A deranged serial rapist wearing a hockey mask viciously attacks Linda, a university student who operates a food truck during the day and works on a horse farm in the evening, and forces her to sing Jingle Bells while in the middle of his heinous act. When the police could do nothing about locating and incarcerating her rapist due to lack of evidence, Linda’s urge for revenge boils to an explosively volcanic overflow. She learns that four other young university women have been attacked by the same Jingle Bells rapist and so she devises a plan to form a rape squad to encourage other women to reach out to their squad to stop various types of misogynistic attackers in hopes that one case might lead to their own attacker, but little does the revenge seeking victims know that they’re rapist has formed his own plan: to rape all five at the same time!
“Act of Vengeance,” also better known by as “Rape Squad,” sleazes the screen as an American rape-revenge exploitation film helmed by “Count Yorga, Vampire” director Robert Kelljchian in 1974. An exploitation film that just doesn’t only exhibit the gratuitous violence and nudity and perversion, but manages to go deeper, analyzing the difficult moments of how women were perceived and treated post rape in a time where laws against rapist and laws to protect the women victims are, at best, intangible. Kelljchian’s assembly line of degradation painfully puts Linda (Jo Ann Harris) through a series of incompetence and chauvinistic values, forcing an awkward and uncomfortable blanket of emotions over, not only Linda, but ourselves. Ross Elliott’s officer portrayal as Sgt. Long was nothing short of frustration for Long and Linda; his questioning was insensitive, yet routine while her vague description of her attacker doesn’t qualify for swift justice. Also, when Linda has her legs up on the gurney brackets, the male doctor goes through a creepy-comforting spiel to try and get Linda to relax before tasking a smear and that has Linda, in a way, relive her trauma and just layers on uneasy tone.
For the first half the film, Kelljchian seamlessly and continuously pushes the male snickering and apathetic obliviousness toward Linda’s, and the groups’, rape. At about or around the time the squad forms and a martial arts expert named Tiny, played by Lada Edmund Jr., starts to karate kick potential abusers’ asses, “Act of Vengeance” drops the dramatics and goes full blown Jackie Brown-revenge, losing some depth to the subject matter and getting back to the route of an exploitation film with bits of intentional comedy tossed in for good measure. “Acts of Vengeance” isn’t vengeful torture porn similar to a preceding film, a little known title you might recall entitled “The Last House on the Left” directed by master of horror Wes Craven, or in later films that have been more popular with audiences over the years; one particular film stands out having a striking familiarity in title and somewhat in story is 2015’s “Bound to Vengeance,” starring “Kindergarten Cop’s” Richard Tyson, where a young girl escapes the confines of a sexual predator, joins forces with a couple of other captive victims, and turns the tables on his perverted, underground organization.
What really makes “Act of Vengeance” also surprisingly good is Peter Brown’s performance as Jack the rapist. The Southern drawl with plain-spoken manner is unlike any other character I’ve ever experienced. When Jack asks of Linda, under his firm grip around her throat, to say, “Say, thank you, Mr. Rapist,” a calculated chill shivers down every inch of the spine. Now being that “Act of Vengeance” was released in 1974, Jack’s assault sporting getup and candid personality might spark a reminiscent flame for horror fans. Jack’s thin stature fits slightly loose in an orange jumpsuit and he covers his face with a white goalie mask that strap wraps around his wavy dark hair. To this reviewer, the jumpsuit resembles a pumpkin-shade version of Michael Myers jumpsuit, while the white goalie mask is without a doubt an inspiration for Friday the 13th Part III and it’s sequels. Jack even stalks the women like the two homicidal big fellas, lurking behind trees and bushes while catching up with ease to his fleeing prey without breaking a jogging sweat. Jack’s personality, that disgustingly witty rapist charm, feels too familiar to yet another staple villain, the boogeyman of children’s’ nightmares, Freddy Krueger. Essentially, Jack could have easily influenced three of the most popular and well known iconic horror villainous characters of all time.
Linda perfectly suits as Jack’s antagonist. The abuser and the abused compliment each other with a their cat-and-mouse game full of deceits and atrocities, but the crowning moment, the scene that defines the fate the characters, crumbles under the pressure of the story’s full embodied substance. Linda and the Rape Squad are baited too easily, walking into a vacant zoo that’s Jack’s trap and the group’s aware of this but still continues forward blindly. Characters ultimately start to unravel when one of the Squad’s women breaks from the pack, on purpose because she’s too frightened, and walks back to the car alone. Certain common sense would suggest to stay with the four other women to avoid being a lone target of your murdering rapist. Jack also becomes easily baited by Linda who mocks his masculinity, drawing him out from his perfectly laid snare and into a one-on-one bout with a baton bearing woman looking for retribution.
