Movie Review: The Gore Gore Girls (1972)

 

There is quite possibly no entertainer like Herschell Gordon Lewis. He has brought horror fans endless joy with such films as The Wizard of Gore and The Gruesome Twosome - beautifully bad movies with ungodly bad taste, and that is exactly why we love them. The Gore Gore Girls from 1972 would be Lewis's final film for more than 30 years, but oh, what a way to go out.

Private investigator Abraham Gentry is promised a sizable sum by a reporter from The Globe, Nancy Weston, to look into the murder of a stripper named Suzie Creampuff. As Gentry rounds up a list of suspects, the body count continues to rise as more strippers are offed in increasingly bloody and gruesome ways. Who could be the one making mincemeat out of these beautiful girls' faces?

It has actually taken me a while to be able to write this review because while there is plenty to talk about with The Gore Gore Girls, it has left me rather speechless. The movie revels in its abundance of sleaze and over-the-top, unrealistic gore so much so that my experience of watching it can be broken down into the times that I busted out into such fits of laughter that I had to pause the movie before continuing on. Through the course of The Gore Gore Girls, there were many such laugh-out-loud moments, most of them having to do with the kills.

First to die is Miss Suzie Creampuff in a quick little opening scene before the credits. She's primping in front of a mirror before a black-gloved hand proceeds to shove her face into said mirror several times. It's good, but things get much, much better. The next victim is Candy Cane, a girl whom we meet again in front of mirror where she is staring at herself and caressing her body for some reason. While popping her bubble gum very annoyingly. Anyway, she actually gets the worst demise of them all where her face is hacked to smithereens with a cleaver. This induced Laughing Fit #1. Oh my goodness, how freaking excessive was that?! When the killer is done, her face doesn't even look like a face, especially when the killer sticks his/her hands all in it, pulling things apart and popping her eyeball.

Of course, this is not the best death in this movie.  Laughing Fit #2 came right at the beginning of this murder scene when the Circus Stripper (so named by me because of her dance sequence to odd circus-like music) randomly takes a cucumber out of her refrigerator (how subtle) before she has her throat cut and is bent over a kitchen table. Then the killer spanks the poor girl's butt bloody with a wooden meat tenderizer! What the hell?! That's kind of amazing and horrifying at the same time. It is made even more amazing when the killer dashes a little salt and pepper on her freshly tenderized rump. Soon after this mind-boggling scene, we are almost immediately thrown into another murder scene that is even more random. This scene includes a chick making French fries while ironing before getting her throat cut and getting said iron to her face. Laughing Fit #3 happened when her nipple was cut off and the milk was caught in a champagne glass. I about died. The girl's roommate then comes in and gets her face shoved in the boiling French fry grease. Dear goodness, Hersch, I seriously can't take anymore!

The Gore Gore Girls actually boasts some of the best acting I have seen in an HGL movie, mostly because I love Abraham Gentry. His character is incredibly obnoxious but the actor playing him does obnoxious so well that I give him a pass. Nancy is also pretty funny herself, especially in the scenes where she gets drunk. But the best character of course has to be the bar patron who just sits there, drawing faces on melons and squash before smashing them to bits with his fist. So very random, but so freaking hilarious.

When all is said and done, The Gore Gore Girls has one of the best and most delightful endings I've ever seen. Just as Abraham and Nancy are about to finally make out, Abraham breaks the fourth wall and informs the audience that they've "seen enough," and literally closes the curtain on the movie. Then this text appears:

Seriously, what's not to love with a movie that ends like this? Not only is it another example of awesome titling by HGL, but The Gore Gore Girls is also just another fantastically sleazy and crazy addition to this man's oeuvre. I love it.

Movie Review: Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964)

Oh my goodness, if I never hear another banjo-picking, Southern hillbilly song again it'll be too soon. Gah, Hersch, that was painful. Thankfully the rest of Two Thousand Maniacs! was not. It is one of Lewis's earlier movies and the second in the so-called "Blood Trilogy" (bookended by Blood Feast and Color Me Blood Red - the next two movies on my watchlist). I don't know if it is my favorite yet, but I can definitely say that it is the most well-made and entertaining of what I've seen so far. So let's talk about it, shall we?

