Puncture Wounds

Released: July 2014

Director: James Coyne

Rated R

Run Time: 96 Minutes

Distributor: Lionsgate Studios

Cast:
Cung Le: John Nguyen
Dolph Lundgren: Hollis
Vinnie Jones: Bennett
Gianni Capaldi: Vin
Briana Evigan: Tanya
James C. Burns: Sgt. Terry Mitchell

In the world of mixed martial arts, there are few people that are as accomplished in the ring as Cung Le, a Vietnamese-American that is an expert in various styles of martial arts including Sanshou kickboxing(a form of Chinese boxing), Tae Kwon Do and Judo.  He’s one of the flashiest fighters I’ve seen in MMA.  You don’t see a lot of fighters throwing spinning hook kicks or dropping axe kicks on their opponents, because those are very high-risk moves that usually aren’t successful and leave people open for a pounding.  Cung Le is undefeated in his Sanshou career with 17 wins and 0 losses.  He’s also a three-time world champion in kickboxing.  The man is an accomplished fighter, there is absolutely no doubt it.  The first movie that I saw him in was Tekken where he played Marshall Law, one of the characters from the video game.  He’s done a couple of movies where he was allowed to show off his skills as a martial artist, but as an actor, I’m not entirely convinced that he’s capable of headlining a movie.  His latest film is a collaboration with Dolph Lundgren called Puncture Wounds.

Opening somewhere in California at a hotel, we see John Nguyen, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, struggling to get back into civilian life.  Staying at a seedy hotel, he overhears a call girl getting roughed up by a couple of Aryan Nation wannabes, I guess, so John steps in decimating the group.  What he doesn’t realize is that these folks work for a ruthless drug and human trafficker by the name of Hollis.  After getting word about this incident, Hollis orders a hit on John and his family.  Story-wise, this is about as generic as it gets, and I’m being generous.  This movie has been done a thousand times before and it has been done better.  That’s one of the MANY problems that this movie’s got.  The acting is…a mixed bag, mostly.  Dolph Lundgren is in fine form as a particularly nasty villain with a horrendously generic name.  Vinnie Jones doesn’t get much screen time, but when he’s on screen, he’s an absolute blast.  Vinnie Jones is not a particularly dynamic actor, but he’s very intense in almost everything that he does.  Dolph Lundgren is clearly having a blast playing a villain.  He’s good at playing bad guys, with Andrew Scott from Universal Soldier being one of his best performances…ever.  Everyone else is….meh.

Cung Le is probably the weakest link in the film.  I praise the man’s physicality and his talents as a martial artist, and he pulls his weight in that arena in Puncture Wounds.  But that’s all he’s got going for him.  His acting is atrocious.  He has no range whatsoever other than looking pissed off all the time, and he’s not even convincing with that.  He’s also narrating the movie, but his performance is flatter than an open can of soda.  He has no charisma to speak of, and absolutely no real presence, when he’s on screen.  I generally don’t like coming down so hard on somebody who’s clearly got physical talent, but I have to call it as I see it.  Cung Le also handled the fight choreography.  It’s not bad, but this opens up another problem with the film:  The excessive use of slow-motion.  When it comes to screen fighting, you want to keep the slow-mo at a minimum, highlighting particular moves or impacts.  You don’t want to draw it out, because it makes the film feel longer than it should.  I had to check my clock to see what time it is.  For a movie that’s an hour and half long, it feels a hell of a lot longer.

The writing in Puncture Wounds is abysmal.  If you’re going to make a movie about a guy taking revenge for the murder of his loved ones, you need to be able to connect with the character.  But to do that, you need to give some background on not just the main character, but his family as well.  Let us spend time with his folks before bumping them off, so we can feel his rage.  That way, it becomes more satisfying when he takes out the bad guys.  With the exception of Dolph Lundren, Vinnie Jones and some of the fights, and some gorgeous ladies, this movie isn’t worth your time.  Even as a rental, I find it really hard to recommend this one.  Lundgren’s done better movies, but Cung Le needs to step up his game in the acting department.  This is not a good movie.  Rental only.  5/10.  It just barely avoids getting a Dunce Cap.

The Human Centipede 2

 

 

WARNING: DUE TO THE NATURE OF THE FILM I’M REVIEWING, READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.  THERE WILL BE SOME GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS THAT MAY NOT SIT WELL WITH SOME PEOPLE, OR ANY PEOPLE FOR THAT MATTER.  IF YOU HAVE A WEAK STOMACH, HIT THE BACK BUTTON ON YOUR BROWSER FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY.

