Throwback Thursday: Cannibal Holocaust (1980) - Theatrical Trailer

In honor of the man that brought to life the POV storytelling, faux documentary, found footage style to the horror genre (you thought that honor went to the "Blair Witch Project" didn't you?... lol) birthday, Ruggero Deodato, this time around for throwback Thursday we have the ultra horror classic "Cannibal Holocaust".

Professor Harold Monroe heads down to South America in search for a documentary crew that has gone missing in the inhospitable jungles known as the Green Inferno. The crew was to find and film never before scene primitive tribes that are suppose to live in the area. Unfortunately for Monroe the only thing he discovers of the missing film crew are their cameras and cans of exposed film.

Upon returning to New York Monroe views the film in detail.  




In the beginning of this film we meet a documentary team of director Alan Yates and his crew, formed by Faye Daniels, Jack Anders and Mark Tomaso, who are heading for the south-American jungle to search for real cannibals. All starts out as normal as the film retraces the steps the film crew takes into the jungle. Guide by a local named Felipe, they hike into the jungle, traversing streams and traveling through foliage that leaves them bragging to the camera about the natural beauty of the area. This start go awry right away as Yates and his team begin to commit various and unforgivable atrocious against various wildlife. In one repugnant scene, Felipe and Anders catch a large river turtle, they haul it ashore at their camp, and proceed to hack it apart before cooking and eating it while the camera is still rolling. Later, they shoot at various birds and small mammals in the jungle for no reason, but then Felipe screams out when a snake bites his foot. Anders and Mark, in desperation, hack off Felipe's leg in a vain bid to save him, however, Felipe goes into shock and dies thus revealing how he died. Yates, unperturbed by this fact, tells his team that they must continue on and head further into the jungle and finally make contact with warriors of the Yacumo tribe. For no clear reason, they shoot at the natives, and then upon entering their village, proceed to humiliate the natives by killing their livestock, and proceed to burn their village to the ground, in which they intend to use the killing to stage a mock up of a Yamamomo raid on their village. Several natives flee, while a few others are killed or burned alive by the sadistic Yates team. Then Yates, aroused by his murderous actions, has sex with Faye in full view of the frightened and bewildered natives, while Andres secretly films it. In the films most gratuitous scene, the team happens upon a ritualistic forced abortion and the clubbing death of the mother-to-be.

In the final reel, Yates speaks to the camera where it is days after their massacre of the Yacumo tribe and they are in a different part of the jungle for the vegetation is different and there is no sign of the feared Yamamomo tribe. Suddenly, the group happens upon a young woman, a Yamamomo woman. Triumphantly and inexplicably, the men attack her, taking turns raping her while rolling in the mud of a nearby clearing, while one man holds her down, the other rapes her, and the third gleefully films the action. Faye tries to protest, but is held back by Anders. As Yates takes his turn to rape the terrified young woman, a Yamamomo warrior crouches in the grass yards away, watching the whole atrocity the savage film crew is doing. The film cuts to a riverside clearing where the mud covered Yates team find a dead Yamamomo woman vertically impaled to the ground with a 12-foot pole exiting out of her mouth. Yates looks overjoyed and is told to look concerned for the camera. Yates talks about the profound disrespect the Yamamomos have for their women and that the woman was killed as a form of sexual punishment. It is not clear whether the woman was killed by her own people for being sexualy violated by the Yates team, or if Yates and his group himself killed the woman themselves to rig up this latest spectacular footage for their people back home. As a result of their actions, the vengeful Yamamomo emerge for a final 10-minute violent confrontation. In the jungle, the group is surrounded by dozens of Yamamomo warriors throwing spears and arrows at them. Anders fights them by rashly shooting at several of them, while Yates (deranged to the last) continues filming, saying the footage is beautiful. Anders is felled by a spear, as Yates continues filming. Anders' dead body is dragged away by the Yamamomo where they castrate, behead, and hack him apart before cooking his remains and eating them. Faye is the next as she is grabbed by several Yamamomo warriors where she is stripped, gang raped, and is also beheaded and mutilated by the vengeful warriors. But it isn't long before Yates and Mark pay the price for their own indiscretion when the warriors spot Yates still filming them, and attack. When Yates is attacked, his keeps his camera rolling as he drops the camera and falls to the ground capturing his own horrifying death in close-up. In a fitting touch of irony, the last thing which his dying eyes see is the same camera lens which he and his crew used to capture the images of death and mayhem...... which in fact they were all responsible for.


