Vidal Raski's crazed Danish exploitation feature The Sinful Dwarf/Dværgen.

Starring: Torben Bille, Anne Sparrow, Tony Eades, Clara Keller and Werner Hedman.

It's time to lower the tone here at 42nd Street Cinema, which can only a good thing. I love a good grimy exploitation flick and among the slew of perverted exploitation pictures made in the 1970s, there are a select few standout titles, these are the ones that encapsulate that dirty, rotten and downright nasty essence we exploitation cinephiles seek. Films such as, Thriller: A Cruel Picture/Thriller - en grym film (1974) and The Sinful Dwarf (1973).

I was beginning to have preconceived notions after reading about the film and how it 'goes too far' with cinematic acceptability. So, when I finally sat down to watch this long lost nugget of 70s sleaze, I couldn't help but wonder if it would be overhyped and whether I should set myself up to be let down.

I wouldn't go as far as saying it's the sleaziest or most offensive movie ever made, but it's certainly safe to say The Sinful Dwarf is a winner. It's a scuzzy and powerful flick with several genuinely uncomfortable scenes.



Torben Bille portrays Olaf, the gimp legged dwarf, who lures young girls into his eccentric mother's guesthouse. Once inside the house, they are subdued with heroin, chained up in the attic and sold as sex slaves. This is all fundamentally established within a grueling pre-opening credit sequence of the movie. In which we see Olaf shambling down an empty street, carrying a teddy bear and a motorized poodle. Upon passing a young girl playing hopscotch by herself, the dwarf places the poodle on the floor. The young girl interrupts her game and appears to be entranced by the toy. As she picks it up, the dwarf takes the other end of the lead that is attached to the small toy and leads her back to his mother's house.

I think what makes the sequence even more disturbing is that it, aside from the dwarf's manipulation and eventual abduction of the girl, is when you begin to question the girl's age. As the actress is clearly in her twenties, her character's attire suggests she is of a much younger age, around that of a ten or or eleven year old. This is further exacerbated by her interest in the poodle toy and is more suggestive of her true mental age.
Olaf and the girl enter the house, he closes the door before eerily telling her that he has, "more toys upstairs". Following her up to one of the upstairs rooms, as her back is turned he hits her over the head with his cane. The weird credit sequence then ensues with motorized toys accompanied by a strange repetitive jangling sound.



The following scene depicts the dwarf disemboweling the teddy bear with a knife, in order to remove a small packet of heroin from inside. We later learn that it is supplied by a bearded fellow aptly named Santa Claus (Hedman), who owns a toy shop.

Enter the newlywed couple, Mary (Sparrow) and Peter Davis (Eades). The newlyweds are trying to find a place to live, since Peter is attempting to find his footing with television writing and Mary is a housewife, the two are practically broke. Previously turning down a place for £10 a week, they find themselves knocking on the door of Lila Lashe's (Keller) guesthouse. Peter talks to Lila, at first she informs him that there are not vacancies, but once Mary walks into shot, Lila's tune dramatically changes. Retracting her previous statement, she tells Peter that there is a room they can have for £6 a week.

It'll be a while until the couple truly understand what Lila and her dwarf son are hiding in their squalid attic. Until that point, the film is padded out with complete absurdities, such as Lila's peculiar cabaret acts, to which Olaf accompanies her on the piano and numerous scenes of 'Johns' taking advantage of the captive girls. Including a few dirty XXX close ups, which reminded me of the hardcore inserts seen in Thriller: A Cruel Picture. Purely because they're completely unnecessary and the film hardly benefits from having them.

The Sinful Dwarf is probably the scummiest exploitation picture to come out of Denmark in the 70s. The set is so decrepit and stained, that it deepens to the film's already strong grimy atmosphere. Torben Bille is perfect as the ever-grinning maniacal dwarf, especially when he finally gets his mitts on Sparrow's character Mary. I almost forgot to mention how much he resembles a compacted version of Jack Black.

If you are a fan of exploitation movies, then you need to see this!

Antonio Margheriti's urban horror-come-cannibal film, Cannibal Apocalypse/Apocalypse domani.

Starring: John Saxon, Elizabeth Turner, Giovanni Lombardo Radice (as John Morghen), Cinzia De Carolis and Tony King.

Cannibal Apocalypse is at heart, an amalgamated cash-in on Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) and Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust (1980). Margheriti's film is also an interesting mélange of the Vietnam vet movie, urbanized crime thriller and the traditional horror film. Unfortunately the final product is a little uneven and seems to flit from one plot device to another carelessly.