Released: November 2011

Director: Tom Six

Run Time: 91 Minutes

Not Rated

Distributor: IFC Films

Cast:
Laurence R. Harvey: Martin Lomax
Ashlyn Yennie: Miss Yennie

Movies are generally made to entertain people.  It’s why people go to movies:  To be entertained.  Simple enough, right?  Not always.  Most movies are generally designed that way, sometimes with a message.  But there are a number of movies that were made to get a rise out of people.  I could go all the way back to The Birth of a Nation, which was released in 1915, that is very provocative, even today.  But some of the most provocative and shocking movies dwell in the genre of horror.  In the 1970’s, there were a number of films that pissed a lot of people off.  Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left, but it didn’t hold a candle to movies like I Spit on Your Grave and Cannibal Holocaust.  I don’t necessarily think that these films were made to specifically piss people off, it just happened that way.  The most famous of which was The Exorcist, which I consider to be one of the greatest horror films ever made.  While the films that I mentioned weren’t necessarily intended to anger people, they were made for a purpose: To expose the hypocrisy and contradictory nature of society.  Some of them went pretty overboard, to be sure.  Some of today’s horror films, while certainly graphic and shocking, are generally not made to do more than that.  The Human Centipede is one of those movies, but the sequel: The Human Centipede 2 really goes the distance.

To get into the story of The Human Centipede 2, I really need to talk about the events of the first movie.  The first movie involved a crazy surgeon, played by Dieter Laser, whose intention is to create the world’s first human centipede.  To do this he had drugged two girls who asked to stay the night, because their car had broken down.  When they woke up, the good doctor described what he had planned:  To create a human centipede with a single digestive system by surgically attaching their mouths to a person’s anus in front of them.  Now, the second film appears to pick up right where the first film left off.  As soon as the camera pulls back, we discover that The Human Centipede is nothing more than a movie.  When the camera rolls back we see a rotund, bald and mentally challenged man who is watching the film on a laptop.  The man, Martin, has been inspired by The Human Centipede to create a human centipede of his own, but with the twelve people instead of three.  I’m not going to go further into the story, because there really isn’t one.  The Human Centipede 2 was made for one purpose, and one purpose only:  To shock and disgust.  That’s not to say that the first film didn’t shock and disgust, but it took a “less is more” approach.  What I mean by that is that the gross stuff that was supposedly happening was left to the audiences imagination, where it was sure to be more horrific.  That’s actually a very artistic way of doing a movie like The Human Centipede.  The sequel, though?  Holy….shit.  Literally.

Honestly, I wouldn’t even call this movie an actual sequel, as it literally has somebody actually watching the first movie.  It’s a very interesting way of approaching a follow-up to a movie like Centipede.  Tom Six makes some pretty interesting stylistic choices while making the movie.  The most obvious one is that the film is in black and white.  It was filmed in color, but was later converted.  I think that was a brilliant idea.  For some strange reason, it makes the film a hell of a lot more effective.  Considering how gruesome the film is, I think having it in color would have made it come across as overly cartoony.  The black and white aesthetic actually makes the gore that much worse to stomach.  The effects in the film are all practical, no CGI to be found, and that’s always a welcome thing in a horror movie.  Nothing takes you out of a gut-wrenching horror movie than blatantly fake CGI blood.  The Human Centipede takes the whole restrained aspect of the first movie, and throws it out the window.  This is a very gory film.  In the first film, you had a character, that while insane, knew what he was doing medically.  Here, the main character of Martin is not right in the head, and his approach to surgery is….extremely primitive to say the least, and it shows.  It’s pretty gross, the way he knocks people’s teeth out with a hammer and then stitches their faces to other peoples’ asses with a staple gun.  The acting in the film is actually really good, particularly Laurence Harvey.  He’s a relatively new film actor, so it was very interesting to see him in a movie like this.  He’s fantastic.  The character is clearly not a fully-functioning individual that doesn’t speak and makes odd noises.  But his eyes really convey a particularly nasty brand of evil.  He does a fantastic job.  Ashlyn Yennie basically plays a caricature of herself, that for some reason gets fooled into thinking that Martin is some kind of film agent.

