What Halloween Means To Me Bonus Features: Daniel Beckman

 

We're gonna wind up the What Halloween Means To Me bonus features with the one and only (thank Cthulhu!) Daniel Beckman.  Daniel is one of the core members of the SOC family.  He’s been one of my biggest supporters since the beginning, and he was/is one of the members of the infamous EC3.  He was there for the the "Christmas Day Serbian Film" incident.  Hell, he’s even the man responsible for coining the term “Cellmate.”  You should thank him; you readers were almost called “Cellulites.”  Yeah, I figured you'd like his idea better.  Anyway, while the future of EC3 may be very uncertain, what is certain is that Daniel will always be a part of SOC in one way or another.  So, what does Halloween mean to you bitch?

“Halloween.  My dark Christmas (too emo?).  It stands as the only holiday that I get excited about these days.  I still hold out hope that every creature that has ever frightened me may in fact be real.  A vampire (pale, not sparkly) may attack on any given evening, ghosts may haunt me, or (fingers crossed) the zombie apocalypse will level society and reset everyone’s credit scores.  All of these occurrences are at least 6 times more likely in October.  Halloween stands as most kid's first look at the dark side.  Millions of children roaming the streets with demons, sluts, and corpses.  It's beautiful!  Some of us love it and never let it go.  Halloween night is the one night a year anyone can be someone or something they are not, or perhaps finally be themselves.  There are no rules.  Be careful though; those rules come back the next day.”

348 days ‘til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween.  348 days ‘til Halloween, Silver Shamrock.

RIP Joe Roberts, aka Where I've Been For The Last Month

Hey there Cellmates. Yes, I’m still in the land of the living, and yes, SOC is getting back in gear. As I’m sure you noticed, I haven’t been around a lot lately. In fact, this is my first post in a month. Some of you know where I’ve been during my hiatus, and I’m sure some of you just think I’ve been being lazy, so I’m just gonna lay it all out there and let you know what’s been going down. I warn you, some heavy shit has been happening, and it’s gonna get personal and probably a little emotional, but that’s just how it goes.

This is Joe Roberts. Some off you knew him personally. Some of you just knew him through his involvement in SOC. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while (or checked out the archives), you’ll remember EC3. Joe, Daniel, and I did group reviews of The Vomit Gore Trilogy, Subconscious Cruelty, and Anthropophagus. Unfortunately, it’s been tough to get all 3 of our schedules together lately, so we haven’t done an EC3 in what feels like forever. Joe was a major part of the inner circle of SOC. He was one of the people who encouraged me to start the blog. Actually, he always told me I was a f**king idiot for not starting one sooner. His nocturnal hours and acerbic wit made him the perfect late night screener-watching partner. Close to half of the movies I’ve reviewed on this site I watched with him.

He wasn’t just a part of this project though. I considered him my little brother. We met when I was a junior in high school and he was a freshman. Over the years we watched countless movies together, were in bands together, did a lot of stupid shit together, grew up and learned about life together, competed over who could build the coolest collection of bizarre artifacts and horror/Halloween memorabilia, helped each other through dark times, laughed about the past and talked about the future, went on road trips together, and generally were closer than most blood kin. He was probably the one person I could most freely share my thoughts and feelings with. Most of the best times I’ve ever had somehow involved him. Six years ago, when I lost my actual blood little brother to a drug overdose, I started to think of him even more in that role.

Well, for close to a year he’s been struggling with a lot of medical issues. I’m not gonna go into a lot of details. Suffice it to say, he was in rough shape. He’s been in and out of the hospital, seen god knows how many doctors, and was in a lot of pain. Watching him deteriorate over the past year has been a very sad experience, but he kept it lighthearted most of the time. There was this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I might be watching one of my best friends dying, but I always pushed that to the side. There were still treatments to try and tests to run; and for a while it actually looked like he was making progress towards getting better. Then, at the beginning of August, his parents found him unresponsive in his chair. They took him to Emory, which is the best hospital in the Southeast. There they basically told him that his liver and kidneys had shut down and that there was nothing they could do. He opted to return home and die there.
I’ll spare you the play by play of his final 2 weeks. I stayed there with him, both because the nurses needed the extra muscle (due to his extreme adema, he was hard to move around) and because I promised him that I would stay with him ‘til the end. A handful of his other friends were also there a much as humanly possible. The Pack is an amazing group of people. It was a heartbreaking, gut-wrenching time. Without going into specifics, things were very complicated. There were quite a few moments when each of us broke down, but there were also some powerful, very deeply moving moments. It was kinda profound in a way. Watching Joe go through the phases, watching The Pack gather around him, and seeing how each person dealt with it in a different way showed me a lot of things about the human spirit and condition. He had always said that he wanted me to conduct his funeral, but we never actually thought of that as a reality. He still maintained that I was to do it at the end, though, so I did. That sucked. Hell, the whole experience sucked. Bad.

So that’s where I’ve been for the last little while. I wouldn’t wish it upon my worst enemy, and there’s nothing I want more in this world right now than to have Joe back, but life has to go on. Joe was always a huge believer in the fact that I could make this blog and (in the bigger picture) my writing/editing career a success. The best way I can think of to honor his memory is to keep on keeping on and make Son of Celluloid everything it can be. I’ll be honest with you folks, my head is still pretty discombobulated. I love that word. Anyway, at the moment it’s hard to wrap my mind around a flick and concentrate enough to write, so getting started again might be a bit of a slow process. Just know that I’m gonna work through it, we’re gonna get back to what we do ‘round these parts, and I’ve got some big plans for the next few months. I’ve especially got something cool in the works for October.

