Review: American Guinea Pig: Bouquet of Guts and Gore

I can’t decide if I was in no position or the perfect position to experience American Guinea Pig: Bouquet of Guts and Gore the first time I saw it.  Let me explain.

The setting was Days of the Dead: Atlanta.  I was drunk to say the least.  That evening, I procured six edibles.  Yes, that kind of edibles.  Three pot brownies and three pot caramels.  My intent was to space them out and eat them over the course of the weekend.  I ate one immediately, then proceeded to continue drinking.  About 15 minutes before the screening, I decided to eat another as I found a seat.  As I sat down, I noticed a popular independent horror director sitting in front of me and handed him the other half of my brownie.  I’m not naming names.  I don’t wanna get anyone in trouble.  We’ll just say that his name rhymes with Madam Ballrant.  Anyway, I reached into my pocket to get another, and all I felt was empty wrappers.  It was then that the realization set in.  Throughout the course of a couple of hours of not paying attention and the drunken horror con social butterflying that my position as the horror scribe of Atlanta affords me, I had eaten all of them.  Jason Hoover later referred to it as “hero dosing.”  In other words, I was about to be FUCKED UP.  

As the movie began to run and it all kicked in at once, the thought “I really hope this is a long flick, ‘cause I’m not gonna be able to stand up for a while” crossed my mind.  Then, as I saw two women being abducted, I found myself incapable of doing anything but staring, slack jawed, at the screen.  For the next seventy-something minutes, I couldn’t look away.  I don’t think I even blinked.  It was like some Cenobite in the employ of Unearthed Films had affixed hooked chains to my eyelids, Clockwork Orange style, and was refusing to allow me even a momentary respite from the most intense gore I had ever seen being mainlined into my brain.    

I am happy to report that after a second viewing in a less drunk and far less stoned mindset, the movie retains its power.

For those unfamiliar with the Guinea Pig films, it was a series of seven (well, six and a “worst of”) Japanese ultra-gore films produced in the 80’s.  They became infamous after being found in a serial killer’s collection.  The apocryphal story of Charlie Sheen seeing Flower of Flesh and Blood (the second in the series and BOG&G’s spiritual father) and reporting to the FBI that he’d just seen a real snuff film is one of extreme cinema’s most beloved tales.  Now Stephen Biro, owner of Unearthed Films and the  American distributor of the Guinea Pig flicks, has undertaken the creation of another cycle, this one made in the good ol’ US of A.

Simply put, this is probably the most effective gore flick ever released.  What Marcus Koch has achieved here is a legitimate game changer.  This is a bold statement considering all of the flicks I’ve seen, but I have never seen gore effects this good before.  The way the skin moves when it’s cut.  The way the instruments catch on the bones.  The meticulous cross sections of severed limb stumps.  This is truly the masterwork of a man at the top of his game.  This is Marcus’ Day of the Dead, if you know what I mean. 

One complaint that you’re likely to hear about this film is that it has no story.  Well, yes and no.  There is no story in a traditional sense.  It’s the same as Flower of Flesh and blood in that the mutilation is the sum of the experience.  There is a higher concept and some intriguing symbolism (I’m still not sure what to make of some of it) if you’re inclined to look deep between the lines for it, but it’s definitely not out in the open.  The film is primarily concerned with being a real time chronicle of two women being dissected.  That’s it.  It’s an exercise in grueling atmosphere and visuals.  It’s an endurance test.  Speaking of which, people will say it moves slowly.  Those people missed the damn point.  There’s something either deliciously transgressive or sadistically nerve-wracking (depending on your perspective) about watching the clothes being slowly cut off of the ladies for a few minutes before the blood starts to flow.  It’s torturous foreplay.  It’s those agonizing minutes after being sent to your room but before a parent arrives for that whoopin’.  It’s those terrifying three seconds between stubbing your toe and the pain impulse reaching your brain.  The fact that it lingers on every minute detail forces you to feel rather than watch.

