Tag: Exploitation (Film Genre)

I Drink Your Blood (1970)

Well! a little bit later than i’d have liked, but! i’m finally getting round to updating the site in line for the launch of the new series in a little over a weeks time! to say things have been a little bit chaotic over here while tried to get everything prepped ready for a reasonable launch date would be a bit of an understatement. honestly, its amazing i’ve managed to do it. BUT! we’re here!

Over the last couple of weeks i’ve been vine swinging from writing, to recording, to editing to uploading and all the other fun stuff that goes into making the channel fly as it does! AND! as is customary (Well…I mean, this is the 2nd one we’ve ever done. but hey! traditions have gotta start somewhere!) we’re back with another summer special to help quench your thirst during the drought that is my summer break! and this time joining me to talk through the frankly astounding exploitation grindhouse classic “I Drink Your Blood” is Miss G.G Graham!

I had an absolute blast working with G.G and when it comes to exploitation cinema she really knows her onions! seriously, she totally blew my mind with just how much she knew about David Durston and the context with which this film was formed. a true professional in ever sense of the word. I really hope I get to work with her again in future as working on this was a blast!

So! grab yourself a tall beverage of your choice and enjoy this bumper edition of “The Red Triangle” we tried to be as thorough as possible and at the time of writing this is the longest single film review i’ve done to date!

If you enjoyed listening to G.G here you can find more of her work (and I highly encourage you to go check her out as she’s simply fab!) at the below links here:

https://midnightmoviemonster.com/
https://twitter.com/msmidnightmovie
http://driveinasylum.com/
https://cultsploitation.com/all-reviews/

And we’ll see you guys VERY shortly for the launch of the new season on August 31st at 4pm BST (11am EST)

The poster may not be all that relevent to the film. but MY GOD it sells it!
by tytdreviews

The Beast in Heat (SS Hellcamp) (1977)

This movie sucks. and since getting involved in the whole “Video Nasty” scene this was one of the movies i’d wanted to see the most out of all the entries on that section 1 and 2 list. it just seemed on paper to be a fun and weird, nasty little horror movie. in my minds eye I was envisioning something super bleak but played as if it had been directed by Ken Russell. and BOY was I in for a dissapointment.

I remember clear as day the first chance I got to watch this via Full moons streaming service last year sometime over the summer and within about 30 minutes I realised i’d been fully cheated on the premise and that in fact this was just going to more or less be a pretty generic war movie with a few very poorly shot and directed shock moments thrown in for good measure. I didnt come away from this movie on the first watch sad, I came away angry that I’d waited literaly years to see this film, only to be bitterly dissapointed by just how underwhelming it is as a work. I jumped into a group chat with some friends to vent my frustration and got a mixture of “Oh Wow that bad eh?” and “yeh it’s awful” which didnt really soothe me much either.

As times gone by i’ve been able to be a bit more critical about all of this and i’ve kind of ended up in a place where I feel that this is a film that; if you can get it for cheap or ideally free I’d say it was worth keeping. but I certainly wouldnt say it was any good and I DEFINITELY wouldnt say it was worth any more than $5.

It’s a good job I caught this film on streaming as I was seriously planning to spend upwards of $35-$48 to import a copy of the US Severin release of this movie at one point. the official line is that the BBFC dont have a problem with this film and that if it was submitted for classification today it’d be passed uncut for release. the problem is the films SO shit that UK distributors wont go near the thing. Leading to a bizarre situation whereby the film IS available to import from international sources. but because dealers know it’s so shite they wont license it for a UK release. despite it being perfectly okay to do so. Which leaves people like me who, before seeing it on streaming couldnt find a copy anywhere else, to have to do drastic things like pay upwards of $48 in costs and shipping to find out just how unwatchable and WHAT a money pit it truely is.

Totally rubbish, worth owning for reference and maybe as a filler feature for a pretty lively party. NOT something you’d just stick on because you want to enjoy your evening. this films so bad…

The Poster is literally the coolest part of this movie. GOD this film was SO LAME!!!
by tytdreviews

Massacre at Central High (Blackboard Massacre) (1976)

One for the “Yikes” pile, this movie even now is just…leaves me with this sense of cringing discomfort. it’s one thing to make a drama about a 35 year old teenager trying to blow up a school and killing off the students. it’s another when your sympathetic to the killer. and this film really does genuinely try to rationalise that; had our main character not gotten TOO into murdering his peers. the school probably would have been better for it.

I know theres themes around corruption present and the idea that just removing the figureheads of corruption from a system without properly planning for the transition of power, merely creates a vaccume from which even worse corruption can spring forth. I get it. but I just find it incredibly problematic that the film at no point takes the time to point out that the main character in this movie (the one doing the killing) is wrong to have even done it in the first place. instead it really just leaves the viewer with the feeling that, had David just planned better for the aftermath, the murders would have been entirely justified.

This was one of the first scripts where I actually had to cut a section of the script out in post. I had initially recorded a section in the opening of my review where I took a bit of a deep dive into school shooting statistics with the aim of trying to figure out exactly why someone in 1976 would think that this movie was in ANY way a good idea. and my initial research revealed that basically the same amount of school shootings occured between the 1920’s and mid 1970’s as occured between 1998 and 2004. I therefore came to the conclusion that the reason why this film got made was simply a case that…well; not a lot of these really happened all that often, so my guess was that the producers thought they’d be safe covering this topic in this way as (at the time) it would have been about as common as a General election and probably would have been viewed by the public as one of those “It could never really happen to me” moments.