That right there, is one of the film’s biggest failings: Logic.  It is completely inconceivable that somebody like Martin, with his limited mental capacity, could even remotely get away with the shit that he does.  There is no way in hell that Martin couldn’t have been arrested or even killed by the people that he managed to abduct.  With his asthma, he’s clearly not physically capable of doing the things that he does.  I guess when you’re watching a movie like The Human Centipede, logic doesn’t really enter into the whole thing.  The other thing I noticed is that the film was made in response to critics of the first film.  People had complained about the lack of the nasty stuff.  Tom Six went full throttle here, and delivered all the shit and gore, and then some.  While I certainly appreciate the lack of punches pulled, I feel that the whole “less is more” approach of the first movie was far more effective in getting ideas across.  That’s just me though.  There’s also a very unnecessary sequence of a pregnant woman who was abducted but managed to get away.  The problem is that she ends up giving birth in the car and while she’s trying to escape, she ends up crushing the infant with her foot.  I really don’t think that was necessary at all.  That was clearly in there just for shock value.

The Human Centipede 2 got banned in several countries due to its graphic content.  Have you noticed a pattern when it comes to movies like this?  It seems like whenever a film like this gets released, people get into a pissing match over it.  I think Tom Six had that in mind when he made these movies.  While I think Tom Six is a talented director, I don’t think he’s really going to get anywhere if he keeps doing movies like this.  Right now, he strikes me as a one-trick pony.  He’s only making movies to shock audiences and piss off the censors.  That doesn’t always translate to a good movie.  The Human Centipede 2 isn’t a particularly bad movie.  It really isn’t.  It’s got some pretty fantastic performances, particularly from Mr. Harvey, but it’s not a movie that’s going to be remembered for that.  At the end of the day, the film gets an 8.5/10.

Tremors 5: Bloodlines

Released: October 2015

Director: Don Michael Paul

Run Time: 99 Minutes

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Rated PG-13

Cast:
Michael Gross: Burt Gummer
Jamie Kennedy: Travis Welker
Natalie Becker: Lucia
Brandon Auret
Daniel Janks
Rea Rangaka

About 20 or so years ago, my dad had a friend who had a massive movie collection.  This was a huge VHS collection, because DVD didn’t exist yet.  One day, my dad took my brother and I, and showed some footage from a small monster movie were monsters were attacking people from underground.  This scared the living hell out of me and my brother, so when we got out of the house, we ran to the car hoping we weren’t going to get eaten by these giant monsters.  So, my dad had borrowed that movie and sat us down to watch the whole thing from beginning to end.  It was one of the funniest movies we had ever seen.  Yeah, it was scary at times, but it was also genuinely hilarious.  The monsters?  Graboids.  The movie?  TREMORS!  Starring Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Michael Gross and Reba McEntire, Tremors was one of the biggest monster movies of the decade.  With great characters, decent story, and awesome monsters, Tremors became a phenomenon.  It was such a hit, that it had developed two sequels, a prequel, and full-blown television series.  I know, because I have them all on DVD.  After the 4th film was released, there were multiple rumors that a 5th Tremors was going into production.  There was no substantial evidence to suggest such a thing, but the rumors persisted.  A few years back, the rumors had started with the possible title of Tremors 5: Thunder From Down Under.  It was going to take place in Australia…which would make sense since everything in that country has evolved to murder you.  Last year, the news had broken that a 5th Tremors film was indeed going into production, starring Michael Gross as Burt Gummer.  That movie is now available as Tremors 5: Bloodlines.

Tremors 5 opens with a commercial for Burt Gummer’s new survival TV/Internet show.  Soon, he meets with a new cameraman, Travis.  Both are interrupted by a South African gentleman, who tells Burt that South Africa is being targeted by an Ass-Blaster.  Initially in disbelief, Burt realizes that the gentleman is telling the truth, so he and Travis head to South Africa to assess the situation.  After arriving in the country, they realize that the creatures have evolved along a different path than the others.  They are bigger, meaner and tougher than the beasts that Gummer has faced in North America.  The story really isn’t anything special, but it does have some interesting twists.  One you will see coming a mile away, and another one that you won’t.  When you’re dealing with giant man-eating monsters, you really don’t want the story to get in the way, and it really doesn’t.  It’s a film that really knows what it is and it goes full throttle.  This is probably the most intense film in the series outside of the first movie.