Cannibal Apocalypse was one of the 39 titles that cropped up on the DPP's (Director of Public Prosecutions) Video Nasty hit list. While it has subsequently released in an uncut version, the film is still cut by 2 seconds in the United Kingdom for scenes which involve a rat being set on fire.

Beginning in similar territory to Apocalypse Now, we see an attack on a Vietnamese camp by American troops, led by one Captain Norman Hopper (Saxon). From this initial sequence, the tone shifts from the Vietnam movie into cannibal country with the introduction of Giovanni Lombardo Radice's character, Charlie Bukowski, who has been imprisoned by the Vietnamese forces. Though it is unclear why, Charlie and his fellow prisoner, Tommy Thompson (King) have become cannibalistic.



The narrative then jumps forward to Atlanta, Georgia where both Bukowski and Thompson are being released from hospital. Shortly after leaving the hospital, Bukowski goes to see a war movie, during which he takes a bite out of a girl's neck who's sitting in front of him. Quickly after the cinema erupts, Bukowski makes it out of the cinema only to get into a confrontation with a group of bikers who chase him into a flea market. This segment of the film is the aforementioned 'urban crime thriller'. To be quite honest with you, this and the end scene in the sewer are my two favourite moments of the movie. The scene is a drawn-out and bloody gunfight, though don't go envisioning anything like the finale to The Big Racket/Il grande racket (1976). Eventually, Hopper arrives on the scene and coerces Bukowski into surrendering, who is subsequently arrested and returned to hospital. It's at this point in the film we learn that, the cannibalism in Cannibal Apocalypse is contagious and thus returning to the horror element.



I wish this concept of contagious cannibalism, while it is wholly similar to what is seen in most zombie films, was further explored, sadly it is quickly brushed under the proverbial rug and forgotten about.
The film culminates with Hopper, Bukowski and Thompson escaping the hospital and going on a rampage through the streets of Atlanta, after being driven into the sewers by police they end up in a gun and flamethrower battle. A scene which, with credit to Margheriti, is handled with considerable vigor and thanks to the makeup effects provided by Giannetto De Rossi, Lombardo Radice's death is impressively gruesome.

Cannibal Apocalypse is sadly a film in which the name precedes the content, if you're looking to see a violent cannibal film, look elsewhere. If you want to complete the nasties list and see a half decent action flick in the process, check this out.

Probably Lucio Fulci's most widely recognized film, The Beyond/E tu vivrai nel terrore - L'aldilà or simply L'aldilà.

Starring: Catriona MacColl, David Warbeck, Cinzia Monreale, Antoine Saint-John, Veronica Lazar, Anthony Flees, Giovanni De Nava and Al Cliver.

The Beyond is more than 'just another zombie movie'. It's the culmination of several experienced artists; director Lucio Fulci, along with screenwriters Dardano Sacchetti, Giorgi Mariuzzo, cinematographer Sergio Salvati and make-up artist Giannetto De Rossi, collaboratively working together to produce what is essentially the archetype for dreamy and violent Italian horror cinema.
Throughout the 1980s, the Italian film industry was infamously producing cheaper-versions, one might even dare to use the word "imitations" of successful American films. Fulci's horror endeavours weren't entirely of that ilk; yes there's a few echos of other (American) works found within his horror oeuvre, the same can be said for many American pictures. Everybody "copies" everybody. But, aside from those echos and the cash-in titles, Fulci's work is brimming with uncanny dream logic and a prevalent sense of unease, leading to an almost surrealist quality, a quality that's an integral component in Fulci's repertoire. This quality is found distinctly in his "Gates of Hell" trilogy: The Beyond, City of the Living Dead / Paura nella città dei morti viventi (1980) and The House by the Cemetery / Quella villa accanto al cimitero (1981).

Fulci's zombie efforts deviate from his American contemporaries, namely the underlying social-commentary found in Romero's work, instead, Fulci tends to focus on a superstitious / folk, supernatural, gothic or mythological evil. Beginning his undead pieces with Zombi 2 (1979), utilising a much older theme of voodoo-based reanimation of the dead, as opposed to the now more prevalent scientific meddling angle. However with The Beyond, Fulci opts for a nightmarish oneiric world in which anything can happen. A style that would be revisited later and taken a developed further in Fulci's 1990 nunsploitation picture, Demonia.