One bright spot in all of this is the discovery that I still have all of the recordings from EC3. 12 hours of Joe, Daniel, and I bullshitting about gore flicks and giving them the MST3K treatment. There is even a Human Centipede 2 edition that was never published. I’ll get that written up as soon as I can handle listening to it. I can’t do it yet. I was also hanging on to a flick called Philosophy of a Knife to be the next edition. If and when I will do that one remains to be seen. The future of the series is up in the air. Daniel and I will decide what to do eventually.

I want to take a minute to thank all of you who posted on the Facebook page, messaged and emailed me, and sent well wishes and support. You guys have no idea how much that means to me. I’ve said it before, but I’ve never meant it more; the Cellmates are the greatest group of readers a writer could ask for. I’m sorry if this whole thing was too maudlin and sentimental, but it’s a long road back to normalcy. Life will go on, horror will go on, and dammit, Son of Celluloid will go on. Joe, buddy, you’re forever gonna be my inspiration to keep this SOC thing going. I love you bitch. I’ll see you on the other side.

Bear with me folks, Son of Celluloid is on the way back…

How I Lost My Horror Convention Virginity: Thoughts on Days of the Dead Atlanta

This past weekend was an awakening for the Son of Celluloid. Ever since I was just a budding horror geek, a geeklet if you will, I had heard of a magical place where the horror geeks run free among their own kind. A place where the stars we’ve only seen on the bloody screen become real people that exist on the same plane as the fans. A place where everything you could ever want to buy is available. A place where drunken ramblings and impassioned debates about the most obscure b movies are the norm. Basically, there existed a natural habitat for me and the rest of the gorehounds; a place known as a horror convention. I had seen them advertised and seen glimpses of them on the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors video from long ago, but I had never experienced it. This weekend Days of the Dead finally brought a horror con to Atlanta (well, Peachtree City if you want to get technical about it), and let me tell you folks, it was everything I had dreamed it would be. Paradise really does exist. If you’ve never been to one of these, trust me, you have to.

I warn you, some of my recollections are pretty fuzzy, as there was a LOT of drinking going on, and I’m not going to bore you with my entire itinerary, but here are some of the highlights and random cool memories and thoughts…

-On the way to the room from checking in I ran into Amelia Kincaid from Night of the Demons and chatted with her for a few minutes. She was really cool, even though she kinda blew me off for an interview later in the weekend. That's ok, she was busy and I still love me some Angela.

-The weekend really got off to a killer start on Thursday night when First Jason, fronted by Ari Lehman, played at the pre-party. I’ve never seen someone shred like that on a keytar before. Well, it’s not actually a keytar, it’s a keyboard mounted on a giant machete. They played songs like “Jason is Watching” “Living Hell,” “Jason Never Dies,” and ended with a cool Edgar Allan Poe piece. After the show, I ended up out back getting stoned with a boy in a lake and a boy with a doll (I’ll let you figure that one out). Now THAT’S how you kick off a party!

-The weekend was all about networking and I made some great connections. I converted some new Cellmates and discovered that I already have a lot more Cellmates than I would have imagined. The filmmakers in attendance gave me some cool flicks I’ll be reviewing soon. I was also given some great items to give to you, so there will be giveaways galore coming up. I’d like to especially thank Stephen Biro of Unearthed Films. He hooked me up with some awesome DVDs and a copy of his book, Hellucination. It sounds intriguing as hell and it will be SOC’s first book review. Go check out THE UNEARTHED FILMS WEBSITE and peruse all of the cool stuff they have to offer. You won’t be disappointed.

-It seemed that every other time I stepped outside for a smoke, Laurence Harvey from Human Centipede 2 was out there too. He’s a great guy, and absolutely NOTHING like you might expect him to be. Someone else I kept running into out there was Neal and Troy from Without Your Head/In Your Head radio. I’ve been listening to both of those shows for a long time, and it was cool talking to those guys in person. Although, that footage Neal showed me was sorta disturbing…

-When I first got my press pass, the one thing I told everyone is that my main goal of the weekend was to interview Sid Haig. I’ve been going on about that for months. Well folks, I managed to do it. My first huge celebrity interview EVER was Captain Spaulding himself (no offense to anyone I've interviewed before). It was Sunday morning, we were both exhausted, hung over, and barely functioning, the lights kept going out, and people kept bumping into my camera woman, but I got my Sid Haig interview dammit. It’ll be on youtube as soon as I work out a couple of camera issues.

- I also interviewed Laurence Harvey, Mark Patton, Taaffe O’Connell, Nick Principe, and Sean Whalen. Everyone was cool as hell and very down to earth.

- I got my old, beat to hell, been-watched-god-knows-how-many-times VHS copy of Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowlorama signed by Linnea Quigley. She was very sweet. Another dream come true meeting.

- While I never support heckling at comedy shows, especially if you're hammered, Daniel (of EC3 fame) did get Rowdy Roddy Piper to say his classic line "It's always been my ass" from Immortal Combat. Yet another classic moment.