An aspect of filmmaking that is often unjustly overlooked is sound design.  To be honest, there’s not a hell of a lot of indie flicks whose sound you can say much nice about.  The sound design in this one, however, is superb.  As good as both the gore itself and the grim ambiance are, those aspects on their own wouldn’t shine nearly as much had the audio been entrusted to lesser hands.  Jimmy Screamerclaus takes an already potent brew and sends it over the top.

Caution: The next paragraph contains a slight spoiler.

One particular aspect of the film’s setup struck me as an absolute stroke of perverse genius.  Before their ordeal, the women are shot up with a nerve agent and given several drops from a medicine dropper.  When it is revealed that these drops were LSD, you immediately knew where the psychonauts in the crowd were by either a gasp or an “OH HELL NO!”  In addition to just being a unique and sick little addition to the proceedings, the real genius of that bit of business is that it adds a whole new level of identification for anyone in the audience who has done acid.  The camera may, literally and figuratively, be making the viewer share the gaze of the killers, but anyone who has ever dosed can’t help but imagine what it would be like to be tripping on the table.  You become trapped in the headspace of the victims, and it’s a truly harrowing idea.

Something happens at the end of this flick that caused a tremor in even some of the most hardcore members of the audience that night.  Hell, Madam Ballrant got up and walked the fuck out.  As the audio residue of that final image continued over the credits, we were left with the question, “Um, is it ok to applaud?  Can we do that while this is going on?”  It was a sublimely awkward moment.  As I filed out of the room with about two thirds of the people who were there at its start, I was pretty much silent until after a few shots and a couple of smokes.  AGP:BOG&G is the kind of flick you have to recover from.  Whether you’re looking for a breath of fresh air in the tired “faux-snuff” sub-genre, want to test your mettle (or that of your unsuspecting friends) with some depravity, or just want to marvel at an impressive practical effects achievement in the age of CGI, American Guinea Pig: Bouquet of Guts and Gore is for you.  Those weak of stomach or constitution need not apply.  Nathan says check it out.

Creepmas Horror Tunes Countdown: The Top 3

#3: Matthew McPeck – F**k Christmas (I Wish It Was Halloween)

 Sample Lyrics –
You Hallmark fascists expect me sober
When you start playing your f**king songs in October!
Hark the herald devils sing Halloween.
So to you holiday-loving sons of bitches,
Screw you all and hey, F**K CHRISTMAS!
All I need is my baby, my baby and Halloween.

I’d be willing to guess that there’s not a one of us who hasn’t expressed that sentiment at some point.  Are you looking at the lights and tinsel and wishing that they were jack-o-lanterns and spider webs instead?  Then this is your anthem.  This synth-pop/proto-goth style song expresses exactly how I feel every December and only gets more and more timely as the big day gets closer and closer.

#2:  Screaming Lord Sutch – Creepy Christmas

Sample Lyrics –
The Creature from the Black Lagoon howling carols out of tune
A demon and a vampire roasting chestnuts on a fire
And the one that they call Lestat groovin’ in a party hat
Dr. Jeckyll playing Hyde & seek, they were dancing cheek to cheek.

If you just said “who?” then turn in your horror music lover’s card NOW!  In the 60’s, Screaming Lord Sutch was innovating the theatrical horror shock rock show well before Alice Cooper or Arthur Brown.  He also ran for parliament 40 times as part of the Official Monster Raving Looney Party.  He was an interesting dude to say the least.  In 1989, he and his band, dubbed “The X-Mas Creeps” for this release, unleashed this groovy number about a party I would have killed my grandmother to attend.  For the record, if that sax solo doesn’t get you in the rockin’ holiday spirit, you don’t have a soul.

#1: 

Screamerclauz – 12 Days of Axemess

Sample Lyrics - 
Nope.  Trust me, this one is better when you don’t know what’s coming.

Maybe my favorite Christmas song of all time.  Before he blew our minds and shredded our souls with his demented animated film Where The Dead Go To Die, Jimmy Screamerclauz was horrifying people with his music.  What do you get when a sicko like Screamerclauz mixes a traditional version of a Christmas classic with clips from flicks like Zombie Flesh Eaters, I Drink Your Blood, and Night of the Demons?  Pure hilarity.  The first time I heard this I may or may not have laughed until I peed a little.  Extra horror geek cred if you can name all of the movies and shows he samples.