It certainly doesn’t hurt that the film is well-shot.  Filmed on location outside of Johannesburg, Tremors 5 features some of the most spectacular scenery in a direct-to-video movie.  The way they shot the African fields, with the wildlife, is gorgeous.  In terms of production values, direct-to-video films have, mostly, come a long way since the mid 90’s and early 2000’s.  Tremors never got a theatrical sequel, so it’s very surprising that the sequels were surprisingly decent.  Tremors 5 is the best of the sequels, bar none.  As technology has changed, so has the look of the Graboids and Ass-Blasters.  The creature designs in this film are amazing.  While some of the CGI is not particularly great, the look and animation of the creatures is really, really good.  I’m very surprised at how good this movie looks and feels.  Is it over-the-top?  Definitely, especially when it comes to the creature gore.  When these things blow up, they blow up, sending entrails all over the place.  I’m amazed the film got a PG-13 rating considering the amount of gore in the film.

In the first movie, what really stood out was the characters.  Val Mckee, Earl Bassett and Burt Gummer were the three really big highlights of the film, even though everybody else did a great job as well.  The one constant through these movies, however, is Michael Gross as Burt Gummer.  He played an ancestor of the character in the previous film, but he returns as the legendary survivalist in this 5th installment.  This is Michael Gross’s film through and through, although Jamie Kennedy does a great job of playing against Gross.  In fact, the film has some pretty decent character development, particularly with Kennedy’s character, Travis.  He goes from this annoying, talkative twerp to a total bad-ass by the end of the film.  I never figured Jamie Kennedy for something like that, and he does a really good job.  Even the lovely Natalie Becker brings her A-game as Lucia.  The acting, for the most part, is pretty good.  In a Tremors film, you’ve got to have some funny shit going on, and this movie delivers.  Because it focuses on Burt Gummer, he gets himself into some pretty….odd situations.  The whole cage sequence is laugh-out-loud hilarious, and yet the character takes things pretty seriously, as the situation requires it, so you believe that these guys are in danger.  The film does acknowledge where it comes from, because of some references to the previous films.  Some of it’s pretty funny, and some of it is groan-inducing.

There is some suspect CGI, and one of the characters turns out to be a greedy douchebag, so that’s kind of predictable.  As far as direct-to-video movies go, Tremors  5 is one of the best I’ve ever seen.  It’s intense, spectacular, and funny:  All the trademarks that a good Tremors movie should have.  While the film isn’t perfect, it is by far the best sequel in the franchise, and with some outstanding performances by Michael Gross and Jamie Kennedy, I can honestly say that I recommend this film to fans of the series.  Even if you didn’t care for the previous sequels, give this one a shot, it’s surprisingly awesome.  This one gets a 9/10 from me.

Cannibal Holocaust

Released: June 1985(USA)

Director: Ruggero Deodato

Unrated

Distributor: Grindhouse Releasing

Run Time: 96 Minutes

Cast:
Robert Kerman:  Professor Harold Monroe
Francesca Ciardi: Faye Daniels
Perry Perkanen: Jack Anders
Luca Barbareschi: Mark Tomaso
Carl Gabriel Yorke: Alan Yates

Over the past few years, we have seen some “extreme” horror movies such as A Serbian Film, Martyrs, and Human Centipede.  These are the kinds of movies that don’t pull punches with their content.  These movies are gut-wrenching, violent, and at times detestable.  These aren’t the first ones to do it, though.  In fact, the first film to really shock audiences was Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.  Despite the fact that it was in black and white, it was very intense and violent.  Now, the real brutal films first started showing up during the 1970s with Wes Craven’s The Last House On The Left, which was released in 1972.  The tag line for the film was “It’s only a movie.”  It was a rough one to sit through.  But in 1978, one of the most notorious films ever made was unleashed on audiences: I Spit on Your Grave.  This film was notorious for its graphic depictions of rape and violence.  It ended up on the U.K.’s infamous “Video Nasties” list, and was subsequently banned in multiple countries around the world.  However, one of the most controversial films ever made was right around the corner: Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust.