Ruggero Deodato's "Cannibal Holocaust" is a first of its kind and so realistic that ten days after its premier in Milan the Italian authorities seized the film and arrested Deodato. At first he was only charged with breaking obscenity laws but was then recharged with murder as the authorities believed that the actors portrayed in the movie were actually killed. Adding to the fact was that Ruggero Deodato had them all sign contracts that stating that they were to disappear to maintain the illusion that this wasn't just a fictional movie. It wasn't until the actors were summoned to court that Ruggero Deodato was released from jail and the charges dropped.

Throwback Thursday: House of 1000 Corpses

The movie that started it all for Rob Zombie's film career. Love him or hate him the man definitely has a look and feel that is all his own and has been one of a few --even with remakes of "Halloween-- that has had an original take on the horror genre.

 Initially shot in 2000 on the Universal Studios back lot (Zombie used the house from the Burt Reynolds' classic "Best Little Whore House in Texas"),  however, what was embraced in the beginning, Stacey Snider the then new head at Universal shelved the  film in fear that it would only garner a NC-17 rating. After several months Zombie was able to wrestle the film back and was then ultimately sold and released by Lions Gate Entertainment.

Zombie draws from the pool and genre he knows best setting "House of a Thousand Corpses" late 1970's during a time when films of this nature where all the rage.

On October 30, 1977, Jerry Goldsmith, Bill Hudley, Mary Knowles, and Denise Willis are on the road in hopes of writing a book on offbeat roadside attractions. When the four meet Captain Spaulding, a vulgar but friendly owner of a gas station and "Museum of Monsters & Madmen", they learn the local legend of Dr. Satan. As they take off in search of the tree from which Dr. Satan was hanged, they pick up a young hitchhiker named Baby, who claims to live only a few miles away. Shortly after, the vehicle's tire bursts in what is later seen to be a trap and Baby takes Bill to her family's house. Moments later, Baby's half-brother, Rufus, picks up the stranded passengers and takes them to the family home.

There they meet Baby's family, Mother Firefly, Otis Driftwood, her adopted brother, Grampa Hugo and Baby's deformed giant half-brother, Tiny. While being treated to dinner, Mother Firefly explains that her ex-husband, Earl, had tried to burn Tiny alive, along with the Firefly house. After dinner the family puts on a Halloween show for their guests. Baby offends Mary by flirting with Bill. After Mary threatens Baby, Mother Firefly makes the couples leave, since their car is repaired. As they leave, though, Otis and Tiny disguise themselves as scarecrows in the driveway, attack the couples and take them prisoner. Otis kills and mutilates Bill's body for art, while Mary is tied up and Denise is bed-bound while dressed up for Halloween. Jerry is scalped because he failed to guess Baby's favorite movie star.

After Denise doesn't come home, her father Don calls the police to report her missing. Two deputies, George Wydell and Steve Naish, find the couples' abandoned car in a field with a torture victim in the trunk. Don, who was once a cop, is called to the scene to help the deputies search. They arrive at the Firefly house and after finding other bodies, are quickly killed by the family. Later that night, the three remaining teenagers are taken out to an abandoned well. They are dressed as rabbits in reference to Otis when he earlier stated that "Scared kids run like rabbits, run little rabbit, run!". Mary attempts to run away, but is stabbed to death by Baby moments later.

Meanwhile, Jerry and Denise are lowered into the well, where a group of feral figures pull Jerry into the water and leave Denise to find her way through an underground lair. As she wanders through the tunnels, she encounters Dr. Satan and a number of mental patients. Dr. Satan has Jerry on his operating table, vivisecting him. Dr. Satan tells his mutated assistant, who turns out to be Earl, Mother Firefly's ex-husband, to capture Denise. Denise outwits him and escapes the chambers by crawling to the surface. She makes her way to the main road where she is picked up by Captain Spaulding and passes out from exhaustion in the front seat. Otis appears in the backseat with a knife. Denise later wakes up to find herself strapped to Dr. Satan's operating table, where she begins to scream in terror

Although compared a lot to "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" except as an acid trip, "House of a Thousand Corpses" became a cult classic despite the critics slamming the film as a "cheesy ultra gory exploitation flick, strangely devoid of thrills, shock and horror."

While failing to impress the critics "House of a Thousand Corpses", however, did become a box office success. Generating 16 million plus in box office returns on a 7 million dollar budget.

Jason Takes a Page from Norman: Friday the 13th to Come to TV

Deadline is reporting that Sean S. Cunningham is taking his creation of Friday the 13th and bringing it to the small screen.