What Halloween Means To Me '13 Day 17: Jimmy Screamerclauz

There is something very, very wrong with Jimmy Screamerclauz.  If his music, writing, and extreme animated horror films are any indication, his mind is a cacophony of eyeballs, fish stick tits, bizarre religious rituals, deformed children, brutal mutilation, hallucinogenic nightmares, and an unexplainable, perverse beauty.  He’s also a brilliant filmmaker.  His film Where The Dead Go To Die was my favorite flick of 2012.  Its real raw emotion fused with mind-bending subversive weirdness creates a viewing experience unlike any other.  I recommend it to anyone who thinks they’ve seen everything, wants to push their boundaries, or is just screwed up in the head.  So strap in folks, I have a feeling this answer is gonna get a little deranged.  Jimmy, what does Halloween mean to you?

“Rather than try and explain to everyone what Halloween means to me I’d rather just tell you a memory that shaped my childhood. My friend Billy and I were playing our favorite game of all time called “dodge the semi-truck” where we would wait for a truck to come and then see who could wait the longest before jumping out of the way.  Our parents would get quite mad when we played this game, mostly because our other friend Brad didn’t get out of the way in time the summer before and met an untimely demise. It was very sad, though I think we both secretly envied how much braver he was then us. He died like a fucking man!

Anyway, after dodging two trains in a row we decided to wander around the town waiting for nightfall, it was our favorite day of the year, Halloween. The problem was we were getting older now, we were just about 13, and the fact that we watched poor Brad get splattered only a few months prior made us grow up even quicker. Trick or Treating just didn’t seem to cut it for us anymore, but we still wanted to have some sort of Halloween adventure. After much discussion we decided to get some nasty revenge on a man in the neighborhood named Robert Jacobs. The previous summer I was hired to mow his lawn for $2o and when he wasn’t looking I took my shoes off and dipped my sock in the gasoline tank and huffed it. It made the lawn mowing experience much more pleasant and dream like. During one particularly hot day, the heat and gas fumes got the best of me and I passed out while pushing the mower and I ran over his little dog that was playing on the lawn. The dog didn’t die, but it lost one of its legs. I didn’t see what the big deal was, but he was pretty upset and not only refused to pay me, but also made me pay for the dog’s leg surgery! $1500 that cost me! Then the dumb dog just chewed it off and died anyway. The way I see it he buried my money, and tonight was the night we were going to dig up the dog and get my investment back!

We waited for nightfall and met up at the local creek. Since it was Halloween we decided to dress up in costumes. I decided to dress up like a skeleton but wanted to be a little more original then that so I put some fake blood on too, then I was a bloody skeleton. Billy dressed up as our dead friend Brad, which I thought was kind of fucked up but hey who am I to judge, after all I was dressed up as something dead too! We crept into Mr. Jacob’s yard and found the spot where the dog was buried, we thought it would be harder, but we just looked for the big three-legged dog statue he had erected. The glow of his eternal flame helped guide us as well, Mr. Jacobs must have loved that little guy. Once we dug the dog up we learned that the leg I spent so much money on had rotted away, I was pretty pissed so I lifted up the dog’s carcass and tied it to my face like a mask. We snuck into his house and pretended to be the ghost of his dog and asked him if we can have $1500 to pay the toll bridge it costs to get into heaven, he might have fallen for it given enough time, but before he could have time to process it, Billy had already put on one of his wife’s dress and started doing some sort of seductive dance for him, which I thought was quite weird and out of character for my usually more manly friend,  but before I could have time to make fun of and/or question he sexual orientation, an un-amused Mr. Jacobs shot Billy in the face with a shotgun.