Cannibal Holocaust begins on a news story about a group of film-makers who went into the Amazon to make a documentary about the local cannibal tribes that resided there.  They had been missing two months when one Professor Harold Monroe decides to go looking for them and see if they’re still alive.  After arriving in South America, Monroe hires a local guide to take him through the jungle to find his missing colleagues.  After witnessing a brutal rape and murder of a native woman by another native, Monroe discovers the remains of the film makers near the village of one of the tribes.  After convincing the tribe’s chief to hand over the footage for the documentary, Monroe heads back to New York to try and unravel what had happened.  Watching the “documentary,” Monroe discovers the horrifying truth about the events that lead to the deaths of the film crew.   I had watched and reviewed this film about a year ago for a different website of mine.  That website is pretty much dead at this point, but I had mentioned some of the grotesque stuff that was in the film.  A little history first:  When Cannibal Holocaust was released back in 1980 in Italy, it was both praised for it’s cinematography and visuals, while condemned for it’s graphic content.  A lot of people really hated this movie, mostly because of one fact: Real animals were killed on screen.  The version of the film I had watched was completely uncensored, and had all that crap in there.  It was an issue that I certainly had.  That’s not to say that the violence and graphic sexual assaults that happened on screen were any less brutal, but it was the animal cruelty that stood out, and made the film particularly notorious.

So, why do I come back to this movie nearly a year after I saw it?  About a decade ago, a company called Grindhouse Releasing had celebrated the 25th anniversary of the film by re-releasing it on DVD.  What makes this DVD release different from the previous one is the inclusion of the option to watch the film without the animal cruelty.  Ruggero Deodato, at some point, had decided that it really wasn’t the best idea to slaughter animals on camera.  This is the version that I had just viewed.  Is the film as powerful without the animal cruelty?  In a word, no.  While the film was certainly gut-wrenching, it was also very powerful and made audiences very uncomfortable.  Animal rights activists were PISSED, and it’s completely understandable.  In my personal opinion, as a person who really loves animals, I really do appreciate the inclusion of this option on the DVD.  My initial viewing of the film left certain images burned into my mind for months.  Make no mistake:  Even without that footage, Cannibal Holocaust is still a very gut-wrenching and gruesome experience.  The movie was filmed on location in Colombia, so that allows for some authenticity which Deodato was trying to go for.  Some of the backdrops and scenery are amazing.

Cannibal Holocaust is widely considered to be one of the first “found footage” films ever made, and hasn’t been duplicated since.  I generally don’t like the sub-genre, but Holocaust was something different.  The first half of the movie is Monroe searching for the missing crew and we get to some pretty interesting things.  By interesting, I mean some pretty gross things like a decomposing corpse and a brutal rape and murder of a native woman.  When Monroe recovers the lost footage, the film takes a different turn and becomes a “film-within-a-film.”  This is actually a really cool thing to do, and I loved the way they did it.  It made the film more realistic which, surprisingly, added to the controversy surrounding Cannibal Holocaust.  Again, here’s a little more history about the film for you: Because of the way it was shot, and as realistic as it appeared, the director and some of the other crew members were nailed with obscenity charges.  Because of the way some of the characters were dispatched in the film, Deodato would’ve been hit with murder charges as well, if it wasn’t for the fact that he produced the actors to prove that they were still alive.  It’s pretty interesting stuff, actually.

The DVD set that I received in the mail recently is extraordinary.  The first disc contains the actual movie, which includes the uncensored version.  But for those of us who are sensitive to animal cruelty, there is the option to watch the film without that crap, which I stated above.  Personally, I think the version without the animal cruelty makes for a better film and experience.  The pacing is better as well.  One of the features on the second disc is an interview with Robert Kerman, who played Professor Monroe.  It’s a pretty candid interview with Robert basically laying into Deodato as a director and the film for being “savage” as he puts it.  He was very much against the animal cruelty that had been occurring, and he made it known to the director and everybody else.  Cannibal Holocaust was made as an indictment of the exploitation of the Third World and it’s inhabitants for sensationalism, and it’s illustrated here time and time again, not just with the folks who wanted to let the world see the footage, but also the crew that made it.  It’s pretty heavy-handed, to be sure, but it’s still pretty relevant.

After a year had passed since I last saw the film, I can honestly say, that it’s still a vicious, uncompromising, and brutal film that deserves all it’s accolades and it’s criticisms.  The people who spoke out against the film are not wrong.  This is a film that pushes buttons and doesn’t mince words.  Cannibal Holocaust is considered to be the grand-daddy of cannibal horror, and it’s a well-deserved label.  It’s also a film that inspired Eli Roth to write and direct his latest flick, The Green Inferno, which was recently released.  If you’re a fan of horror movies, Cannibal Holocaust is required viewing, at least once.  Because of the recent DVD release, I have to say, that I really, really like Cannibal Holocaust.  Not necessarily because of its content, but because of how it was made and how it has managed to continue to shock and disgust audiences even today.