- The panels were great. I enjoyed the Scream Queens panel (What was the question?) and the Sid Haig/Bill Moseley panel (especially Sid’s story about being forced to drink blood laced with hallucinogens in a headhunter village in the Philippines), but my favorite had to be the Men Behind the Mask. These guys were funny as hell. Here’s a video of almost the entire panel. What you won’t see is at the end when I asked Tyler Mane what the craziest thing he saw backstage in WCW was. He sat for a full minute in stunned silence before turning backwards and saying “Tyler Mane isn’t here any more.” It was hilarious.

- At night, the whole thing becomes a killer party. Drunken madness reigns supreme. Imagine the biggest, craziest party you’ve ever gone to. Now imagine that everyone there is a horror freak, half of them in costume. Words can’t do it justice; you just have to be there.

- The Dear God No screening was packed and raucous as expected.

- PJ Soles is a sweet lady, but she kinda looked terrified when Nicole and I charged drunkenly (yeah, that’s an understatement) at her in the hallway screaming “PJ!”

- Um, what were the Trekkie, Stormtrooper, & Darth Vader cosplayers and a Steampunk booth doing at a horror con? Eh, whatever.

- I only had 30 bucks for merchandise, but I managed to get a Hellraiser puzzle cube, a Gold Key Boris Karloff’s Tales of Mystery comic from 1968, a piece of the chapel from Night of the Living Dead, and a cool Bates Motel keychain. Score! My dream item: an autograph dealer had Vincent Price’s signature for $175.

- Did I mention that the stack of screeners I walked away with is absolutely sick?

- The favored past time of the weekend quickly became trading stories about your encounters with the one and only Gary Busey. That's Daniel with his Buseyness. People asked me about this story a few times at the Splatter Cinema screening of The Beyond last night, so here it is once and for all; my Gary Busey story. On Friday, while my friends were getting their pictures with Sir Psycho of Busey, I pointed to his 8x10s and this exchange took place…

Me: “You ought to have a picture of you and that bad ass truck you drove in Succubus: Hell Bent.”

GB: “ I wasn’t in that picture.”

Me: “Sure you were. Remember, you played the Sentinel and you had that truck with the skulls…

GB: “No. That wasn’t me.”

Me: “I watched it three days ago.”

GD: (Glaring with the Busey death stare) “I’ll take your word for it.”

I decided at that point that I’d leave it alone and walk away. Also, in the dealer’s room we saw a guy selling some really cool knives he had made from railroad spikes. That will be important later. Anyway, I had just gotten my Linnea autograph and was taking it up to the room. When the elevator opened, there stood Gary Busey, holding one of the railroad spike knives. After a moment of debate, I entered the elevator with a knife wielding Gary Busey. I only had two floors to go. He turned his head and looked at me and our eyes locked. Now, I’ve always wondered if the whole “crazy” thing was an act that he played up for TV. I can say with the utmost certainty that it isn’t an act. In that moment when I looked into the eyes of Busey, I saw true madness. That man is off his damn rocker. He stared at me for a long moment, knife still clutched in hand, until the door opened. I, hoping he hadn’t remembered me, said “have a nice night Mr. Busey” and walked away. He just gave the slightest nod and silently watched me exit the elevator. Then the door closed and he was gone. It was by far the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen. I had to have momentarily stepped into a movie, or maybe the Twilight Zone, as that was just too perfectly random to have happened in real life. I went back to the room, took a big shot of whiskey, and considered just how close to death I may have just been.

In other words, Days of the Dead Atlanta was the time of my life. Considering this was my first horror con, I really don’t have a frame of reference, but from what the vets I talked to told me, Days of the Dead was one of the best. I enjoyed it more than DragonCon, which is the closest thing I’ve experienced. If you’ve never been to one of these, you absolutely must see it for yourself. If you’ve been doing it for years, then you know what I’m talking about. I’d like to officially thank Adolfo and the rest of the staff for putting on a great show and allowing me to cover it. I’d also like to thank Leah, my personal assistant/camera woman/brain for the weekend. That's her with Sid Haig. Without her following me around with that ever present notebook, my drunken schmoozing would have been lost in the ether and no progress would have been made. I seriously owe you. Well Cellmates, there you have it, the story of when I lost my horror con virginity; which is an apt analogy because I’ll never forget my first time and now I’m obsessed with finding a way to do it as often as possible. Next year it will be March 1-3 at the Downtown Atlanta Sheraton. Trust me, you don’t want to miss it.

EC3 Takes On Subconscious Cruelty

Warning! The EC3 posts are not the usual semi-family friendly Son of Celluloid fare. Due to the nature of the films presented and the fact that the three members of EC3 curse like sailors, the language and subject matter may be offensive. Reader discretion is advised.

Subconscious Cruelty is one of those movies that wants you to ponder what it’s about. It is the spiritual kin of other esoteric, obtuse flicks like Begotten, Holy Mountain, Visions of Suffering, Eraserhead, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Wall, Tetsuo, all of Kenneth Anger’s films, etc. It kinda made me feel like I was in film school again. Since a major part of experiencing a flick like this is interpreting what it means, I’m not going to go there in this review. You’ll have to do that for yourself. Daniel, Joe, and I did spend about an hour after the flick in a deep, philosophical, scholarly discussion about the symbolism and meaning writer/director Karim Hussain was trying to convey with Subconscious Cruelty. This conversation, which contained some very profound moments, was capped off by all 3 of us laughing like Beavis about the word “taint.” That’s just how EC3 rolls.