We all know the story of the ill-fated summer camp and surrounding lake of Crystal Lake that saw the death of a young boy that drown while in the care of camp counselors that were more into exploring each other's anatomy than taking care of the kids. Flash some 20 years later, the now closed down camp looks to reopen with a new crop of horny twenty-somethings looking more for a good time than a job. Once again dark days fall upon the camp as one by one the counselors die. This premise has now spawned a plethora of sequels and not only on e reboot, but a new as well.

While the movies follow our favorite honky mask wearing, machete wielding maniac the new series looks to go more in-depth with the town, its residents and the Voorhees themselves. No different than what is now being done with Norman Bates and his mom and the strange Twin Peaks type town they live in.

Terminator's Bill Basso and Jordu Schell from Avatar are on task to write the script that will take Jason through multiple time periods. Emmett/Furla/Oasis Films and Crystal Lake entertainment are the producing partners that are going to take the franchise to the small screen. No word as of yet on what channel will be the home of the new Friday the 13th Series.

In 1987 another (short lived) series of the same name hit airways. Origainally entitled the 13th Hour, producer Frank Mancuso Jr.(Producer of Friday the 13th Part 2) thought that changing the name to Friday the 13th would draw a bigger audience.

Mancuso's version followed the cousins Michelle "Micki" Foster and Ryan Dallion as they hunted cursed antiques that were sold by their uncle who had made (then broke) a deal with the Devil.

That series lasted 3 seasons.      

Throwback Thursday: Making Of The X-Files: Fight The Future (Documentary)

On the heals of the recently announced "X Files" Comic and the rumors surrounding a new "X Files" film, for Throwback Thursday this time around is the DOC on the making of the first X Files movie:  "X Files: Fight the Future", which laid the ground work where the series was going to go.

Taking place between  seasons 5 and 6 we find the X Files unit dismantled and Agents Mulder and Scully reassigned. While investigating an Oklahoma City style bomb threat of a federal building in Dallas the agents find a wider conspiracy as Mulder discovers that the real target of the bomb is actually across the street from the Federal building, and that the reason for it is that the FEDS have a secret lab where they are storing the bodies of a young boy and fireman that have been infected by a black oily substance after falling into an uncharted cave system.

As on par for the theme of the "X Files" the black oily ooze is actually an extraterrestrial virus that transforms the host into a new species. And has a large government cover up.

The show came to an end in 2002 and during their 9 year run has spawned a second film ("I Want to Believe"), several books and the publisher IDW came out with a tenth season in comic form appropriately titled "X Files: Season 10". Along with that the X Files franchised has also spun off several stand alones in both book and comic. One of which was a cross over with "30 Days of Night" premise.

On April 20th, 2014, IDW has said that they plan to release a new X Files mini-series in July entitled "X Files: Year Zero" that will set the stage of the origins of the X Files.




According to IDW:

In the 1940s, a shadowy informant known as "Mr. Xero" directed the FBI to a number of paranormal cases that would soon be classified as "X-Files," which were reserved for the improbable and unexplainable. When faced with an eerily similar "Mr. Zero" in the present, Agent Mulder resolves to uncover the truth about who this mystery person is and their connection to these cases.

...

"The origins of the X-Files unit of the FBI were only hinted at in the TV show, and we're proud to present the story of how the precursors of our favorite paranormal agents established the division in the late 1940s," says editor Denton J. Tipton. "I think Bing and Millie will become fan-favorites alongside Mulder, Scully, Reyes and Doggett."

"I've always thought the 40s would be a wonderful setting for X-Files, with the Russian red menace, atomic mutations and flying saucers all lurking in the shadows— what I like to think of as 'UFO Noir,'" said [writer Karl] Kesel from an undisclosed location. "Of course, iconic characters like Mulder and Scully are a joy to write, and being given the opportunity to introduce their predecessors— Bing Ellinson and Millie Ohio— well, the truth is it's all a little unbelievable to me. But the unbelievable is what X-Files is all about, isn't it?"


Unfortunately for fans the comic will have be enough for now as Gillian Anderson spoke with IGN recently let it drop that mostly likely the anticipated new movie probably won't start until 2016 do to the fact that Chris Carter and his group is still figuring out the details of the script and Anderson herself probably won't have time to film until then.

What is believed about the new film that it probably won't follow the premise of the Alien conspiracy as it was prophesied at the end of the series that the Aliens' had planned for the colonization of Earth by 2012.

You can currently see Gillian Anderson staring in the NBC show  "Crisis" and David Duchovny in the final season of Showtime's "Californication".