House of Knifeable Bitches

Five super-bitches and a bitch with a loose mouth get themselves into a whole heap of trouble in Stewart Hendler's Sorority Row ('09), a remake (that's a stretch) of Mark Rosman's The House on Sorority Row ('83), a film I saw at a grindhouse theater in downtown Detroit. It was a well made slash-and-stalk with a winning Richard Brand score.

If you have a decent girlfriend, boys, you will appreciate her even more after spending close to a hundred minutes with these disgusting excuses for human beings. I don't quite understand why writers Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger decided to make every female character so goddamn unlikable in this. I'm not arguing that the world doesn't have more than its fair share of such knife-able trash -- it does. I'm just questioning the decision to not balance the movie with non-bitchy women. Did these writers have no positive female role models?

When every woman and man is a piece of shit, their bloody deaths have a cathartic effect only; there's no deeper audience involvement.

Parts of this movie look like steals from Co-ed Frenzy, the film-within-a-film in Brian De Palma's masterpiece, Blow Out. There is a reasonable amount of nudity, production values are high, and the direction is not too hurried or choppy.

The big revelation is a little too so-what! to make a difference. The climax, which takes place in a burning house, has little credibility.

The film's dialog is snappy and the cinematography by Ken Seng, who also shot Obsessed (a film I enjoyed a lot more), is pretty and functional.

The lack of warm characters does create tangible distance between story and audience. It's a hard film to embrace.

Although I enjoyed it, let's call a spade a fuckin spade -- it is still a horrendously unoriginal piece of filmmaking and adds exactly nothing to cinema.

General audiences did not warm to this film; nor did they warm to Rob Zombie's equally unoriginal, less entertaining trade-off for a paycheck. It's a comforting thought that the shine may be going off remakes. Perhaps originality (relatively speaking) will make a comeback.

Imagine that.

Ad Mat Massacre

Remember real movies? They weren't remakes, or comic book adaptations, or old TV shows given a facelift. They came from the heads of adults and they were original.

Elia Kazan's The Visitors was a 'What if?' scenario based on the true story of several soldiers who kidnapped and raped a Vietnamese woman. It formed the basis of Brian De Palma's Casualties of War.

In The Visitors, Sean Penn's character, Sgt. Tony Meserve, gets out of jail for his crime and decides to pay a visit to the home of PFC Eriksson (the character played by Michael J. Fox).

All names were changed in The Visitors, but the set-up was authentic.

The film is one of James Woods' first and finest roles.

It's slow and dark as fuck, but it's brilliant.

It is available on a Region 2 DVD only.

The Hunting Party ('71) was released in Australia when I was nine year's old. This ad mat didn't tell me much, so my interest in it was slight... until an "Uncle" (more a friend of the family) saw it, and sat at our kitchen table telling my parents how disgustingly violent it was. He went out of his way to condemn the film, even threatening to call the theatre chain and lodge a complaint.

I looked at the ad mat very differently after that.

It took me close to thirty years to finally see it uncut, and I loved it.

It is an impeccably made, brutal Western with killer performances from Oliver Reed (I love Ollie), Gene Hackman, Candice Bergen, and the legendary L.Q. JOnes.

On top of that, the score by Riz (Cannibal Holocaust) Ortolani is a masterpiece.

What makes the film so excellent is the relationship that develops between Bergen and Reed, who has kidnapped and raped her.

Director Don Medford, who directed a lot of great TV such as The Invaders and The Twilight Zone, brings a sweeping cinematic electricity to the proceedings.

The violence, which is really well choreographed, is hard and brutal.


The MGM DVD is superb.

My original imdb review went as follows:

Occasionally bloody and nail-biting Western performed by a great cast -- Hackman, Reed, Bergen, Oakland and LQ Jones (one of Peckinpah's favourites). Hackman plays a rich, impotent brute whose wife (Bergen) is kidnapped by Reed. Substituting his limp penis with a long gun that can shoot eight hundred yards, Hackman and his wealthy buddies start hunting Reed and his band of horny miscreants at long range.

