapped pizza guy. But then again, I wasn't expecting top-notch acting from a movie about toxic weed zombies.

The camera work is acceptable throughout, nothing too bad. The editing is okay, although some scenes could have definitely used trimming down. The digital effects are just as bad as the gore effects, possibly worse. And the gore effects are already the remnants of the bottom of the barrel. There's a few uses of green-screen that look awful, tons of CGI blood and smoke, and while the soundtrack is decent, the sound mix is really bad. Sometimes dialogue is mixed so low that you can hardly hear what the actors are saying. If you're looking for a serious zombie movie with good story, characters and awesome gore, definitely skip this one. But if you like movies that are so god-awful that they're entertaining, I can kind of recommend Pot Zombies. It's atrocious, but I think the worst part is I kind of enjoyed it.

RELEASES:
-This movie was released by Troma (of course!) in 2007. DVD extras are kind of sparse, but the movie does come with a drinking/smoking game option, plus two music videos, a bunch of trailers for other Troma titles, and a short romantic comedy called Fiancé, which Justin Powers made in 2002. This short is actually better than Pot Zombies, but that's not saying much.

Blutnacht: Die Rache des Dämon (1999)

Blutnacht: Die Rache des Dämon (1999) - Germany
Directed by: Jochen Stephan, Hermann Weller

ABOUT THE FILM:
Jochen Stephan is a big movie fan with an even bigger movie collection, sporting thousands of DVD's, Blu-Rays, VHS tapes and more. He's been collecting movies for over 20 years at this point, and he has one of the best collections I've ever seen. Tons of rare underground and indie releases, and needless to say, tons of German splatter and horror. Jochen actively spends his time and money on collecting all of the underground German movies he can, but Jochen has also made a few horror films, and it's time to check out his first filmmaking endeavor.

"Scary find in the cornfield"

Blutnacht has a troubled history behind its production and its release. It was filmed between 10 to 12 days in 1999. After wrapping up the movie, one day someone from within the city found blood, animal guts, clothes and vampire teeth scattered all over the cornfield, where Blutnacht was filmed. Alarmed, this citizen called the police, the news and the media got involved, and they even brought in a police helicopter to look over the field for more body parts or clothes. They later found out everything was part of a film project, and the filmmakers hadn't finished cleaning yet. Everything traced back to Jochen and his film, and his house was raided and all of the film's materials were seized and investigated before being returned later. Because of its violence and bloodshed, the movie was marked as "indiziert," meaning it was placed on a list of media that could be harmful to German youth, but it wasn't completely banned (but close to it). The film was eventually taken off of the list, and on a VHS re-issue in 2002, Blutnacht came with television news reports on the aftermath. This same footage was also later included on the DVD release.

"Rider discovers gruesome horror film props"

But what about the film itself?

Blutnacht is about Jo, an ordinary German man who likes to have fun. One day, Jo and his buddies decide to meet up and have a party, and Jo brings his girlfriend along for the ride. But before the party, Jo is shocked and angered to discover his girlfriend fooling around with his best friend. So he confronts them and they quickly flee. Feeling betrayed, Jo walks off and wanders onto the road, where he is hit by a car. The driver gets out and discovers that he killed Jo, so he quickly escapes the scene. But the intense anger Jo felt toward his girl and his best friend manifests itself as a demonic force and resurrects Jo as a pissed off bloodthirsty demon, who sets out for revenge against humanity. As he stalks and kills everyone he finds in the countryside, he is followed by a companion who assists him in the killings, rewarding him with new killing tools and also making the bodies disappear. The blood night begins!

REVIEW:

The movie starts and after 10 long, boring minutes of nothing but Jochen and one of his friends driving and talking, we finally get into the meat of the story and the fun begins.

Blutnacht is a love-letter to all things underground splatter and horror, and you can tell everyone involved had a lot of fun making it. Everyone in the cast basically plays themselves, so the dialogue and exchanges don't feel awkward or unnatural, but are still far from professional. Jochen puts on an entertaining show as Jo, a brutal killing machine who just wants blood and guts, and he mercilessly chops, guts, slices up and decapitates everyone in his path. The story is plain and simple, but still maintains some originality with the aspect of Jo being followed and assisted by the other demon.

The gore effects in Blutnacht are pretty good by amateur film standards, and the kills are plentiful. Arms and body parts are hacked up and stabbed into, guts and innards are torn out of torsos, heads are pulled clean off of shoulders, and bodies are lit on fire, all the while blood sprays everywhere like a firehose. And the camera doesn't shy away from any of the gore, it captures every last second of the kills in their nasty glory. However, this causes some issues with the pacing and the editing. The movie is very slow at points, even when stuff is happening. The camera lingers a lot, with few angle changes or edits. Another problem is the picture quality and the lighting. Blutnacht was shot on a cheap video camera and was recorded almost entirely at night with very little lighting. Everything is lit with cars or with small lights, and this makes it hard to see what's going on at times. At one point a bright light flashes during a kill scene, as someone was taking photos off screen. The picture quality is very fuzzy and grainy, as if the footage had been copied from tape to tape a few times during editing. There are also points where you can see the play button from the VCR it was recorded on and the picture lags occasionally. So the film isn't pretty to look at, but it's what I expected from an amateur gore movie made in the late 90's.