Two groups of travelers find themselves in the little town of Pleasant Valley, where they seem to be "special guests" for the town's centennial celebration. But the people of Pleasant Valley have some very gruesome events in store for their guests, as revenge for wrongs committed against their town during the Civil War.

One thing I'm really enjoying about Lewis's movies are the stories. With the exception maybe of The Gruesome Twosome, his films don't seem to be of the standard fare that would come in later decades - there's always something just a bit... off about them, or there's some kind of twist that is so weird but at the same time still works. I loved the concept behind The Wizard of Gore, and now Two Thousand Maniacs with its whole all-the-town-is-crazy-and-kills-these-people-in-awesome-ways things is really making love the man. The ending of this film could be seen as complete malarky to others but, dangit, I liked it. It gives the movie a sense of mystery that it might not really deserve and it sure makes a hell of a lot more interesting than it could have turned out to be.

Our victims are two different groups of young lovelies traveling the countryside in hot convertibles going... wherever the heck they're going. Two couples in one car and a woman and the man she picked up hitchhiking are in the other car - and six just happens to be the magic number that Pleasant Valley needs to carry out their evil deeds. You see, back during the war a bunch of soldiers rolled through the town and pretty much killed everybody just 'cause they could. So now one hundred years later the town is out for vengeance against whatever Yankees they can get. Our Yanks don't know any of this at first, of course, and prove to be excellent fodder for the townspeople because they are absolutely ridiculous to believe that they would be special guests for a random town's centennial. And they just completely put their plans on hold because they get put in a crappy hotel by some of the most annoying and creepy people ever? Pfft, they deserved what they got, I'm not sorry to say.

And what do they get? Well, those are the fun scenes! The people have come up with some impressive ways to kill their guests, obviously modeled after what was done to them a hundred years ago. First to go is the dumb blonde who goes off with one hillbilly only to have him cut off her thumb, and then later her arm which is then put on a spit during the festive "barbecue." The amputation is nicely done with the effects - a lot better than some of the stuff Lewis would do later. Next up is the little annoying drunk boy who would have gotten the coolest looking death of all if they had actually showed it to us. He gets his limbs torn from his body by four horses running in different directions but they cut from the good stuff - probably because they couldn't do it - so all we see is one severed leg. My favorite death comes next, when one of the other guys is put into a barrel with nails stuck into it all over and rolled down a hill. Not so sure that that would kill him so quickly but I was willing to overlook that because of the inventiveness. Lastly is the crushing by a huge boulder, made even more fun by the dunk tank-like way they rigged it up. A woman is laying on a platform underneath the boulder while hillbillies throw balls at the target that will make it fall on her. Of course it does, and spectacularly crushes her.

What the movie lacks in the blood and splatter department sometimes, it makes up for with all-around hilarity. The rednecks act just as nauseatingly cliche as you would expect them too, but the actors are so damn enthusiastic with all their roles that you can't help but love them. They are way more interesting than any of the travelers, even the two main ones, Terry and Tom, who are only a little bit smarter than their counterparts. Heck, even the kids get a chance to shine, and little Billy certainly takes advantage of it. Such a doll. Anyway, I couldn't stop laughing through most of this thing, whether it was at the acting or the dialogue or just the craziness that was going on.

Three Lewis movies down, and so far they're all winners in their own way. Can't help but be stoked about what's in store for me next (and hopefully I'll get them reviewed much sooner than I have been!) as I continue my strange and exciting journey through the works of Herschell Gordon Lewis. Stay tuned!

Movie Review: The Gruesome Twosome (1967)

Looks like my next Herschell Gordon Lewis experience came quicker than I expected, seeing as how a certain internet DVD service flat-out refuses to send me The Howling. It's been a "very long wait" for about two months now so I'm thinking I'm just going to have to buy it, though I don't recall liking it enough the first time for purchase. Anyway, I have to watch what they send me, and The Gruesome Twosome was next on the list. The Gruesome Twosome may have a fantastic title that I absolutely love saying, but it is a movie that does not live up to that title in the least. But it's still fucking awesome. Damn you, Herschell, and your terrible but strangely entertaining movies.