What's admirable here is the way director Medford handles both Bergen's developing relationship with Reed (shades of Stockholm Syndrome) and Hackman's gradual realization that he can't compete with the younger man on any level.

The score, by Riz Ortolani (CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST), is sensational, and perfectly captures the sense of big trouble in a harsh land and the bloody inevitability of these men's lives.

Aside from the inclusion of some awful process shots on an exterior train scene, the film's technical credits are top notch and cinematographer Cecilio Paniagua's dusty vistas are powerfully evocative.

For me, the film's stand-out dramatic scene is Reed's "rape" of Bergen and its ambiguous aftermath.

Pretty damn good.


Not a lot to say about Trouble Man ('72) that hasn't already been said. It's a powerhouse blaxploitation classic.

I snuck into this and cowered in a dark corner for ninety minutes, terrified that somebody would catch me and throw me out. I could have waited eight years to see it instead and saved myself the angst.

What Are YOU Doing After The Orgy?

If the title question was being directed at the beautiful Christine Lindberg, it's a fair one, and the answer would have been: "Plenty."

This, Lindberg's first film, was followed by close to 22 others including Thriller - A Cruel Picture ('74) and Norifumi Suzuki's amazing Sex and Fury ('73).

Known as Rotmanad ('70) in Sweden, What Are You Doing After The Orgy? is not a film I have a clear memory of.

It is a title I have never forgotten.

Mary Millington was publisher David Sullivan's pornographic "It" girl. Millington was immensely popular in British flesh mags, so her transition to film seemed natural. Unfortunately, her movies, though successful, were busts, and she faded quickly.

Due to the harshness of British censorship at the time, the only pornographic thing about Come Play With Me were the centerfolds Mary did to promote the flick.

From the director of Scarface, Carlito's Way, and Dressed To Kill.

Yes, Brian De Palma made this in '72 after Hi, Mom.

Although it played at Melbourne's premier porn palace, it is not, in fact, a sex movie at all, even though it is very sexy.

Orson Welles appears as a tap dancer (!)


Light-hearted, mildly erotic sex comedy that played in one Melbourne venue, the Roma, for an extraordinary two years.

Again, a fair question, and I don't have any answers.

From the director of The Vampire Happening.

I can't argue with the claim that Janine Reynaud (pictured) was a "luscious beauty".

I love this -- "A macabre tryst with death and hell's bloody speedway".

After the success of Bedroom Mazurka, the Swedish softcore pipe opened up.

Danish director John Hilbard died in 2001; he left a string of good-spirited sex flicks.

If anybody can help me identify this film, I'd appreciate it.

It could be a retitling of The Bizarre Life of Dominas ('69) or Henri Pachard's The Bizarre Ones ('68) or neither. Pachard's film is a fairly brutal roughie, so I'm unconvinced that this is that film -- especially since it is aimed at those who enjoyed Case of the Smiling Stiffs, a retitled, early Sean Cunningham sex comedy.


'65 thriller with a little tension.

"Bed her late than never!" Love it.

Euro title is Le Voyageur.

The star, Marie-France Broquet, was a stunningly beautiful woman who had a short career in "Continental Films".

Agnar Mykle, a Norwegian, had a fascinating life, as did this novel.

In '58, Mykle and his publisher were charged with publishing obscene and immoral material after 'Song of the Red Ruby', a semi-autobiographical -- and beautiful -- novel, was published.

Mykle's career was ruined by the controversy that surrounded this case. He became a recluse and co-wrote a book about puppet theater, Dukketeater. It is revered in in its native country.

Now, his books are considered classics of Norwegian literature, and he is credited with being a major influence on the liberalization of sexuality and censorship in Scandinavia in the late 50's and into the 60's.

The film borrows elements of the novel, but it errs on the side of mild farce (with sex).

Mykle's book celebrates sexuality and nature; the film does possess a gentleness and honesty about its subject that Mykle might have appreciated.