Unfortunately; just as I was working on the edit for this episode, a school shooting happened. and I re-reviewed my data and found a TON of scope for incorrect data and missed avaneus of exploration ranging from School massacres being listed seperately from school shootings in terms of collated data. issues with classifying what actually COUNTED as a school shooting and what was classed as a School massacre or just a targeted attack. issues with what qualified as a school attack (if people get attacked en mass just outside the school grounds. does it still count as a school attack?) and even variations on the attacks themselves. such as; what if it was a teacher that committed the attack rather than a student, what if it’s an entire SCHOOL that goes to attack another school? does that count as one incident or hundreds of smaller ones? and in one bizarre case from the 1920’s if a student accidentally kills another student with a hoe on school grounds, but then kills another student to stop them covering up the first murder. is that a massacre? or just a super awful story?

In essence. what I wanted to say was “Because of how few attacks happened between 1925 and 1975 the producers probably felt comfortable presenting the film this way” but honestly? after seeing all the variables I missed out. the datas a hot mess and I honestly dont know anymore. all I do know is they definitely could have handled this film more tactfully…that being said; I guess your more likely to get butts on seats with controversy and shock than you are with just being a clean cut drama.

Anyway; this movie hasnt aged well, but there are a couple of okay points with it. so maybe check out my review and decide for yourself 🙂

This cover is SUPER misleading. however; it’s the best cover this film has.
by tytdreviews

The “Caligula” (1979) Comedy Dining Experience – 500 Subscriber Special!

Well! we did it! a milestone I never thought we’d hit and we’ve smashed it! Im going to be honest here; when I started the channel I thought i’d consider myself grateful if I managed 10 subscribers. and; at most. I thought if I could hit 100 subs i’d have proven something to myself about my thoughts on film and cinema at large.

I have had mixed experiences in the past with “Filmies” I realise that I myself am in the minority of people who think bad films have something to teach us as much as good films do. University was a big eye opener for me as I realised that there were people who’s entire film diet consisted of “Only watching the absolute best” of anything cinema had to offer.

I found it a very beige experience.

and the more and more I spoke to people, the more and more I realised that. While their were people like me out there and a bad movie community in general. it was very much a bubble. and surprisingly difficult to enter short of traversing the minefield that is bad cinema at large. this coupled with a growing annoyance at the lack of resources to chart bad movies (as mentioned in my “About” section on this very website) and I decided that. in the absence of a clean and detailed documentation of this type of film. I’d have to try myself.

And I’ve loved *almost* every minute of it! it’s been hard. it’s been an uphill struggle. it’s put a strain on myself, my family and my friends at times. But I dont regret a minute of it. 500 of you fine fine readers subscribing to my channel is more than I ever could have hoped for. and the number is growing quicker and more consistently than it ever has before.

And so. to you. I offer you this special episode of the comedy dining experience as thanks. You will not BELIEVE the wrangling that went on behind the scenes to get Ben and Laura to agree to this one (Let’s just say im in deep with the mob now) but…fair play to them; they sat through the whole thing. for me…for you. Me and Ben have been friends now for very nearly 10 years and me and Laura have been together for almost as long as well. and a guy couldnt ask for 2 greater compadre’s to tackle this masterpiece in bizarre adult weirdness.

So…enjoy! and…I really wasnt kidding at the end of this. we WILL do “Cannibal Holocaust” if we hit 1k.

to your future and ours. we’ll see you there.

by tytdreviews

Truck Turner (1974)

So! We’re back! Season 8 non the less! and let me tell you now. Im pretty bloody exhausted. Having spent the entire summer pretty much backing and forthing with renovations and builders (A blog on that will be on the way shortly) I finally got the media room up and running and decided to finally get going on exporting all the season 8 episodes i’d worked on (8 epiosdes) ready to schedule in, upload and forget about.

Life had other ideas. Basically; my harddrive decided to die. Normally this would be devestating as, because I was planning to do backups once things were back up and running, to switch my harddrive on and find it’d basically died BEFORE I could back anything up. meant I’d effectively lost 2-3 months work with 1 week to launch day.

That at least WOULD have been the case if someone hadnt clearly been sent to “Guardian Angel” me. y’see…while I’d lost the original exports, I did still have partial access to the drive. I could view everything on there and I could even transfer off some of the small (KB) files and VERY mercifully for me, I’d saved not only all the original Premiere pro edit files for all the episodes i’d worked on, but i’d also saved *almost* all the raw elements that made up the edit. So I simply bought a new drive, migrated all the raw elements over (It still took nearly 2 days to do that) and then on the new, fully working drive, re-exported all the video files from there. *Boom!* I was back up and in business…there were a couple of minor losses. any episode that used VHS footage predominantly had to be recaptured back in and adjusted so the cuts all matched and there were one or two raw .jpg’s and .png’s that i’d misplaced during the transfer which meant I had to do a couple of substitutes. But yeh; everythings pretty much back on track.

Ultimately; I lost about 3-4 days of editing time due to this harddrive error, but considering I could have literally lost everything I could myself exceedingly lucky. ladies and gents. im normally a very careful man when it comes to backups. and the story that happened here should be a warning to each and every one of you. ALWAYS. MAKE. BACKUPS. because next time, you may not be as lucky as I was.

ANYWAY!; New season! season 8! it’s a shorter run due simply to a mixture of the renovation work overrunning and the harddrive failure. it was originally planned as an 18 episode run + a collab. thats now been knocked down to a 16 episode run and im not 100% sure about the collaboration. But we’ve still got plenty in store to take you all the way from now until the end of December! So put on your dancing trousers and get down to the totally and utter king of funk and soul “Isaac Hayes”

This is one movie, I CAN dig.

The Original Poster for this is okay. But I personally find it a bit too busy. I much MUCH prefer the 101 films Bluray cover.
by tytdreviews