Now, a normal shotgun blast would have blown Billy’s head clean off but Mr. Jacobs was one of those old coots that only has civil war guns and he was always just shoving weird shit down the barrel that he found around the house. So in addition to all the ancient bullet fragments that tore Billy’s face apart he also had a match box car sticking out of his eye and a swirly straw sticking out of his forehead.  We decided to was time to run and got out of there fast.

We decided to stop at this all night cheese steak stand and figure out what had just happened to us. The guy liked our costumes and marveled at how real Billy’s looked. Billy was kind of offended so he put one of his teeth in the guy’s tip cup. The guy was pissed at first but then saw it was an adult tooth and knew it was of great value to the right people. The cheese steak was delicious, Billy tried to eat his but the food kept falling out of the hole in his face. After that Billy dropped dead on the table, he bled to death. Apparently when you get shot in the face you’re supposed to go to the hospital and not the cheese steak stand. My best friend in the world died that night and it in all seriousness it should have made me hate Halloween, but luckily Billy died at 12:26 so it was technically November 1^st. FUCK NOVEMBER FIRST! RIP Billy, and Brad, and dumb dog.”

 14 days ‘til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween.  14 days ‘til Halloween, Silver Shamrock.

The Best Horror Flicks Of 2012 Part Two: The Top Five

 If you missed the first part of this countdown, you can check it out HERE.

5. Cabin In The Woods

I’ll admit that I was kinda apprehensive going into this flick.  I’m not much of a Joss Whedon fan, and the way the press were falling all over themselves to verbally blow the guy made me nervous.  Luckily, this was the best thing to hit theaters this year.  It was meta without being condescending.  It was a flick by horror geeks for horror geeks.  Whether I was playing “spot the reference,” laughing at the knowing parade of clichés, or applauding when those clichés were turned on their heads, Cabin In The Woods made me glad to be a horror fan.  The fun factor even overcame the abominable CGI.  I have a feeling that the orgy of gore (goregy?) featuring every horror monster you can think of will be the most freeze famed and slow motioned scene in any horror flick for years to come.   With the homage’s coming so fast that repeated viewings are almost required, it’s like a cinematic equivalent of that “photo hunt” game we all get sucked into during slow nights at the bar.  Not scary in the least, but it’s the most enjoyable self-referential horror send up since Behind the Mask.

4. Abed

By design, post-Romero zombie horror is horror of the masses.  It’s fear on a pandemic scale.  Abed does something I’ve never seen from a zombie flick; it takes the scope of the undead backdrop and scales it down to make something truly intimate and disturbing.  Based on a story by Elizabeth Massie, this movie left the audience dumbfounded and maybe a little sickened at the Buried Alive film Festival, where it won Best Feature. I went into this one having never read the story, and I wasn’t prepared for where this was going.  It’s pretty damn hardcore, but it’s done with a gravitas that makes it as mentally and emotionally extreme as it is visually and thematically. It’s a very personal terror, and director Ryan Leiske does a great job of making us share the protagonist’s torment.  The zombie makeup looks fantastic.  50 Minutes is the perfect length for the story, but unfortunately it’s gonna make the flick a little hard to market.  Therefore it might be a little tough to track down, but trust me, you owe it to yourself to see this one.  Need more convincing?  It’s got zombie sex.  Yeah, I knew that would get you.

3. The Loved Ones

It feels like I waited to see this one forever.  It’s been appearing on top 10 lists for a couple of years now, but it finally got a DVD release in America this year, and it was well worth the wait.  This twisted flick is anchored by an amazing performance by Robin McLeavy as Lola.  If I were doing acting awards this year, she would have Best Actress in the bag.  There are so many elements that make this movie great in addition to my favorite villainess of the year, maybe even the decade.  We see a lot of Mother/Son psychotic pairs, but here we have a Father/Daughter duo that’s a nice change of pace.  The well played incestuous sexual tension between the two ratchets up the cringe factor.  The violence is brutal and unflinching, the cinematography and art design are top notch, and the story offers up a couple of wicked twists.  I have also rarely seen a film choose a song more aptly to weave into the narrative.  It’s a nauseatingly cheesy tune, but it fits Lola perfectly and, in context, actually becomes pretty chilling.  This Aussie flick is intense, darkly funny, and absolutely engrossing.