Blutnacht feels a lot like one of those underground movies that the filmmakers made only to entertain themselves, out of their love of horror and gore. I feel that if the police never got involved in this movie, it would have been long forgotten and buried. But Blutnacht's production history marked its legacy, and the movie has forever casted its shadow onto the German underground scene.

I had a lot of fun with Blutnacht, even if it is technically flawed on many, many fronts.

RELEASES:
-Blutnacht was originally going to be released in 1999, but the police seized all of the materials before it could be released. Currently, only one copy of the original tape exists, in Jochen's possession.

-The movie was re-released on VHS in 2002 by WeSt Pictures after it was taken off of the "indiziert" list. This tape came with bonus footage at the end of the movie, showing various excerpts from newspapers about the film, as well as news report.

-Blutnacht was later re-released on DVD-R by WeSt Pictures, with the same extras as the old VHS release. You can purchase a copy from Jochen personally on Facebook.

-Blutnacht was released on DVD-R in the United Kingdom by OldSkull Video, along with its sequel. This was the only release to include English subtitles.

-Blutnacht was released on VHS again by Rotten Cat Media.

The only existing copy of the original tape.

Zombarella's House of Whorrors (2019)

Zombarella's House of Whorrors (2019) - United States

Directed by: Tony Masiello, Tim Ritter

ABOUT THE FILM:

Zombarella's House of Whorrors is the ultimate love-letter to the shot-on-video, straight-to-video sleazefest movies of the 80's and 90's while also parading itself as an X-rated version of late night cable access television shows. Filmmakers Tony Masiello, Tim Ritter, and the elusive "Fred Olen Wood" were brought together after all having worked together on previous projects like the anthology Hi-8: Horror Independent 8. Tony approached Tim in 2019 and asked if he would like to make a short film for an upcoming anthology. Tim happily obliged and also sent Tony some old footage that had never been released before, with everything melding together into this tribute to b-movies and late-night television.

The movie plays out as if it were an actual late-night cable access show and does so quite convincingly, with more b-movie trailers and 1-900 number adverts than you can shake a stick at. But the main attraction is an anthology of three short horror stories by Tony Masiello and Tim Ritter, compiled into an anthology called Tales from the Mausoleum, as hosted by the sexy and well-endowed Zombarella! Held within this sleazy anthology are tales of killer dolls, horny aliens, cannibal vampire call-girls from space, a lunatic obsessed with castrating people and many more crazy lo-fi shenanigans!

REVIEW:

Zombarella's House of Whorrors proves successful as an homage to low-budget b-movies and to cable access television, however there are a few nagging flaws that bother me about it. The first time I watched the movie I wasn't a big fan, but after giving it another shot it grew on me and I began to appreciate it more for what it is.

All of the short films, fake advertisements and movie-trailers are a huge mixed bag in terms of quality, production value and entertainment factor. Most of them are solid with premises so ridiculous and cheesy (such as Cannibal Vampire Call-Girl Hookers from Outer Space) that they amount to being the film's best moments, even if they are just adverts and not part of the actual anthology. Some of the trailers and the adverts are compiled from really old footage so the picture quality may change a lot from scene-to-scene, but it's not detrimental and even gives the film more variety to aid the cable-access vibe it was going for.

But then a lot of the adverts get really repetitive and drawn-out, such as the gratuitous amount of 1-900 "adults only" adverts. It feels like they were being added a lot to pad out the runtime more, and they bring the pace of the film down as a result. If there were maybe 2 or 3 of these ads scattered throughout instead of how many are actually there, the pacing problems wouldn't be as nagging or noticeable.

The actual stories in the anthology are interesting and varied in terms of creativity, with my personal favorite being the Computer Date segment due to the writing and copious amounts of gore. Unfortunately most of the acting across all of the shorts is not good, so it was a little hard trying to get invested. I understand that most of these people were just friends of the directors who wanted to be in the movie and aren't professionals. There's nothing wrong with that, but it gets to be distracting at points. However, the acting isn't necessarily super important in a film like this, as the movie is fueled by its creativity. Hell, even a lot of the ads and fake trailers are very funny and well-made, like the one for Wee Willy Winky.

The movie is well-edited and put together, the camera, lighting and sound is consistently decent and a lot of the gore effects are pretty well-done! We get tons of deaths in here featuring castrations, decapitations, axeings, stabbings, guttings, more genital mutilation and so much more!

While Zombarella's House of Whorrors isn't perfect, it's a very entertaining viewing experience with so many different things to offer to its audience. It has sex, it has violence and over-the-top gore, aliens, killer dolls, laughs, and it does nothing more than aim to entertain. They weren't trying to make high art or anything, it's just a bunch of horror fans making stuff other horror fans would enjoy! And I would recommend any self-respecting fan of shot-on-video horror and b-movies purchases a copy.