In The Beyond, the gates of hell are unwittingly opened following a brutal chain-whipping and crucifixion of an artist named Schweick, whom locals believe to be a warlock, in a Louisiana hotel, in 1927. A scene that harks back to chain whipping in Fulci's early classic Don't Torture a Duckling/Non si sevizia un paperino (1972).
Following the pre-credit sequence, we jump ahead to present-day Louisiana. The plot, as thin as it is, sees protagonist Liza (MacColl) inheriting the previously mentioned and now cursed hotel. After befriending a local doctor named John and an esoteric blind woman, Emily (Monreale), who tries to warn Liza of the building's ghoulish history.
Once renovation work begins on the old hotel, a plumber named Joe (De Nava), unintentionally opens up a gateway to Hell, while digging through a basement wall.
At this point in the film's narrative becomes that of a living nightmare world. Anyone who has already seen The Beyond and wants to recommend to another must encourage the uninitiated to remove all rational thought from their head and to simply absorb the ensuing succession of imagery, sound and grizzly gore effects, as Fulci's begins an exploration of the metaphysical.



At times, the prevalent violence acts as an anchor to reality itself, becoming the only familiar against a battery of the surreal. Especially during a scene where a chap is suddenly stunned by some unseen force and knocked to the floor, only to be inexplicably attacked and killed by a half dozen tarantulas that crawl from nowhere, without any further explanation or rationale. As I've grown older I've decided that I'm glad there are no concrete answers as to why Fulci chose to commit such strange scenes to celluloid, I'm just really happy he did. It will stand the test of time and the closing shots should be up there with anything produced by Kubrick.

Nonetheless if you're into Italian cinema, it's highly likely you've already seen this. If you're only just finding your feet in the world of Italiana, The Beyond is a fantastic starting point for anybody willing to deviate from "traditional" American horror.

The year that everyone got 3D fever. Here, in no particular order are my picks of last year's the good, the bad and the outright atrocious. Enjoy.

10. Saw 3D
So this year we finally got the final installment of the Saw series. What began as an interesting crime thriller, similar to Fincher's Se7en (1995), quickly became the highest grossing horror film franchise, complete with 2 video games, a comic book in tow, as well as being at the forefront of the critically-coined 'Torture Porn' sub-sub-genre.
However, the film itself was in my opinion, 'just another' Saw movie. It felt like every other Saw movie, the only saving grace was the inventiveness of the various traps and the 3D - albeit scarce.



9. Frozen
Adam Green's latest flick and he's filmmaking talent has certainly matured. Beginning with Hatchet (2006), a throwback to the slasher films of the 1980s, which in turn felt more like a parody of the sub-genre, than a respectful homage. Then in 2007, Green brought Spiral to the scene, a psychological horror film that didn't rely on cheap humor, over the top violence to be an entertaining and thought provoking flick. Finally, in 2010 Green brings us Frozen. An amalgamation of survival and psychological horror films. Filled with likable characters, buddy humor and chilling sequences, Frozen was a real treat and definitely one film that's left a lasting impression on me.



8. A Nightmare on Elm Street
Now, I know I've already posted a full length review for this, but I felt it was imperative to mention it on this list. The film is nothing more than a diabolical master class in how not to remake a widely beloved cult classic. Jackie Earle Haley is essentially reprising his role as Rorschach from Watchmen (2009), only under the guise of Freddy Krueger. The film relies purely upon cheap scares through the use of loud noises, it's only saving grace is the cinematography, which does look truly stunning.



7. The Crazies
When I first heard that there was a remake of The Crazies in the pipeline, I was excited. I was excited because as much as I love Romero's original, I feel that in the right hands it could be given the update it deserves. The initial 40 minutes are great, everything is set up nicely and the cinematography looks beautiful. Then, out of nowhere things start to slip up and the film loses momentum, direction and sadly the last half of the film becomes overly predictable and most of all disappointing. But at least Timothy Olyphant is in it...right?



6. Paranormal Activity 2
I'll admit, I liked the first Paranormal Activity. It didn't blow me away completely, but I thought it was a well put together flick, considering the shoestring budget and ultimately the film was a huge success, à la The Blair Witch Project (1999). Now, the sequel unfortunately was a huge disappointment, re-using gags from the first film and eventually building up to what are absolutely laughable sequences I feel Paranormal Activity 2 fails at being a good genuine horror film on every level.