2.  Excision

Excision is a coming of age film gone horribly wrong.  Actually, it’s more like David Lynch and David Cronenberg taking turns brutally raping the memory of John Hughes while Alejandro Jodorowsky suggests positions.  Like The Loved Ones, the flick features a tour de force performance from its female lead, AnnaLynne McCord.  Hers is a complex character that will ring true for anyone who’s ever been the “weird kid” of their school.  Surrounding her is one of those “Holy shit, who ISN’T in this flick” supporting casts full of genre vets.  Veering back and forth between mundane suburbia and Pauline’s blood soaked masturbatory fantasies, this is body horror combined with a riveting character study, with both aspects laid bare and presented at their most raw.  Alternately touching and disturbing, this movie succeeds on every conceivable visual, narrative, and performance level.  It might not even be horror in the strictest sense, but this is genre filmmaking for people who don’t mind thinking.  If Richard Bates Jr. can pull this off in his maiden voyage in the director’s chair, I can’t wait to see what else he has in store for us.

1. Where The Dead Go To Die

You don’t watch Where The Dead Go To Die.  You experience it.  I can honestly say that it’s like nothing else I’ve ever seen.  It boggles my nearly unbogglable (yes, that is a word…now) mind every time I watch it.  It’s what extreme cinema is all about.  Some of the things that take place in this flick make Serbian Film seem like a Lifetime movie.  Visually, it has some of the most bizarre imagery I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something.  The animation is, at times, crude and glitchy, but that only adds to the off kilter mind f**k that this flick is.  To some it may seem like shock value for shock value’s sake, but if you pay attention, there’s a lot of substance tucked between the brutality and perversion. Writer/director/damn-near-everything-else Jimmy ScreamerClauz managed to take the extreme subject matter and hallucinogenic visuals and weave them around an emotional core that will simultaneously tug at your heart strings and try it’s best to make you get reacquainted with whatever you last ate.  The fact that a lot of the story deals with children takes the flick to some rather uncomfortable places.  If you’re a sick freak like me though, there are some demented laughs to be had. 

At times this film struck me as a combination of Heavy Metal, Cannibal Holocaust, The Girl Next Door, Holy Mountain, Peanuts, Gozu, and a 90’s Tool video.   The word “nightmarish” is thrown around a lot in the horror world, but this might be the best cinematic representation of nightmare logic ever captured. You’re trapped in an otherworldly place where anything can happen at any time and you have no control at all.  You don’t even know what rules apply. Everything seems not quite real, but real enough to hurt if the trip decides to turn bad.

This is definitely not a film I would recommend to everyone.  Those whose tastes lie firmly in the mainstream and those with even slightly delicate sensibilities need not apply.  If you’re into subversive art, unique “video fringe” oddities, and effectively realized films that will actually challenge you as a viewer, this one is for you.  It manages to be mind blowing, gut wrenching, heart breaking, and soul shredding at the same time.  You may love it, or you may hate it, but if you just sit back and let the flick work its depraved magic on your brain, I guarantee you that it’s impossible not to be affected by it.  In other words, Where The Dead Go To Die punched me in places I didn’t think I had any more, and I love it when a film can touch me that way. 

Cabin in the Woods, The Loved Ones, and Excision should all be available wherever you get your DVDs and Blu-rays.  Keep an eye on the festival circuit for Abed and check out the film’s facebook page HERE.  You can get Where The Dead Go To Die HERE or on Amazon.

Well, there ‘ya go Cellmates, my picks for the best that the horror movie scene had to offer in 2012.  Do I have great taste?  Would I not know good horror if it buried a machete in my face?  Tell me what you think.  Now, let’s see what kind of shocking places horror takes us in 2013.