Young co-eds are disappearing in an unnamed college town and oddly enough, the perpetrator is kindly old Mrs. Pringle, who runs a local wig shop, and her mentally challenged son, Rodney. He kills and scalps the girls so mama can carry on with business, but now someone is catching on to them. Another nosy co-ed is determined to solve the mystery of the disappearances.

Holy crap, so many WTF scenes in this movie. And it starts right at the beginning. The opening scene before the credits is as odd as they come, consisting of two mannequin heads with wigs and cut-out construction paper faces basically talking about the plot of the movie about to start. I couldn't even hear what they were saying half the time because I was laughing so hard. Absolutely pointless filler? Indeed. Wonderful in its silliness? Undoubtedly. Oh, but the WTF was not even close to being over with this scene. Still plenty more to look forward to.

But... we have to introduce some kind of plot first. As the first real scene shows, Mrs. Pringle's operation goes something like this: she advertises a room for rent in her wig shop, a girl with a nice head of hair comes by inquiring about it, Pringle introduces her to her stuffed cat Napoleon (more on that later), then sends her into a room behind the wig shop where Rodney waits to attack and scalp. All the girls that we see meet this fate just sort of wander around without fighting back or anything so they kinda deserve to die for being so r-tarded.

Then we meet one of the most annoying characters ever, Kathy, the college girl who seems to be obsessed with solving mysteries - which we find out because several characters say something to that effect several times throughout the movie. Her boyfriend Dave has a habit of throwing a bitch fit every time Kathy says something that doesn't involve her tongue in his mouth so he instantly becomes the second most annoying character ever. Kathy only becomes involved with Pringle and Rodney because her friend Dawn is looking for a place off-campus, so we know that she's going to die and Kathy's going to go looking for her because she's nosy and annoying.

But honestly, screw the plot. I really just want to talk about the other WTF stuff. Case in point: Napoleon. The stuffed jaguar or whatever the hell it is in Mrs. Pringle's house that she talks to all the time. Of course it's probably there to add to the overall ridiculous nature and black comedy of the movie, but Mrs. Pringle herself pretty much takes care of most of that. Kudos to this actress for her commitment, as her comedic performance definitely made the movie a lot more bearable. Pringle shoots off these crazy lines full of wisdom and tropes, always asking affirmation from Napoleon. And nobody who encounters her has the heart to call her a crazy bitch. How nice.

More WTF occurs at the drive-in movie. Kathy and Dave are necking in the car, but the far more interesting part of this scene is the movie they are watching. I don't know what the hell kind of movie this is supposed to be. I am, however, interested in seeing the rest of it if there is more. The movie is a headless man and woman sitting at a dinner table (headless because the camera never fully shows their faces), and the woman is saying all kinds of clingy and womany shit to the man, Terrence, who only seems interested in the food on the table. He crushes the potato chips, scarfs a banana, takes a bit out of an apple, crushes a peach... not listening to anything the woman is saying (understandably, too). Lewis intercuts all this weird shit with shots of Kathy and Dave but for some reason this movie takes precedence in this scene - more filler is my only guess. Again, I could not stop laughing, especially when the woman started fondling her beer glass. Too fucking funny.

The whole thing ends rather unceremoniously when Douchey Dave brings the police to Pringle's house just as Kathy is about to get it from Rodney. She pokes him in the eye with a hat pin, they show his gooey eye in closeup and then... he dies. I don't really remember how. A short epilogue scene shows the wig shop closed and then there's a random shot of Napoleon to end it all. An hour and twelve minutes of pure WTF and nobody could have done it better than Herschell, I swear to goodness. This man is a genius of bad movies and I love him for it. Beyond "so bad it's good," The Gruesome Twosome is cinematic gold at its best... worst... it sucks, but it's awesome... you know what I mean.