Deservingly so, MGM’s and Kelljchian’s “Act of Vengeance” receives a stellar home video release in Australia from EX Films, filled with extras including a 30 minute interview with Jennifer Lee-Pryor (as Nancy in the film), an audio commentary by author Alexandra Heller-Ncholas of “Rape-Revenge: A Case Study” and film critic Zak Hepburn, and theatrical and home video trailers. Pristinely presented in a widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio that’s vividly colorful, nearly blemish free, and with all the bells and whistles of restoration perfection. The Dolby Digital 2.0 mix is clean, clear, and balanced, giving Jack the rapist that much clarity in his threats. EX Films provides solid packaging of a clear case with reversible cover art and a 48-page insert booklet featuring all the press material sent and received about the film – a marvel to read. The Ex Films region 4 release tops and trumps the competition, standing clearly the winner when compared to it’s DVD-R rival from MGM in the U.S. No other film is more violating than this hard to swallow, rape-revenge exploitation gem “Act of Vengeance!”
Category Archives: Horror Inspirations
In A World of Evil, An Embryo Becomes the Hero. “Mécanix” review!
In a dystopian of metallic wires, continuously spinning gears, and nightmarish creatures, human beings are being driven extinction, enslaved by these same terror creatures that rule the human’s once empowered world. Rounded up like mindless cattle for vivisection, humans dwindle in numbers and in spirit. When one human stumbles upon the embryo, the only object to which the creatures fear and the reason for the humans being vivisected, a new hope of freedom emerges out from the last of the human beings as the last freeborn man implants the embryo inside him. As the horrid creatures learn of the embryo’s whereabouts, a means to an end of their existence drives a frantic frenzy of nonstop destruction before their race becomes obliterated by the embryo’s uniting power.
“Mécanix” is a stop-motion, German Expressionistic film that’s a hard sell for most audiences. Director Rémy M. Larochelle and producer Philippe Chabot have extracted hell and beauty out of an idea of post technology cataclysm inspired by the DIY filmmaking. Spanning over a four year production and then another ten 13 years until U.S. DVD distribution, the 2003 released “Mécanix” creeps to make a cult film impact, but Larochelle’s film is making an impact nonetheless. The experimental nature, the stop-motion effects, and the entrenched expressionism of symbolism makes “Mécanix” unique and memorable thats a labor of love stemmed from Larochelle’s painting, drawings, and sculptures.
Back more than a decade ago, Larochelle sought to display technology and human interaction organically. The film doesn’t necessarily setup the series of cataclysmic events and lays down layers of assumption that humans have created technology and technology eventually goes Terminator coup, but, as if believing in the existence of the circle of life, technology can’t maintain without the human element and so they’re alignment ultimately comes together. “Mécanix” is a representation of that alignment that’s deeply subjective and disturbing, yet oddly fascinating, hooking automated teeth into an unsuspecting viewer.
Aforementioned, “Mécanix” took four years to completely conjure into a 70-minute motion picture feature. Within that time span, Larochelle painstakingly and thoroughly guides every aspect of the special effects, creating reality and fantasy together from through a 16mm camera to the spectacular finished product on screen, making the composited material flush and fitting for visual consumption. Also, ambient audio flawlessly helps bringing the sculpted terrifying creatures come alive who wield bulbous arms of clanky rebar and fleshy pulp, bares unidentifiable skulls protruding through cyborg tissue, and slither across the floor through dark crevices and nooks.
“Mécanix” isn’t an overly gory film, but it’s a hellishly wretched one coming out of Canada. Brief scenes of self-mutilation and depicted re-arrangements of the human anatomy are as about as graphic as “Mécanix” gets, subtly hinting more at explicit content. Stéphane Bilodeau’s freeborn man character, the male lead, and Julie-Anne Côté’s character, the female lead, born from the embryo have light weight speaking roles. The creatures communicate much more of their need for the embryo, giving inanimate characters a good slice of the dialogue, yet Bilodeau and Côté singularly convey their scenes appropriately despite never being in the same scene together. The two main characters present the only non-mechanical beings. Even the humans who are enslaved have a rigidness about them, android-like, while serving their master creatures, who some even don the use a wheelchair to move around – technology needs technology to maintain life sustainability.
Unearthed Films and MVDVisual brings the IPS Films, Creatio Ex Hihl & Avant-Gore Films “Mécanix” to the U.S. home entertainment market 13 years after the world premiere. Being Rémy M. Larochelle’s only feature film to credit, the director can’t be compared to his other work obviously, but “Mécanix” is a fine debut, especially with the amount of sacrifice put into his inspired “Begotten” similar artistic style. The DVD is presented in a in 1.33:1 full screen aspect ratio with a Dolby Digital 2.0 mix that’s suitable for the drowning tone soundtrack from Southern Lord’s doom metal group Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine. The video quality is an attribute to 16mm standards, containing speckles of imperfections that simple add to the charm. The only extra included is an unorganized, yet entertaining interview with director Rémy M. Larochelle and Philippe Chabot, geeking out over answering prepped questions about the film’s formation and inspiration. “Mécanix” rarity will be the prayerful hope and the ultimate declination towards the film’s success as the market for experimental is never catchy with audiences, but the uncontrollable gawking over the “Mécanix” mechanical creatures and practical effects becomes unavoidable.