Review: Where the Dead Go to Die

I’ve said for many years that there was a lot of potential in the world of animated horror, but that no one had done it right yet. Anything is possible with animation, and you can go places and do things you couldn’t in a live action movie. What? What the hell did you just say to me? Oh for the love of…shut up about your beloved anime! Why can I never talk about animated horror without someone bringing anime up? Jeez. Ok, Vampire Hunter D had its moments. That’s about all you anime freaks are gonna get out of me. Maybe a little Wicked City. Anyway, what I’ve always held up as the best animated horror ever created was the B-17 segment of Heavy Metal. It had the atmosphere, but it didn’t go far enough and it was too short. I’ve seen some good stuff over the years like City of Rott or El Superbeasto, but that was horror comedy. Peurs Du Noir was cool, but lacked punch. I wanted a real, visceral, dark animated flick with that authentic horror atmosphere. I wanted something more extreme. Animation would seem to lend itself naturally to extreme horror as there are no limitations. Well folks, I can finally say that I have seen a film that serves up exactly what I’ve always wanted from an animated horror flick. Where the Dead Go to Die is trippy, demented, gory, and downright brilliant.

The movie was made by musician/filmmaker Jimmy Sceamerclauz. I say he made it because the voice acting is about the only thing he didn’t do himself here. This is his sick baby. To get academic for a moment, Where the Dead Go to Die is probably the best argument for “auteur film theory” I’ve seen in a long time. It is one man’s vision, and it is completely unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. The name of Screamerclauz is not unknown to me. As those of you who know me in real life already know all too well, every year I make twisted and inappropriate XXX-mas CD’s as gifts for my friends. A couple of years back, Screamerclauz’s AMAZING rendition of the 12 Days of Axe-mess was on it and has become a perennial holiday favorite of mine. I’m not familiar with most of his other work, as speed/noise-core isn’t my thing, but when I saw that this was his flick I was very intrigued.

I don’t want to give away any more of what happens than necessary, so I’ll just go with the “back of the box” synopsis: “Where the Dead Go To Die revolves around a troubled group of children living on the same block. They are haunted by a talking dog named Labby who brings them on surreal hell-rides between different dimensions and time periods. On the night of a lunar eclipse he informs Tommy about the devil fetus living inside his mother. The same night he attempts to help Ralph court the girl across the street, who is an unwilling participant in her father's child porn tape trading ring. Add in a memory stealing junkie living inside an abandoned church and you have 90 minutes of pure mind melting insanity.”

Let me tell you Cellmates, that synopsis doesn’t do the flick justice at all. While the movie is split into three parts, as it was originally three short films, they flow together well and the transitions don’t feel disjointed at all. The first one, Tainted Milk, involves Labby telling Tommy about the demon child in his mother’s womb. Some of the stuff that goes on in this opening segment puts stuff like Serbian Film and Salo to shame. The fact that a lot of the sex and violence involves children adds a whole new dimension of depravity. The second segment, Liquid Memories, delivers quite possibly the most hallucinogenic visuals I’ve ever seen. The story of the serial killing memory junkie wraps and weaves around these visual manifestations of insanity until your mind gives up on trying to make sense of it and agrees to just go along for the ride. The Masks That the Monsters Wear, the final segment, continues with the surreal hellishness and graphic atrocities of the first two, but adds in a completely unexpected element, an engrossing story with empathetic characters and genuinely emotionally effecting scenes. The story of sexual abuse, physical deformity, and the hopeful helplessness of youth manages to be heartbreaking, fascinating, and absolutely riveting. The overall tone of the movie is hard to nail down. The over the top sickness, pervasive sadness of some scenes, threads of pitch black comedy, and the “whoa, that was cool” aspect blend to keep the tone of the film constantly in flux and keep the viewer from ever really knowing what to make of it. In other words, you don’t so much watch this flick as you experience it.

A lot of “mind f**k” style movies tend to rely on either bizarre visuals or a sick story for their power. This movie perfectly melds both. Neither is in service of the other, they work in tandem. The word “nightmarish” is thrown around a lot in the horror world, but this might be the best cinematic representation of a nightmare ever made. You have the feeling of being in an otherworldly place that you have no control over. It’s that feeling that anything can happen in that place, and you don’t know what rules apply. Everything seems not quite real, but real enough to hurt. It’s all intriguing, vivid, and strangely beautiful, but the loss of control and macabre nature of these visions threaten to make them turn on you any minute. After the film, you have the feeling of waking up from a nightmare that you remember in every detail; a combination of “what the hell was that,” “what does it mean,” and “holy mother of shit, that was intense.” It’s either a nightmare or a really strong trip that’s constantly on the edge of turning bad.