A word of warning before I start, there WILL be spoilers in this review. Honestly, I don’t think that matters a whole hell of a lot with a flick like that. Subconscious Cruelty has no linear narrative. The first segment does to an extent, but the series of four vignettes is definitely more about the symbolism presented and the emotions and mood it can create in the viewer than actually telling a story. Trust me on this one, my words can’t describe what’s shown. Knowing what is coming would not diminish the effectiveness of the film at all. If you really don’t want the spoilers however, skip the next paragraph.

Up first is Ovarian Eyeball, in which someone cuts a woman’s abdomen open and removes…an eyeball. Yes, an eyeball. I didn’t see that one coming. This is accompanied by a monolog (actually there is no dialog at all in this flick) about killing our left brain, the literal side. Section two is The Human Larvae. A man lives with his whore of a sister, with whom he shares a (possibly incestuous) love/hate relationship. He watches her with other men as he delivers a vaguely Poe-esque “descent into madness” first person voice over. When she becomes pregnant, he takes on the role of midwife, all the time pontificating about and plotting the ultimate desecration of life. When the child is born, he carries out his plan. Rebirth is next, and it’s basically a bunch of naked people rolling around and getting it on with the earth, literally. A man fucks a bloody hole in the ground. A woman gives head to a tree branch, giving new meaning to the euphemism “twig ‘n berries,” bites it in half, and it starts bleeding. Then a woman holds a butcher knife as if it was a penis and a man proceeds to give it a blowjob. Finally we get Right Brain/Martyrdom. A man sits in a coffee shop watching couples. He then goes home, pops in some porn, and angrily does the ol’ five knuckle shuffle. He is apparently deeply religious and disgusted with what he’s just done. In his dreams that night a man “from the right” comes to him, melts his cross necklace, and shoots it into his brain with a hypodermic needle. Joe and Daniel pointed out the “Opiate of the masses” visual pun at the exact same moment. Anyway, Mr. Right (get it?) pontificates while an unseen person skins Mr. Religious’s wang like a banana while jerking him off. Then Jesus is cannibalized, peed on, and anally raped with a tree branch by three naked demon sluts. I’ll pause while you read those last two sentences again. Finally, we have a moment of serenity in the form of a naked man lying in a waterfall.

SC sits firmly in the arthouse horror category. The difference between this flick and a lot of arthouse horror fare is that this one was actually good. Looking back on it, you realize that the movie could be looked at as quite pretentious, but that’s only in hindsight. Joe, Daniel, and I are all very quick to point out ostentatious bullshit. While we were actually watching the film, none of the three of us ever mentioned anything of the sort. The powerful imagery and intense atmosphere do a great job of making the potentially overblown thematic material palatable. You’ll notice that there is no wittily insulting exchange in this EC3 review like there was for the Vomit Gore trilogy. That’s how you know it was great.

The dreamlike visual style is unique and effective. The lighting is a big component. Each of the three main segments has its own style. In Human Larvae, the action is mainly lit with warm amber hues, with the backgrounds being very dark. This serves to both focus the viewers attention, enhance the hallucinatory qualities, and hide a lack of elaborate sets. Since the movie was made for approximately $100,000, that was a very smart move on the part of the filmmakers. By contrast, the “dirty hippies” getting it on with nature were lit very brightly. It has the same disorienting effect as sitting in a dark room for a while and then walking outside into very bright sunlight. The last segment has the same black backgrounds as the first, but veers into Argento-esque territory with its colored lighting.

The other thing that really impressed us was the gore. These are some of the most effective low budget practical effects I’ve seen in a while. One thing that I particularly enjoyed was in the Ovarian Eyeball scene when the woman’s abdomen was being cut open. You could still see it rising and falling with her breath. I’m pretty sure it was a complete prosthetic, as the cut was a little deep to be a smaller piece placed over the actresses body. If I’m right, then they used a simple bladder effect. If I’m wrong, then the makeup appliance was a masterpiece. Either way, that small detail made the shot immensely more believable, and I was duly impressed. They didn’t even do that in Guinea Pig: Flower of Flesh and Blood, which is my standard for up close bodily mutilation. The final segment featured some great cannibalism, and some of the…um...penile trauma even made EC3 cringe. That’s not easy to do. The baby in the Human Larvae looked excellent also. If you are going to be doing unpleasant things to a baby in a movie, it has to look real or it’s just going to be hokey. It’s the difference between the idiotic baby scene in Slow Torture Puke Chamber and the positively horrific one in Serbian Film. This one looked very good, and the scene is much more gruesome for it.

Random Thought #1: For the love of Hitchcock, can EC3 get through one damn movie without watching someone getting pissed on?

Random Thought #2: Joe and I have decided that we should start a death metal band and call it Fishhook Handjob.

Random Thought #3: SPOILER ALERT: Daniel was actually disappointed in the fact that after all of that build up, all he did was kill the baby with a knife. He was expecting something more elaborate and subversive. In fact, we all kinda were. THAT is a good indication that you are ridiculously jaded when it comes to movies. Then again, I guess once you’ve seen the infamous “newborn porn” scene in Serbian Film, there’s no turning back.