RELEASES:

-Zombarella's House of Whorrors was released by Tony Masiello himself under his company SOV Horror in 2019. It was their second ever DVD release and is still available today for an absurdly low price at their website. Unfortunately that doesn't stop assholes from pirating his hard work and swapping it around on the internet for free. Not fucking cool, you guys.

I would highly encourage any fans of shot-on-video movies, sex, gore and trash to purchase the movie and anything else Tony has released because he puts in an endless amount of effort into every single release he does! You can purchase the movie here!

The DVD comes with an audio commentary from Tony Masiello, deleted scenes, a bunch of trailers for other SOV Horror releases and an episode of Tony's cable-access show Mondo Bizarro!

Paura il Diavolo (1992)

 

Paura il Diavolo (1992) - United Kingdom

Directed by: Darren Ward

MY 50TH REVIEW:

Before I get into the film itself I'd like to announce that I'm stunned I've made it to 50 reviews. I mean, technically I've already reviewed more than 50 movies/short films, but this is my 50th consecutive review posted, and I'm excited to share it with those who read what I post. For those of you who've stuck with me this long, thank you so much. If it weren't for you guys, this site wouldn't exist or would be completely dead, and I appreciate you giving my stuff a read. Now, let's get into the review proper. And it's the first British film I've reviewed too!

ABOUT THE FILM:

Darren Ward is a British independent filmmaker from the United Kingdom who first became interested in making movies in the late 1980's. He grew a love for horror and wanted to become a special effects artist, and would test out his skills on his buddies. When Darren was finished with school in 1989, he participated in helping make a local zombie film called Dead Time, and would continue to work on independent action and gangster movies for the next few years. In 1992, Darren Ward finally decided to set out and make films of his own, and Paura il Diavolo was his very first attempt at filmmaking. It was self-financed by Darren himself, with a budget of 30 GBP!

In Paura il Diavolo, Darren pays homage to the Italian horror films of the 80's, with his biggest influence on the project being Lamberto Bava's Demons. This 45 minute short film takes place over one dark, stormy night and follows a young man who returns home. The sky rumbles violently and something lands in the backyard in a fiery crash. The man discovers a bag with a note attached, warning him not to look inside the bag as it holds the spirit of an ancient evil. The recipient is advised to destroy the bag as soon as possible. Unfortunately our lead doesn't heed the warning, and undergoes a transformation into a hideous beast hellbent on killing all in its path!

REVIEW:

Similar to My Lovely Burnt Brother, Paura il Diavolo is one of the first underground films I ever saw and it's one of the films that pulled me deeper into the scene in the first place. So I will always appreciate Paura il Diavolo for introducing me to the scene, but the film is not free from flaws.

You may notice that my screenshots are incredibly dark and blurry. Usually I would blame the poor quality on the copy of the movie that I used for review, but in actuality Paura il Diavolo is just incredibly dark and murky. The lighting, or lack thereof, is by far the film's biggest problem. Sometimes it's so dark that it's impossible to see anything, and the lights that we do see are so oversaturated and bright that they make the film a real eye-strain.

The story is extremely simple, cliché and derivative of other films. Hell, sometimes the influence is blatantly obvious. The entire transformation scene was inspired by Bava's Demons, and there's one scene where a character is watching Argento's Opera on the TV, right as the film reaches the infamous eye scene. Hell, even Paura's title is an homage to the Italian horror films of the 70's and the 80's. But the story itself is so slowly paced, it could have easily been from 20 to 25 minutes long. There's not much to say about the acting because the film has very little dialogue, but what we do hear is hard to make out, mainly because the cast members all have thick British accents and the audio quality is poor too.

Probably the film's biggest strength is the special effects and the make-up. Considering the obviously low-budget, we get some decent gore and blood effects including plenty of stabbings and an exploding chest near the end. The demons inside the bag look pretty silly, but the monster himself actually looks really cool. If I saw that fucking thing in the dark I would probably shit myself and then promptly run for my life. The stand-out effect is the demon's transformation, as it's very well-done with some pretty nasty close-ups on the demon's claws growing from under the man's fingernails.

Paura il Diavolo is a very flawed short film and I can really only recommend it to SOV enthusiasts and underground horror collectors. But in the end I was still able to find some entertainment in it and I appreciate it for piquing my interest in underground gore and horror cinema.

RELEASES:

-Paura il Diavolo was first released on VHS in 1992 by Darren's company Giallo Films, but this tape is extremely rare and near impossible to find. This is the original version that included copyrighted music from the band The Cult.

-A re-edited version of the film with a new score and music was released on the German released Darren Ward's Three Tickets to Hell in 1997 by Incredibly Strange Video. The tape also came with Ward's first feature Blue Fear and his short film Bitter Vengeance. This specific VHS was the source used for this review.