Buy “Mecanix” at Amazon! Experimental stop-motion horror that’s can’t be unseen!
Trek Through Evil and Witness the Three-Eyed Giant! “Triclops” review!
Fighter pilot Captain Glenn Edwards goes missing in the mysterious and off-limits Amarok Crater. After a month of speculation and military red tape, Glenn’s brother, Tom Edwards, and Glenn’s fiance, Samantha, take the high risk of hiring a washed up, drunkard Carlton Denning, a pilot dumb enough to fly under the radar and into the hidden entrance of the forbidden zone to locate Glenn. The trio find themselves in the company Riley, a henchmen for Denning’s unforgiving bookie, who tags along to ensure Denning returns safe and sound to repay his debt. Their crash landing in the middle of Amarok Crater gives them no choice but to search for the lost Glenn, but as their stay prolongs, ancient carnivorous creatures, mutated from the Crater’s radioactive meteorite, emerge from the Crater’s caverns and fissures, including a three-eyed giant hellbent on obtaining a lady friend.
B-movie director Brett Piper is back with another outrageously entertaining drive-in theater film classically titled “Triclops.” Reusing props from the director’s last film, a monstrous crustacean rampage film titled “Queen Crab,” and casting familiar faces from the movie as well, Piper conjures-to-scribe a lost world, a concocted story of various films inspired by the gilded age marvels of movie magic. Practically funded with the quarter-sized lent in their cobwebbed lined pants pockets, Piper meticulously implements the nearly forgotten practice of blending mattes and composites with the strategic use of small-to-medium sized models in order to form a world based on a mutated genesis.
“Triclops” resembles 1966’s “One Million Years BC,” sans a stunning Raquel Welch, spliced brilliantly with the mythological appeal of Desmond Davis’s 1981 adventuring odyssey “Clash of the Titans” with a modern setting backdrop. Even though Welch is not in this particular stop-motion journey, a equally exquisite Erin Waterhouse takes center stage as the film’s protagonist Samantha whose on a quest to discover exactly what happened to her fiancé Glenn. Samantha’s determined to get to the crater, find Glenn, and get the hell out of Amarok Crater. What she didn’t plan on was her cohort, Glenn’s brother Tom, undermining her search and possible rescue for his own underlining intentions to become rich and famous off the unexplored and mysterious territory.
Waterhouse has a range that doesn’t wane, weaving through angst and fear without ever settling on a love interest. Waterhouse opposites Matthew Crawley in his first major role, a dual role, in Tom and Glenn. Did I mention that Tom and Glenn are twins? To round off the adventurous assemblage are Ken Van Sant and Richard Lounello whom are reunited as a team from Brett Piper’s “Queen Crab.” The cast’s dynamic attempts to homage the reactions of the classics; a long moment of shock and bewilderment glazes over the characters’ eyes as they stand in awe of the creatures before them. “Triclops” isn’t a vicious creature feature where a scantily cladded woman runs through the thicket, screaming her lungs out while a snaring beast ferociously tracks her down.
The script feels a bit loose with much of the dynamic between Glenn, Tom, and Samantha goes awkward into oblivion after many hints to outer-relationship throes. Ken Van Sant’s character, Dennings, portrays the unlikely hero. When we first meet Dennings, he’s a blackout drunk with a sarcastic pie hole who just happens to know how to fly a plane. His dealings with a money shark fizzles as badly as Samantha and Tom’s supposedly fling. Even when Riley, played by Richard Lounllo, tags along to keep an eye on Dennings, the animosity goes into flight and disappears into the lost land of Amarok Crater, or perhaps the ration from the Crater not only evolves the physical appearances, maybe their inner soul mutates into their antagonistic selves.
“Triclops” can be discovered on DVD-R courteously of Alpha New Cinema and purchasable at Oldies.com. The region free disc contains a runtime of 80 minutes with bonus features including outtakes and bloopers and fantastic commentary track with director Brett Piper, Ken Van Sant, Erin Waterhouse and producer Anthony Polonia that’s pure water cooler comedy as well as an inside the creation of his modern day classic. The DVD-R video aliases a fair amount with some blotchiness in more darker corners of film, but the sepia coloring feels natural due to the sci-fi tribute content and the soundtrack is clear with no pops or hissing in the dialogue, which prominently sets the stage in the forefront. Brett Piper has once again brought cinematic history back to a world filled with millennials with their noses-glued to iPhones screens and Playstation consoles. “Triclops” is a 50-ft tall film on a 5-ft tall budget and worth every penny of admission.
