Despite the best efforts of M.O.S.S., there still is no stopping the invasion of Hairy Beasts that floods our part of the Internet.
Turns out even the German krimi has its own share of hairy monstrosities, as represented by a doggie with fake poison fangs in Alfred Vohrer’s (of course) Edgar Wallace adaptation Der Hund von Blackwood Castle (The Hound of Blackwood Castle).
It’s all fun and games and howling dogs in my report over at The Horror!?.
GOOD GOD IT’S THE MYSTERIOUS ORDER OF THE SKELETON SUIT (MOSS)!
Fellow Mysterious Order Agent Carol Borden from The Cultural Gutter joins me to discuss our favorite hairy beast in honor of Hairy Beasts month! What is that hairy beast you may wonder? Listen inside to find out! We have a really excellent conversation all about that beast and its significance in art, literature, and culture!
Also included is a short and appropriate reading from OVID’s Metamorphoses.
Check out Carol’s work at Monstrous Industry.
Also, check out my guest spot discussing Dark Shadows for The Cinementals!
The Nesting: It’s an age old tradition for porn directors to try their appendages at making at least one horror movie. This is one of them. It finds director Armand Weston telling an increasingly peculiar ghost story in an Italian style.
Black Magic 2: This film is still quite at the beginning of the Hong Kong weirdo gross-out horror genre, and does not just include uncomfortable sex, worms, maggots, the living dead and more bizarre things, but also the high production values of a Shaw Brothers movie, Lo Lieh and Ti Lung.
Outpost: Black Sun: Those darn Nazi zombies are at it again, threatening the whole world with Nazi zombism. Only a group of really incompetent Special Forces guys, a spunky heroine, and a shady hero can the save the day.
Santo vs. Las Lobas: Hairy Beasts are at it again! This time around, heroic luchador El Santo stars in a real 70s horror film that contains all the strange logic, cheap visual creativity, and dark undertones one hopes for from that sort of film, just with an added Santo.
Naked Killer: It’s that most peculiar of films – a Wong Jing production I don’t loathe, because for once, somebody involved in the production actually seems to have cared about not just making an exploitation film, but making an exploitation film that is actually great fun. And where else can we learn something about Simon Yam’s erectile dysfunction?
Dragonslayer: Another peculiar case in that it’s a Disney production I don’t loathe. Of course, it’s a Disney production that throws lots of money at a script which subverts certain standard fantasy tropes, has a wildly anti-authoritarian and anti-clerical subtext, and is only missing an interesting hero or heroine for perfection.
Sweet Prudence & the Erotic Adventure of Bigfoot gives us what we want – Bigfoot running around a nudist camp! Also we got UFOs, crazy dudes, the Loch Ness Monster, and goofy fun. It all rolls up into a Sasquatchtacular adventure and some fun late night viewing.
We’re back in black and back in bikinis for yet another entry in the ever-growing Fred Olen Ray Bikini Movie Madness! This time, the world of Indiana Jones gets bikinied a Bikini Jones! Join that ever-sexy science field of archeology as Bikini Jones seduces her hands onto the Idol so she can unlock its secrets before the never-do-wells get their mitts on it and on Bikini Jones’s own golden idol. Bikini Jones features many of the regular cast members circa 2010, most of which have appeared in enough films it’s simpler just to link to their tags than to list all the films over and over again for each actor. Fred Olen Ray reuses the talent because they can get the job done, and done right, and done quickly. But mostly done right.
The Blonde Hair Monster is a story from the pulp series Wong Ang the Flying Heroine Bandit. These tales originated in 1940′s Shanghai from intelligence worker Siu Ping (aka Xiao Ping), who used his stories to speak out against the social and economic injustices of the time, creating a hero to fight for the people. Siu Ping fled to Hong Kong as the Chinese Civil War intensified and the Communists declared victory. The Wong Ang character spoke to the citizens of Hong Kong just as she had to the citizens of Shanghai, and became big sellers in the 1950s. Wong Ang is a play on the word for Oriole, and thus is known as Oriole in several title translations.
I am a pretty big fan of director-producer-writer-actor Arjun Hingorani’s work. His listing on imdb is probably incomplete, but the films he made that I’ve seen (four of them now), I have really enjoyed despite some issues. Those issues are very small in the face of his laboriously tangled—but coherent—storylines, stylish camera work, fabulous music, and the people he loves to cast: Dharmendra, Ashoo, Hiralal, Shetty, Jankidas, Keshav Rana and more. I also appreciate his penchant for casting himself in his films, not always in a heroic light but always in a terrible wig. In essence, his movies are solidly entertaining and a real delight to sit through if you are willing to overlook a certain glossing-over of logic and moderate level of preachy melodrama (which I am).
Dirty Blondes 2 is the Speed 2: Cruise Control of the Dirty Blonde Franchise. Which I think is just these two films, as another feature called More Dirty Blondes doesn’t seem to be related at all. Dirty Blondes 2 continues the riveting Dirty Blondes story, as two teams search for evidence of American and Polynesian contact, though this time instead of looking for pottery, they’re looking for a stone dildo. Because that proves…something. Whatever. The classic Dirty Blondes tropes are there – sexy archeology, female archeologists don’t wear pants, female archeologists take long showers and have sex with all of their digging partners, and long-missing ancient artifacts with Earth-shattering secrets are just lying on the ground in mint condition.
Break out the silver bullets, because Monster Dog is the Greatest Movie EVER! Review in a Nutshell: Staggeringly terrible rubber werewolf puppets mixed with spooky cinematography and a great location, Monster Dog is not quite Troll 2 levels of awesome, but it comes awfully close.
Assignment Hairy Beasts continues when I take a look at that most hairless of heroes known as El Santo and his encounter with a gang of lycanthropes, many of them female.
It’s the best weird 70s horror movie Santo ever wrestled in, full of curiously moody moments, hairy beast ladies, and logical leaps. Consequently, my column for fellow M.O.S.S. member WTF-Film gets very, very excited about the film.
Click on through and learn more about lycanthrope culture than you ever wanted to know!