Video Ferox

Coffee drinkin’ beatniks, smooth talkin’ poet-hipsters, pancake-faced blacksploitation voodoo zombies, and the biggest and palest pair of monster mammories you’ve ever seen on a TV screen! ELVIRA: Mistress of the Dark presents A BUCKET OF BLOOD and I EAT YOUR SKIN!!! Two movies so great they literally lactate awsomeness and a hostess so big boobied her bras are as tattered and stretched out as her awful puns. Yup, get ready to motorboat some titty jokes, cause Elvira’s gonna shove em in your faces.

And so am I.

The tapes were released by Channel 1000, a company that sometime since the release of these videos in 1994 switched to releasing travel videos exclusively. I guess after their foray into the world of cheaply licensed horror and sci fi flicks hosted by washed-up late night television hostesses, they decided to just play it safe. The very, very fine print on the back of the box tells me that the packaging is copyright Rhino videos. So I guess it was licensed to Channel 1000? Along with Elvira’s image and name which were licensed from Queen Bee entertainment. Is any of this at all interesting? I’m just glad I didn’t have to sit through the awful Rhino desert catalog poem one more time.   

Alright, that being said, let’s get to the flicks.

#1 A BUCKET OF BLOOD

Really, A BUCKET OF BLOOD is such a fucking good movie that it should be reviewed all by itself, but if I don’t tag on a review of I EAT YOUR SKIN than I can’t make all the double-feature double entendres about Elvira’s double Ds. Not that jokes about Elvira’s boobs aren’t as old and worn out as, well, Elvira’s boobs. But, ya know.

Here’s the note I made to myself while watching the movie:

TRANSCRIBE THAT WHOLE FUCKING POEM MAN DO IT!!!!!!

Okay. Calm down, Jason. I will.

I’m sure I’m violating some copyright or other, but I’m also pretty sure copyright doesn’t exist on the internet, right? Also, when you read it, imagine some pompous pontificating douchbag, declaiming it smugly like he’s the King of Cool and you’re his measly Servant of Square. Actually, he talks exactly like Will Ferrel impersonating James Lipton.

I will talk to you of art
For there is nothing else to talk about
For there is nothing else
Life is an obscure hobo
Bumming a ride on the omnibus of art
Burn gas buggies
And whip your sour cream of circumstance
And hope
And go ahead and sleep your bloody heads off
Creation is.
All else is not
What is not creation is graham crackers
Let it all crumble to feed the creator
The artist is.
All others are not
A canvas is a canvas
Or a painting.
A rock is a rock
Or a statue.
A sound is a sound
Or it is music.
A creature is a creature
Or an artist.
Where are John Joe Jake Jim Jerk?
Dead! Dead! Dead!
They were not born
Before they were born
They were not born
Where are Leonardo Rembrandt Ludwig
Alive! Alive! Alive!
They were born.
Bring on the multitudes
To a multitude of fishes
Feed them to the fishes for
Liver oil
To nourish the artist
Stretch their skins upon an easel
To give him canvas
Crush their bones into a paste
That he might mold them
Let them die
And by their miserable deaths
Become the clay within his hands
That he might form an ashtray
For an augur(?)
For all that is comes through the eye of the artist
The rest are blind fish swimming in the cave of aloneness
Swim on you maudlin muddling maddened fools!
And dream that one bright and sunny night
Some artist will bate a hook and let you bite upon it
Bite hard and die!
In his stomach you are very close to immortality.

Dig that, daddy-o’s? You blind fish swimming in the cave of aloneness. Julien Barton, the actor who played bohemian rhapsodizing Maxwell, is reported to have actually written the poem himself. Maxwell is also very reminiscent of a certain pompous pontificating douchbag (no, not Allen Ginsberg) from Woody Allen’s BULLETS OVER BROADWAY. Which makes me wonder how inspired by BUCKET Allen was when he made his movie.

Years before BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, A BUCKET OF BLOOD asked important philosophical questions about the value of art. Is art worth more than life? Can art justify murder? And with the recent popularity of the BODY WORLDS exhibit, which is basically a clay-less version of Paisley’s work, this film has much bearing upon important contemporary questions. But more important than its social relevance and its potential role as a source of intellectual wackoff material for hyper-cerebral douchebags is the fact that A BUCKET OF BLOOD is an awesome fucking movie, chock full of ridiculousness, murder, mayhem, bad poetry, and a dead cat. I’ll tell you what, this movie was clever, well-written, well-acted, well directed. Just all around great, and I won’t ruin it for you by talking too much about it. Go watch it. Do it!

Okay, so after the movie, Elvira’s comes back in to make some bad jokes about Paisley’s suicide by hanging (sorry for the spoiler), although to her credit, she shied away from that classic chestnut about being “well hung.” Her whole barrage of suicide puns just kinda made me wanna listen to Joy Division. But instead, my musical thirst is quenched when Eliva starts to white-rap over saxophone music, ala – - – and — oh, fuck it. Who cares.

Let’s just pop in the next tape and get this shit over with.