The general consensus is that Subconscious Cruelty is by far the best flick EC3 has reviewed so far. It’s very high on the sex and violence scale, but it’s not at all an exploitation flick. I’ve rarely seen “artsy” horror go to these extremes, and it works here. It assaults you with bizarre imagery and challenges you to make sense of it all. Some of the symbolism is a bit hamfisted at times, especially in the anti-religion department, yet it never becomes overly grandiloquent. Ha! I finally got to use that word in a review. Anyway, Subconscious Cruelty will give you your depravity fix while actually giving you something to think about and maybe even prompting some meaningful discussion. It is a rough ride in parts, but is extremely well made, so feel free to spring this one on your film snob buddies. The looks will be priceless. All three of us highly recommend checking this one out. So, once again, on behalf of Joe and Daniel, this is Nathan inviting you to join us next time as EC3 continues to explore the fringes of horror cinema and answer the burning question ”what kind of sick freaks watch this stuff?” EC3, that’s who!

EC3 Takes On The Vomit Gore Trilogy Part 2.

Warning! The EC3 posts are not the usual semi-family friendly Son of Celluloid fare. Due to the nature of the films presented and the fact that the three members of EC3 curse like sailors, the language and subject matter may be offensive. Reader discretion is advised.

Yesterday, we took on the first film in Lucifer Valentine's (hereafter referred to as either LV or Lucy) infamous Vomit Gore Trilogy. You can check that out here. Now, the exciting conclusion of EC3 Takes On The Vomit Gore Trilogy.

ReGOREgitated Sacrifice

The “story” - Your guess is as good as mine. I was fortunate enough to talk to someone involved with the film (who wished to remain anonymous) and was told that it was presented to him/her as “…the story picked up at the end of the last film where the heroine committed suicide and that this film was what her mind saw as it died. Each character was supposed to be a part of the main girl. She had multiple personalities and each one had to die as she did. The Black Angels of Hell (the demonic twins) were the strongest part of her so they kill off the weak ones, ushering them into the next life, and finally die themselves.” Apparently Angela also has some connection to Kurt Cobain that’s never really explained.

What we actually see – Seemingly random scenes of some damn good gore, torture, and, of course, lots of vomit. Oh, and there’s pissing in this one too. Yay.

We begin with the same shots of Angela dead in the tub and home video footage of Angela from the end of SVD, eliciting a priceless look of abject despair from Joe. Then, a pair of conjoined twins comes walking out of the woods, gets sawed apart, and then they proceed to kill a succession of women. Oh yeah, and Angela is pregnant now for some reason. At the end of the film, somehow we end up outside Kurt Cobain’s house and we are shown that Angela and Kurt died on the same day and are somehow connected, I think. This is incredibly vague and there isn’t even an attempt to explain it. None of this makes any sense at all.

This one is my favorite of the three mainly because of the gore and some truly “out there” visuals. While it may fail as a horror movie in the traditional sense, it somewhat works as a series of bizarre violent vignettes. There are some really cool gore scenes here. One has the Black Angels disemboweling Ms. Lake Washington (who we all agreed was the most attractive victim in the trilogy and broke Joe out of his “too much nudity” funk) and whipping her with her own intestines. We see a tarantula sewn into a vagina. There’s a damn good decapitation. The icepick in the eyes idea is re-used from SVD. We see a whore beaten in the head with an alarm clock. There’s no way that was faked either. They are just wailing on this chick with that clock. We see a man in Celtic Frost style corpse paint and aviator sunglasses wearing a dead octopus on his head, sitting in a throne, and vomiting into a hollowed out severed head. Read that last sentence again. That’s some pretty unique imagery.

These scenes are much more effective as dark avant-garde cinema than anything in SVD. The problem is that RS fails miserably in telling the story it purports to tell. Looking back after reading the synopsis and the story being explained, it makes a little bit of sense, but as Joe said “Movies shouldn’t need goddamn Cliff Notes!” I’m not just being dense here and “not getting it.” Even my anonymous source agreed, “There is NO way anyone would guess that multiple personality shit from watching.” Here’s a quote from an interview with director Lucifer Valentine regarding his use of the octopus…

“ The octopus is used in ReGOREgitated Sacrifice to symbolize the infinitely chameleonic nature of Satan as an octopus can change its shape, color and texture to conceal its identity and is meant to also symbolize Angela's possession by Satan and so Hank Skinny, the symbol of bulimia, wears the octopus as a crown and uses the tentacles to gag himself and Vomit to show that Angela has been both engulfed and embraced by Satan and that she is now taking his form and becoming Satan herself as we see grotesque manifestations appearing onscreen like the octopus crown.”

Um…yeah. Whatever you say Lucy. I am all for symbolism. Hell, I have a degree in film studies. I’m no stranger to looking for deeper meanings in films. For symbolism to work, however, it does have to be at least somewhat accessible to the audience, or it loses all effectiveness. That is basically one of the major problems with the entire trilogy. None of the things LV said he was trying to convey come across at all. We do get one thematic element of Satan and the popular image of women being one, as in her pact with Satan, Whore (yes, that’s the character’s name) is forced to say “I promise to model my body after the images of celebrities and supermodels, but to never gain weight by purging until Satan tells me my body is pretty.” Interesting idea, but it’s never expanded on, so it’s a throwaway statement. The final scene where a naked woman performs a vomiting blowjob on a fake dick then masturbates as it ejaculates gallons of blood onto her? That’s just self-indulgence again. It has nothing to do with anything. It sounds like it would be interesting just for the sleaze factor. It really isn’t.