A couple of other reviewers have taken aim at the animation style, pointing out clipping and synching issues and calling it “amateur” and “glitchy.” You know what? They’re right. What they’re dead wrong about is thinking that the animation is a detriment to the movie. In fact, it works to the flick’s advantage. It’s a very unique style. Just like the movie itself is an amalgam of the profound and the perverse, visually the movie is primitive and picturesque at the same time. The computer animation itself sometimes reminds me of lesser examples of early PC or Playstation 1 era video games. Nevertheless, the lushness of the colors, the sheer freakishness of what we’re seeing, and the knack Jimmy has for shot composition all come together to create an enthralling world for the film to take place in. Sometimes there are issues with objects passing through other objects when they shouldn’t. Sometimes hair or clothing or liquids just don’t move the way they’re supposed to. Yes it’s jarring and doesn’t look right, but I think this actually adds to the other-worldliness of the film and ends up being an asset. Had this movie had Pixar level animation quality and Hollywood polish, it would have lost its unique edge and that nightmarish quality would have been ruined. On a technical level, the only thing I didn’t dig was that the characters voices were very low in the audio mix at times. With the exception of Labby, who always whispers, I’m not sure if the low voices were an artistic choice or not, but I found straining to catch what they were saying distracting and aggravating at times.

As usual, Unearthed Films brought the awesome as far as special features go. There’s an audio commentary with Jimmy Screamerclauz where he discusses pot cookies, how he was learning to animate as the movie went on and, most interestingly, how he originally envisioned the film as a comedy. He also says that for a lot of the film he didn’t have anything deep in mind, he just wanted it to be weird. If that’s true, then his mind truly works in wondrously mysterious ways. In addition to the commentary, there’s a featurette showing them doing motion capture with an X-box Kinect, a featurette showing the recording of the voices for Liquid Memories (including a great conversation with Linnea Quigley about selling toenail clippings on ebay), an additional short called “Ice Cream Sunday,” deleted scenes, trailers, and more goodies that I have yet to delve into. I’m always impressed at the amount of TLC that Unearthed gives to these underground and obscure flicks. No barebones release here. It’s currently available HERE in a numbered limited edition DVD, Blu-ray, or VHS. Yes, I said VHS. How cool is that?

Random Thought 1: My mom has a black Labrador that looks just like Labby. Now when he sits, pants, and looks at me, I get a little creeped out.

Random Thought 2: Joe was kinda pissed that I didn’t save this one for EC3.

Random Thought 3: I have a feeling that if this film had come out during my acid days, it REALLY would have messed with my head.

Where the Dead Go to Die is a movie that walks that fine line between the gorgeous and the grotesque. This flick will make you recoil, make you think, make you feel…and might make you vomit. At times it reminded me of a mix of Fantastic Planet, Cannibal Holocaust, Holy Mountain, Peanuts, Gozu, and a 90’s Tool video. It’s also the most original piece of film I’ve seen in a long long time. This is not for everyone. If your tastes run more towards the mainstream, this might be too much. If you need big budget gloss on your flicks, you probably won’t like it. If, however, you are the type that appreciates eccentric artistry and strange, unique, beautifully made, effectively realized, and challenging movie fringe experiences, I can’t recommend this highly enough. I’ve watched it about 5 times in the last week, and it still blows my nearly unblowable mind every time. I'll post a trailer to it below. You'll be able to tell if it's something you'd be into. Warning, the trailer is NSFW. Hell, it's probably not safe for human consumption. The top of the 2012 class so far. Two severed thumbs up. Nathan says check it out.

Where The Dead Go To Die Trailer from screamerclauz on Vimeo.