Resident Evil 7 trailer breakdown and theories.
Last night Capcom surprised us with the new Resident Evil 7 reveal trailer. After watching it 100 times, I feel the urge to analyze the video and see if there are any clues relating to the past games.
So first lets start with this image. This to me is a throwback to the first game, when it showed the ”Raccoon Times” news paper with a headline about strange murders taking place around Arklay. Now it seems the residents of this new location cannot explain what kind of creatures they are seeing and they refer to them as ”ghosts”. Many people are complaining that maybe the new enemies will be paranormal. I for one do not believe that and still believe that the new enemies are the outcome of a biological weapon.
This shot I found interesting. To me it looks like someone holding a rifle with a flashlight and wearing tactical gear. Could this be Umbrella security trying to protect a testing site? Maybe a BSAA operative or it could be Hunk? I would be very excited if it is Hunk, a guy can dream.
Now could this be one of our protagonists? Many people are thinking this is Rebecca Chambers, which could be true since she is supposedly returning in the new Resident Evil: Vendetta movie. I have money on either being Rebecca or Moira Burton.
This I believe is more of symbolizing what has happened. A virus or whatever it is spreading over this couples photo, with the glass being smashed over the husbands face. Maybe the husband is behind what is happening in this house? From the demo one of the characters says something about their son ”Lucas” being a ”bad seed”. maybe this couple’s son had ties to Umbrella and therefore had his hands on some very nasty biological shit and came back home to spread it. Who knows, but this shot is interesting.
Here is the part in the trailer I’m sure had Resident Evil fans going crazy. This is obviously Oswell E. Spencer, founder of the Umbrella Corporation. I mean who else could this be? An old, balding guy in a wheel chair inside in the famous Spencer mansion. Does this mean Spencer is back even though Wesker killed him in Resident Evil 5? I don’t think so, I think this might be a flash back or who knows maybe he did survive and he himself is infected with a new virus.
This isn’t from the trailer but I had to throw in. This is a screenshot I took while playing through the demo. While in the attic of the house I found this old photograph of what appears to be an Umbrella Corporation helicopter. Before picking up the photo there was a phone beside it ringing. I answered it and heard a mysterious female character telling me that ”Memories hold the truth. Do not let appearances mislead you”. I have an interesting theory about that and have written it below. Please skip ahead to the next picture if you do not want spoilers.
I am entering SPOILER territory now. So if you have NOT played Resident Evil Revelations 2, please skip down to the next picture. In Resident Evil Revelations 2, Albert Wesker’s sister was introduced as the main antagonist. She, like her brother dealt with viruses and all sorts of biological weaponry. She was obsessed with living forever and wanted to find a suitable person to transfer her mind into. Nearing the end of the game Alex was in the process of moving her mind into Natalia, a little girl who Alex picked as her new ”vessel”. During that process Alex then kills herself, to be free from her aging body. The very end of Revelations 2 it is shown that Natalia is slowly turning into Alex, showing that Alex’s experiment was a success. So could it be that Natalia’s mind has now completely transformed into Alex Wesker and she is behind this new viral outbreak? From what we are told on the phone, it does make sense but we’ll have to wait and see.
Another screenshot from the demo that I wanted to add. I took this one to show that no, we are not dealing with ghosts. This is one of the enemies that shows up in the cinematic cut scene at the end of the demo, judging from her face it looks like she has some vein inflammation (possibly from an infection?) and her eyes being blacked out. Who knows what the hell is going on, I know there are plenty of theories being thrown around and I honestly can not wait for this game. I am going to see if there are anymore secrets hidden in this demo.
Pre-order RE7 for PS4 on Amazon!
”Fear comes home again” Resident Evil 7 reveal trailer.
Well the Sony E3 conference just ended and all I have to say is wow. Just wow. Yes you read the title right, Resident Evil 7 was revealed with a very interesting trailer. When the trailer started I had absolutely no idea what it was about, then when it picked up and threw that awesome Resident Evil logo on the screen I couldn’t help but to jump and cheer.
Resident Evil 7 is the seventh installment in the main Resident Evil franchise. It is of course being developed by Capcom and will be released on PS4, XBOX ONE, and PC on January 24, 2017. This trailer is very interesting and I have to admit that I probably watched it about 50 times. I’ve noticed many people complaining about how different it looks from the others and I have to agree that it does, but so did Resident evil 4. Which ended up being one of the best in the series, so I would say that everyone should relax and wait until we get more information about the game. But as for me, I am incredibly excited and I salute you Capcom for going back to horror.
It's Bloggin Evil! 