As far as the vomit goes, this one ramps it way up from the first flick. There is so much puke that it loses what little impact it had left. Puking on bodies. Puking in toilets. Puking on floors. Puking on each other. Hank does his puke/drink/puke/drink trick again, and while it is more visually interesting this time, we’ve seen it before. While it is meant to be repulsive, after a while you just get numb to it. It reminded me of the Nightmare on Elm Street remake. In that movie there were so many jump scares that by halfway through even the teenyboppers in the theater with me weren’t jumping any more. Halfway through this, we were so bored with puke that instead of having the desired effect all it was inspiring us to do was debate about what we thought they had eaten. LV may have realized this, so we get a new bodily function. Yes folks, this time we have pee! The first time it happens you think “Um, ok. That was out of nowhere.” After that it’s just kind of there. It has no impact. Anyone who’s ever seen an issue of Hustler has seen a woman pee, and unless you’re into that, it’s pretty pointless. There is one scene where a woman pees in a jar, drinks it, then pukes it back up, thus combining Lucy’s two fetishes. Sorry, I’m not impressed. I have youtube.

So, all in all, the gore scenes are awesome, the alarm clock beating is fun, and the rest you can fast forward through. It’s the best of the three, even though only half of it is actually entertaining. Your thoughts gentlemen…

D: Easily the most effective alarm clock I’ve ever seen. There was a dildo, there was a tarantula and a vagina, there was puke, blood, still no story, still waiting on that. Maybe in the third one. Um…did you know Kurt Cobain died?

J: The camera work got a little better. After an hour and a half of watching naked women I was actually happy to see tits again. Which is sad because I am a straight man. There are only so many ways you can see a cracked out, “meth-y” looking whore strip in a crappy motel before it’s fucking boring. It sucks because it looks like they put a lot of time and effort into making the gore look good, and the only reason you get to see it long enough to appreciate it is because someone’s puking on it.

Random Thought #1: We finally found the point at which Joe can be offended. After watching 2 ½ hours of vomit, urine, degrading women, vile gore, labia clamps and weights (sorry Lucy, you’re not gonna freak me out with BDSM toys), and all manner of atrocities without incident, Joe finally got riled up that Hank Skinny was wearing a t-shirt of the band Unsane. Joe likes them and was pissed that they were associated with “this shitty movie.” I love these guys.

Random Thought #2: Can you imagine what the set smelled like at the end of a shoot?

Slow Torture Puke Chamber

The “story”: (from Amazon) Making good on her pact with Satan, Angela Aberdeen's tortured and vomit-soaked soul descends into Hell. But Satan is not finished with her yet - He has more suffering planned for his ravaged slave. Angela is sent back up to the surface to stalk and destroy yet another victim. Her return initiates the emergence of a new Angela who is steadily and painfully infected with the Devil's Curse. An appalling metamorphosis befalls the chosen young victim as she is racked by bulimia, and subjected to the dark, forbidden secrets of incest of abuse. Slowly, the two Angelas merge into one Perfect Child of Satan and descend to an eternity of suffering in Hell.

What we actually see: Puking, peeing, and an incredibly badly done baby rape/murder/eating.

When I told the guys what the last one was called, Joe said that “Slow Torture Puke Chamber” should be the name of the trilogy. I concur. If you had told me after watching Slaughtered Vomit Dolls that I would consider it the second best of the series, I would have told you that there was no way. I would have been wrong. By the time we started this it was almost four in the morning and none of us were up for it. Like Joe said, however “It’s like a gang bang. You’re tired after the first fifty cocks, but you might as well just power through it.” Truly inspiring words, my friend.

This isn’t a horror movie at all. It’s amateur vomit and urine fetish porn. Seriously, about all there is here is puking and pissing. Mainly pissing actually. In jars and bowls. In trash cans. On other people. In Angela’s mouth. On her own face. Puking in shot glasses and drinking it. Puking in a funnel taped in to another woman’s mouth. Seriously, this one has more puke and pee than the other two combined. In his interviews, Lucifer Valentine makes sure to mention over and over that he’s an emetophile, meaning that he’s sexually aroused by vomit. Good for him. Unless you are too, there’s nothing here. Well, there is the scene where they pull out that chick’s tampon and slap her in the face with it.

To confuse the “story,” which is already hanging by a thread, we have two lead actresses now, and they’re both calling themselves Angela Aberdeen. One is Amera Lavey. One is Hope Likens. She spends about 20 minutes staring into the camera as a voice over tells her story about being molested by her father. It’s so riveting that we lose interest about 30 seconds in and start discussing how bad Hope’s boob job is. There’s a reason Daniel gave her the nickname “Left-eye,” and it has nothing to do with TLC. Anyway, they both do the usual bodily function thing. To break up the monotony, they both masturbate explicitly with crucifixes. Those who know the members of EC3 personally know that we’re sick bastards, and something like that would normally be right up our alley. Not in this case. Even Joe, probably the biggest blasphemy fan of the three of us, said it was too little too late to elicit any interest in the goings on. We were all so brain dead by the time Angela slides her ass up the wall to pee on her own face that we were cheering for her to poop, as it’s the only thing that hasn’t been thrown at us yet. Daniel wanted it so bad he could taste it. Well, maybe that’s a bad choice of words.