#2 I EAT YOUR SKIN

Tom Harris, square-jawed playboy and trash romance novelist, escapes the wrathful husbands of his ditsy lovers by fleeing to Voodoo Island (the same one Boris Karloff took a vacation on?). Some kinda cancer research is going on there, involving voodoo rituals, human sacrifices and — you guessed it — THE LIVING DEAD! Harris’s editor thinks he can get a new novel out of this trite horror backdrop, and while he’s at it, score some sweet island pussy. Apparently a hurricane struck the island and selectively killed off anything with meat hanging between its legs, leaving a disproportionate population of horny nubile island sluts.

When we get to the island we’re treated to a well butchered skinny dipping scene that at once introduces us to both the sluts and the zombies in a masterful stroke of screen writing economy. I say well-butchered, by the way, because they might as well have edited SCENE MISSING screens into the movie. (As a side note I’ve noticed such flagrant editing jobs in a lot of Rhino videos, although I’m still not sure this counts as a Rhino video).

Cucumber and mud facial?

Blah Blah Blah. Shit happens. Adventure, intrigue, zombies. Honestly, I wasn’t paying that much attention. But the overall feel of the movie — that is, the location, the near-kookiness — kinda makes it seem like some kinda Halloween episode of Gilligan’s Island. I mean, we’ve got a swanky, old (but pretending not to be) rich couple that look suspiciously like Mr. and Mrs. Howell. We’ve got the easily frustrated Captain in the form of Harris’ editor. Harris on the other hand is a little too debonair to be Gilligan. Instead he’s got all the suave can’t-do-wrong-ness of the Professor. Last we have Harris’ love interest, daughter of the professor (yup, there’s a REAL professor on the island too), combining the sweet girl-next-door innocence of a Marianne with the sex-crazed movie-star pussy power of a Ginger. Of course, there’s one thing this Voodoo Island has that Gilligan’s Island never did . . . .

Black people!!!

An ethnic hodgepodge of racially stereotyped servants. Blacks and Hispanics who speak some confusing jumble of Spanish in an obscure dialect, reminiscent of the indecipherable mumblings of a deaf mute.

According to IMDB, I EAT YOUR SKIN, originally shot under the title ZOMBIE in 1964, sat on a shelf unreleased for six years until a movie was needed for a double bill with I DRINK YOUR BLOOD. I don’t know much about that L stuff that makes you go crazy, but I do know about awesome movies. And that must have been an awesome double feature, assuming you didn’t have to sit through I EAT YOUR SKIN to get to I DRINK YOUR BLOOD and you were allowed to leave before I EAT YOUR SKIN came on. And you didn’t have to see Elvira’s cleavage at all. It is sorta ironic that I’m reviewing a double feature that was originally featured as a double feature with another film. It’s as if no one thought I EAT YOUR SKIN could stand on its own merits and thus always needed some sort of brassiere of a better film to perk it up. . . How easy it is to tweak the hard nipples of mediocrity.

So Elvira comes back for her epilogue and she brings up that old complaint that there is no actual skin eating in I EAT YOUR SKIN. But then — and I’m pretty sure my ears did not deceive me here — Elvira suggests that the “eating” in I EAT YOUR SKIN involves Harris and his island love mistress. Wait a minute, did Elvira really just make a joke about eating the love meat? I guess that probably shouldn’t be all that surprising, actually.

Anyway, these Elvira videos sorta seem pointless and offensive, especially coming right off that last review of Reel Wild Cinema, a show that laughed WITH the movies it showcased and held them in some kind of esteem. In comparison, Elvira’s jokes are directed to a mainstream audience who’s expected to have little to no interest in horror or sci fi movies apart from their being fodder for bad jokes and mood lighting for high school make out sessions. Her comments on the films (if you can call her terrible jokes comments) are never insightful, and we never hear any trivia, back stories, or juicy tidbits about the films. She just makes terrible, terrible jokes, and manages to combine the empty headed airiness of a college cheerleader with the rough and tough spread-legged skankiness of a biker bimbo. Who the fuck would be into that? Oh, right: Men.

Really, Elvira’s presence on these tapes was a complete waste. It’s hard to believe anybody bought these movies just for her, but I guess it happened? When I was a kid I bought this set because it was the only place I could find I EAT YOUR SKIN (and back then I was sort of a zombie completist — back before every shitty made-for-DVD production company was churning out forgettable zombie flicks as though they’re investing in a future market of DVDs of unwatchable horror movies transformed into the most valuable and fashionable drink coasters in the world). It was an added bonus that I got A BUCKET OF BLOOD at two for the price of one. I hate to admit it but the only real assets that Elvira brings to these tapes are . . . ugh, do I really have to say it? She got dem monster titties. They might as well have just projected the fucking films simultaneously on each of her boobies. Talk about a double feature! Now THAT would be scary!

–Jason Deadcat

I EAT YOUR SKIN/I DRINK YOUR BLOOD image stolen from
http://www.horror-movies.ca/

And leave some fucking feedback, jerks!

Tags: A Bucket of Blood, Dick Miller, Elvira, I Drink Your Blood, I Eat Your Skin

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 29th, 2009 at 10:56 am and is filed under Horror, Uncategorized, VHS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.