Two Thousand Maniacs, be prepared to meet my DVD player very soon.

Movie Review: The Wizard of Gore (1970)

Michele, meet Herschell Gordon Lewis. Hersch, meet Michele. I think we'll be seeing each other again very soon. However, if you were planning to shock or unsettle me with The Wizard of Gore, you kinda failed a little bit, dude. I had an absolute  ball watching this movie, because while eyeball-squishing and other things of that nature in a movie would usually make me squirm and freak me out, this one had me laughing my ass off at pretty much every scene.

Montag the Magnificent is a great magician who is able to saw girls in half and shove swords down their throats and never harm them in the least. That is, until the volunteers leave the theater and suddenly drop dead in the same method as the trick they were involved in. A local television host and her boyfriend catch on to what is happening after Montag's shows and try to put a stop to it all.

As is so often with the case with low-budget horror movies, The Wizard of Gore is one where you really can't spend all your time watching it nitpicking about how shitty it is. Because it is shitty. I'm just going to be honest: The Wizard of Gore is in many ways technically a really bad movie. But I'm well used to that kind of thing by now so I didn't care and I just went with it. So glad I did, too, because it made it so easy to enjoy the hell out of this thing.

So it's a little confusing trying to figure out what is going on with Montag's tricks at the beginning. The first trick he does is sawing a woman in half with a chain saw. There's no box or anything over her, he just saws right through her stomach. The weird thing is when how the scene keeps cutting from her being all bloody with her guts hanging out to her being perfectly fine. Once I realized, though, that the audience was not completely freaking out like they should have been at seeing Montag play around with her intestines, I figured out that what they were seeing was the bloodless version of the act. Montag hypnotizes the volunteers and the rest of the audience so that don't see what he's actually doing up there. I guess the bloody version that we get to see is just Montag having his fun.

The only big thing that there really is to talk about with this movie is the gore. Don't get your hopes up too much about the acting because you will be very, very disappointed in that regard. The only real passable actor that I found here was the woman playing Sherry, and the worst out of the whole bunch was her boyfriend Jack, who has more than a few moments of downright douchebaggery with his horrible line deliveries. But I digress. The name of the game here is of course gore, as the title tells us, and with all the things I'd been hearing about Lewis's famous gore over the years, I was excited to see what he had to offer me.

Like I said before, though the gore and violence is very over-the-top and bloody and has eyeballs being squished and brains pulled out of heads, it's all really hilarious shit. Should I have been disturbed by some of the stuff I was seeing? Probably. But when you watch somebody stick their fingers into the eye sockets of something that is VERY obviously a doll head, how can you take that even remotely seriously? The only really well done effect I saw out of the whole movie was the girl who was impaled in the stomach by the punch press. Lots of bright red blood and slimy guts were there for sure, but the way she was squirming around with the thing in her stomach was actually pretty awesome. 

The funniest part is probably when Montag is about to perform his biggest trick to date on Sherry's daytime TV show. He's going to light them all on fire and apparently nobody has any problem with either him doing that or doing it in the middle of a TV studio. Anyway. Montag's also hypnotized everybody in the studio and everybody watching at home, but Jack manages to avoid this and goes to the studio to rescue his girlfriend. Montag ends up in the fire himself and we get to see his head get burnt to a crisp. Everybody standing around, again, doesn't seem to have any problem with this. "His power must have died with him. Hm." There is a freaking corpse burning in a fire. Must just be the same old shit with these people or something.

The ending also had me laughing at the silliness of it all but I still didn't care by then. Sherry was also an "illusionist" of some kind and now she's fucking with Montag? Sure! I'm with you. The Wizard of Gore is without a doubt a fun splatter movie that is kind of exploitation, minus the boobs. The gore makes for some excellent gags that are probably not supposed to be as funny as I found them, but that's just how I am sometimes. The acting and directing quality is... below par, to be nice, however it's something that is easy to overlook when you're dealing with all the other ridiculousness.