Hank shows up again. This time he cuts a baby out of a woman, tries to eat it, pukes on it, screws it (I think, it was hard to tell), puts it in a blender, does his puke/drink/puke thing yet again, and kicks it around the floor. Sounds pretty horrific, doesn’t it? Well, maybe it would be if it didn’t look like a dollar store doll covered in ketchup. After the phenomenal gore in the first two flicks, this was really a disappointment. The gore here is absolutely bottom of the barrel. What could have been fairly disturbing was almost comical, with Hank taunting a doll and gnawing on its head. Yet another missed opportunity.

After watching the entire trilogy, none of us could really form coherent thoughts about what we’d just seen. Joe gave STPC credit for at least having a disclaimer calling it an “art project.” I don’t cut it any slack for that. As the series progressed, at least Lucy cut down on the constant shaky cam, lightning edits, and vocal distortion; or as Daniel put it “he slowly found a cure for Parkinson's.” We do all agree that this one was the worst by far. Daniel, by the way, wants to beat Hank Skinny to death. Joe wants to duct tape Lucifer Valentine to the front door of the Westboro Baptist Church and see what happens. I’m just glad they didn’t attack me for subjecting them to that.

Random Thought #1: We Finally found my point of offense. About five minutes in, there are subtitles and Hope says, “I think your perfect.” YOUR? Really? No one proofread the damn subtitles? They used the wrong form of you’re, and that’s what finally got to me.

Random Thought #2: I get why the plastic sheets were everywhere, but it kinda kills the mood.

Random Thought #3: Apparently Lucy and crew are moving up in the world. The hotel rooms are a little less skanky in this one.

Overall, the Vomit Gore Trilogy is one big, steaming pile of squandered potential. I think there were some good ideas there, but it just didn’t translate in the execution. The problem here is that Lucifer Valentine made the movies he wanted to see and either forgot about the audience or assumed that what appeals to him would appeal to everyone else. You, my friend, were dead wrong. This is his personal jerk-off material, with some horror elements thrown in so he could market it to a wider audience. If the flicks weren’t so self indulgent and actually paid attention to the story that he says is there, these could have been good. In fact, with the opportunity presented with Angela’s unique situation, they could have been something special.

We did recognize that if we were still 16 and in our “subversive equals good regardless of quality” phase we probably would have dug it. Most people probably would have been either offended or at least nauseated by the flicks. We’re not most people though. We can see it becoming a “Faces of Death” style slumber party “can you handle it” challenge type of flick. Hell, that’s why we watched it. We wanted something extreme. We got it, but unfortunately, that's all we got. We would have preferred extreme AND good.

The final verdict is that these flicks are somewhere between art house, grindhouse, and outhouse. Watch Slaughtered Vomit Dolls only if you really like pretentious “art” cinema. For the horror fan, ReGOREgitated Sacrifice has some cool stuff, just be ready to sit (or fast forward) through some ridiculous crap to get to it. Completely ignore Slow Torture Puke Chamber unless you’re into amateur urine/vomit fetish porn.

Well folks, that’s The Vomit Gore Trilogy. I promised the guys that I would find something much better for next time. I have a few ideas. Muahahahaha. On behalf of Joe and Daniel, this is Nathan inviting you to join us next time as C3 continues to explore the fringes of horror cinema. After reading all of that, I know what you’re thinking...”what kind of sick freaks watch this stuff?” EC3, that’s who!

EC3 Takes On The Vomit Gore Trilogy Part 1.

Warning! The EC3 posts are not the usual semi-family friendly Son of Celluloid fare. Due to the nature of the films presented and the fact that the three members of EC3 curse like sailors, the language and subject matter may be offensive. Reader discretion is advised.

The Vomit Gore Trilogy. For the fan of extreme horror cinema, it sounds intriguing. For the average movie fan, it sounds revolting and maybe a bit frightening. For Daniel, Joe, and I, collectively known as EC3, it was our maiden voyage. If you missed my last post, follow this link to find out what this EC3 thing is all about. We went into this with one understanding; once we started, we were in it for the long haul. No matter if they were the best or worst movies we’ve ever seen, we were watching all 3 ½ hours at once. We would come to regret that decision. What in the green hell was I thinking?

Director Lucifer Valentine’s Vomit Gore Trilogy consists of Slaughtered Vomit Dolls, ReGOREgitated Sacrifice (what an idiotic pun), and Slow Torture Puke Chamber. I knew nothing about these movies beforehand besides the fact that they involved real vomit. I printed out the synopsis of each film that appears on the back of the DVD, as I’d heard that the meaning was a bit hard to deduce from the films themselves. A bit. Yeah right. Hell, I’ve seen Begotten. It couldn’t be more pretentiously esoteric than that, right? Right? Wrong. Lucifer Valentine (hereafter referred to as LV) has a pretty intriguing story here. Too bad you’d never guess what the story is, or at least anything beyond the bare essentials, just from the movies themselves. Daniel said that he was pretty psyched about the flicks from reading the story synopsis. We all were. By the end of the night we would find ourselves struggling to make it to the end, not because we were repulsed by the bodily functions, but because the movies were just that tedious.