5. Cherry Tree Lane
I picked this up on a complete blind buy, little did I know about the surprise that I was in for. Running on a similar 'Hoody' culture/middle class terrorization theme as Eden Lake (2008) or the french film Ils/Them (2006), Cherry Tree Lane is essentially an in depth study into the human psyche and how people behave in certain situations. Both the protagonist's and antagonist's actions are explored and overall it works very well. However, the only downside to the film in my opinion is that it ends rather abruptly, or perhaps that's because I was enjoying watching each character so much.



4. Piranha 3D
Unfortunately I missed the theatrical run of this, I ended up watching it on DVD. So because of that I can't give a decent enough commentary on how the 3D was. That out of the way, I can begin my critique of Piranha. Which is a great 3 star movie, it excels in being a sleazily entertaining little picture chock-full of gore, babes and cameos from a host of well known to the not so well known/genre favourites. The underwater photography is gorgeous, as is the piranha's conceptual design. Those babies look vicious. Oooh spoilers.



3. [Rec] 2
This is, the film that Aliens was to Alien. The actioned-up sequel to a suspenseful horror that works. [Rec] 2 was such a joy to watch, the inventive 'picture-within-a-picture' sequences added to the claustrophobic atmosphere of the quarantined tenement. My only real critcism of this is that, some of the first person POV shots felt a little like watching someone play the 'Zombies' mode from Call of Duty: Black Ops. However, that said. Go watch [Rec] and [Rec] 2 back to back.



2. The Last Exorcism
Finally, another film that left a lasting impression on me, considerably the last chilling 10 minutes. The pseudo-documentary approach works wonders, especially with the narrative structure.
I honestly didn't think this film would live up to much, but to simplify how I feel about The Last Exorcism is that, it's this generation's Rosemary's Baby.





1. Machete
Okay, it's not a horror movie, but it belongs here. Robert Rodriguez's balls to the wall action-exploitation and what is essentially the 3rd film of 'Grindhouse'. Rodriguez also pokes a satirical finger at immigration while Danny Trejo is finally cast in a lead role that perfectly suits his physique and appearance. Machete is lovable, with all the plot holes and needless cameo roles included. It is what it is, a self-aware, over-the-top action flick.

René Cardona Jr.'s insipidly ambitious disaster exploitation picture Cyclone.

Starring: Arthur Kennedy, Carroll Baker, Lionel Stander, Andrés García, Hugo Stiglitz, Mario Almada and Olga Karlatos.

After a powerful storm system knocks down an airplane from the sky into the sprawling ocean and a local fishing vessel is sunken, the survivors are forced to take shelter on a small tourist boat. Arguing and chaos ensues as the group run out of food and water, with seemingly no rescue in sight.

Cyclone is an Italian-Mexican co-production and a prime example of a director trying to accomplish too much in one feature. The combination of both boat and aeroplane catastrophe with some crude cannibalism, human-on-animal violence and animal-on-human violence thrown in for good measure sounds great on paper and perhaps in the right hands could have been a glorious cinematic experience. Instead, Cardona Jr.'s final piece is a mixed bag of purely enjoyable exploitation filmmaking hampered by terrible dubbing and an awful soundtrack that constantly repeats the same piece of music.



While the narrative is straightforward, not a lot happens once the survivors are aboard the glass bottomed cruiser. Everyone sits around staring at each other while they literally starve to death. Once a few of the weaker survivors finally snuff it, the crew consider resorting to cannibalism in an act of self preservation. An odd scene ensues, involving the lead character deliberating the ethics of anthropophagy, as if Cardona Jr. was trying to make a philosophical point. Their debate is mainly disparaged by Arthur Kennedy's character, known only as 'The Priest'. A perfect segue onto my next point, the characters. Cyclone is overpopulated by poorly developed characters, in fact, they had so little depth that to be honest, I didn't really care what happened to any of them.

However, after a long period of watching people sit around wasting away, contemplating if anything else is going to happen. Cardona Jr. pulls his finger out and with it follows a last bastion of action. Yes, as a last resort the rich girl's dog, oddly named Christmas, is slaughtered and his meat is used as bait. This sets in motion the closing half of the film, in which we see sharks devour clothes and packets of blood.

Regarding the dog 'Christmas', there is an ongoing debate between me and Nigel of Italian Film Review, as to the validity of a real dog being used in the scene. Anyone, who wants to add their two cents feel free to leave a comment below.