Slaughtered Vomit Dolls

The “story” – Angela Aberdeen runs away from home at age 14. She is molested by a priest, and makes a pact with Satan. She then burns down the church, becomes addicted to drugs, and develops bulimia. She becomes a stripper, porn star, and prostitute, all according to Satan’s plan. She then commits suicide by drowning herself in the bathtub.

What we actually see – A headache inducing 72-minute collage of random ridiculous camera angles, distorted voices, ambient noise, vomiting, the least appealing nudity of all time, and some pretty decent gore.

Where the hell do I start? This flick was a mess. It’s shot like a music video for an random second rate early 90’s industrial band. There is barely a shot that lasts for more than a second and a half. Rarely does anyone say something that isn’t slowed down or distorted. There's this incredibly irritating droning ambient noise throughout the flick. It gets REALLY irritating after about five minutes when you realize that it’s not going to stop. Some of the odd camera angles look decent. Most of them just look like the cameraman was just trying to be “artistic” and failing. It comes across like they were trying WAY too hard to be avant-garde, and it’s definitely an exercise in style over substance. The problem is, the style is annoying and the substance is nearly nonexistent.

We do get puking. Puking in toilets. Puking on glass tables. Puking everywhere. No one pukes on each other though. Yet. If you’re squeamish, this isn’t the flick for you. We were somewhat impressed when a guy named Hank Skinny showed up for no reason whatsoever, puked in a cup, drank it, puked it back up, drank it again, puked it back up, drank it, etc. That was pretty gross. Shocking? Not really. Gross? Yes.

There were a few sparks of brilliance here. The gore was extremely well done; it was just badly shot. There was one scene we all loved where a woman’s arm was cut off and then she was given a guitar and told to play it. What an inspired concept! The scene was bizarre, surreal, and absolutely hilarious. There was also one line said by Amera LaVey, who played Angela Aberdeen, which was brilliant; “I don’t know what’s left of me, but you can fuck it if you want to.” That’s one of those lines that, in one statement, convey exactly what state the character is in mentally and emotionally. That's some powerful, well written shit.

One of the more amazing things about this flick is that it actually managed to make three straight men (perverts in all actuality) bored with the nudity. Daniel made us watch 45 minutes of an awful horror movie a couple of weeks ago just because he wanted one actress to get topless. With SVD, he actually sounded disappointed when he said “Oh, she’s getting naked again.” It takes talent to make a movie so bad that EC3 even loses interest in nudity.

Speaking of Amera LaVey, according to LV, she was actually a porn star and stripper with a serious drug problem who entered into a 24/7 power exchange relationship with LV with the condition that while she lived with him and recovered she would do anything he said and be filmed constantly. Now I’m not sure how seriously I take LV’s word, as I have a suspicion that everything about him and his films might be a put on/meta-media prank, but if the shooting conditions are to be believed, I weep for the film that could have been. We all picked up on the fact that a lot of Angela’s heartbreaking statements were most likely autobiographical, as they had a sincerity to them that’s tough to fake. Had LV let her story develop more organically and made a “fictionalized documentary,” this could have been emotionally soul crushing. A shooting opportunity like that doesn’t come along every day. We watched her strip in a hotel room over and over and over. I get that as the repetition of being a hooker, etc, but there was so much farther they could have gone. Had the film not focused so much on avant-garde style and made the “shocking” imagery serve the story instead of overshadow it, SVD might have been a really good flick. Unfortunately, as it stands, it’s one of the biggest missed cinematic opportunities I’ve ever witnessed .

This is the exchange that took place when I asked Joe and Daniel for their post-flick comments…

J: The vomit? Not that offensive. If you’ve ever seen GG Allin concert footage, that wasn’t that bad.

D: I’ve dated a bulimic. It’s not terrible.

J: Or if you’re an alcoholic. You’re used to vomit.

D: I feel like the demonic voice thing was well over used. The gore was actually really good but the shaky camera lost a lot of its effect…and I got really tired of the same tits. I probably would not watch it again.

Joe: It could have made a really cool 10 minute short, but it was just a self indulgent masturbation of Lucifer Valentine’s ego and I kinda wish I had shot myself in the head instead of watching this, and I might since I have to sit through two more.

D: I don’t know what’s left of me after seeing that, but you can fuck it.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Random Thought 1: About an hour in someone shows up in a bald mask and cowboy hat. What’s that Joe? HOLY CRAP! You’re right; it’s Yul Brynner in his Westworld getup. While his presence in this movie definitely elevates it, it is kinda depressing to watch a Hollywood legend slumming it like this. Can’t someone find him some respectable work? Wait, is Yul taking off his cloth...um, actually Joe, I don’t think that’s Yul Brynner after all.

Random Thought 2: Daniel constantly wisecracking in a Borat voice went a long way towards making this flick watchable.

Random Thought 3: “Blisters” is the worst name for a hooker ever. EVER!

Come back tomorrow when we take on parts 2 and 3 of The Vomit Gore Trilogy. Does the series get better? Does it get worse? You'll find out soon enough.

TO BE CONTINUED...