MICROBUDGET MASSACRE 11:
Hysteric Eric looks at 4 Indy films
about Blood, Guts and Pussy!

Rapid-paced, ultra-violent and hilarious, BAGMAN is like an incredibly gory 3 Stooges short. Or as the box art says, “A la niche et Jason et Freddy!” Very low-budget non-stop inventive kills and a masked indestructible killer fuel this infectious splatter-fest. Plenty of digits sliced off and obvious fake limbs ripped off and heads squished. In it’s short running time it conveys more gore than in maybe 4 or 5 features.
Blessed with almost no plot at all, it’s practically pure mayhem, after a brief introduction as a girl in a hospital relays the story of how she got there. A group of hip-hop jackasses run their car into her, and she tells them the Bagman attacked her. You can’t say his name 3 times, or he appears, so of course they do, and he does appear, and, as the saying goes, hilarity ensues. After killing off almost the whole carload of gangstas, one thug calls for reinforcements, and it spirals into ridiculous bounds, as The Bagman is surrounded by dozens of hilarious over-acting French wiggas and mows them all down in various ways. They’re such swaggering dipshits that it’s easy for you cheer on The Bagman to get them all. Shovel, axe, chain, knives, blank. Intestines ripped out, head-squishing, puking blood, axes in ass. Silly, but great fun, and great to watch with a crowd. Dynamite grue, mon ami.
No wasting time on plot or character. Packed with more incredibly gory shorts, which are all equally over-the-top. Looks like they got a better camera for BAGMAN, but same manic kitchen sink presentation is there, along with a lot of the same “actors”. I wish there was subtitles on the other shorts, but they’re so primitive it doesn’t really matter. Blood and gore – the universal language. Amateur in the best sense of the word, these are fans, but their giddy enthusiasm is infectious. Who needs a story? Hope you don’t; this is a big bunch of sight gags and outlandish kills. Decent choreography, even if the realism setting is on over-the-top.
With making of and the assorted shorts, buy the DVD and a t-shirt and help them finance their feature-length version of Bagman at http://www.lebagman.com/en-merch.html.

NEXT DOOR is a weird and moody Norwegian thriller from 2006. John has just broken up with his long-time girlfriend, when the pair of girls next door reach out (are they sisters? Girlfriends? Or something worse?)
You know these films that feel the need to over-explain everything? This isn’t one of those films. The film is quite well made, and keeps you guessing as to what is really going on. It’s when his ex-girlfriend returns for some things that he begins to act strange, and Anne, the first of the two hot neighbor girls asks him to move some furniture. She wants a large armoire pushed in front of the door. Against who? He asks, but never gets a straight answer. The girls are flirty and intimidating but John (Kristoffer Joner in a dynamic and haunted performance driven mostly by his deep-set eyes) is appropriately uncomfortable and hesitant with a hint of a bad temper deep inside.
Asked to watch the crazy sister Kim while the other one (Ann) goes to the pharmacist, Kim seduces him and smacks him around until he smacks her back, which is apparently something they both wanted. Ann peeks in and sees them fucking, complete with bloody smears and punching each other. A flashback shows Anne picking up clothes at the apartment and recalling how after he had accidentally burned her arm with coffee, they had had sex for the first time on six months. Her new boyfriend Ake convinced her that it wasn’t an accident. Were the girls next door listening through the walls next door, could hear John and his ex-GF in their bedroom? They seem to know a scenario she tells him in a flashback. And what about Ake, his ex’s creepy new boyfriend? Just what is he doing in the girls’ next-door apartment?
Can’t tell anymore. There’s a big reveal that brings the movie to a kind of slow halt, but I enjoyed its elegant demise. I’m not going to spoil it. The movie’s a good short little psychosexual thriller with a twist ending. Most, but not all takes place in the maze that is the apartment building. The interior of the apartments was a great environment, with dark and long plain foreboding hallways, seemingly very cold war, at least giving a cold vibe, and echoing the confusion and isolation of the main character.
Looks like a professional feature. The small cast does a fine job, and gives good performances in roles that could have easily lapsed into parody. The atmosphere and the slow unfolding of the story is what kept me interested. 75 minute running time seems short and doesn’t leave time to waste. Fight Club meets Kafka meets David Lynch. Hopefully Tom Cruise won’t buy this to remake an American version. From www.TLAReleasing.com.

In 1987’s KILLING SPREE, Tom Russo is a cranky airplane grease monkey more than slightly protective of his hot wife. Already emotionally unstable, he gets his salary cut. He has been cheated on before, and when he finds his wife’s diary detailing her sexual exploits with various men –the lawn boy, the delivery guy, the TV repairman, his best friend, etc., - he over-reacts, going on a bloody killing spree, a fact that the title might clue you into.
He goes after them each of his wife’s lovers in turn, killing them in imaginative ways. A metal blade attached to a ceiling fan lops off the top of a guy’s head, he chainsaws open one guy’s guts and electrocutes him by placing out his intestines on an electrical connection, and there’s of course a deadly use of lawnmower. They’re low-budget, but fun and bloody real-world FX, with plenty of spray and gore.
The actor who plays the cuckolded husband, Asbestos Felt (stage name, anyone?), is very authentic in the role, with his crazy hair and beard sticking every which way, and totally sells you on being a crazy jealous pissed-off dirtbag. The woman playing the wife is not a good actor, and some of the other actors are iffy, but luckily the film focuses on Crazy Tom. The limitations of 80s SOV technology is evident in abundance – sound drop-offs, less than stellar picture quality, and the gore is pretty phony-looking, too. But Ritter shows some talent in camera placement and use of lights and filters to create some atmosphere, and everything’s so exaggerated the amateur acting and effects somehow complement that vision rather than detract from it.
Played straightforward, but still pretty damn funny. With some weird dream sequences. Gratuitous reading of Fangoria magazine on couch. The obnoxious nosy neighbor gets her just desserts, with a hammer claw through the chin and her jaw pulled off. And generous use of color filters when Tom has his psychotic episodes.
It turns out his wife was writing fiction, so she could help support them, and she had never actually cheated on him. Oopsie! Then the movie goes even crazier, as the bodies of the recently departed return from the dead for their revenge on him. The zombies argue who has the right to kill him. You can be guaranteed the ending is not going to be pretty, at least for our resident bad-tempered burnout.
This movie was pretty fun if you’re looking for a vintage shot-on-video gorefest. I enjoyed it and will probably watch it again sometime. From who else, but www.CampMotionPictures.com.

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THE STINK OF FLESH is a pretty good little no-budget exercise into zombie territory. Lacking a budget, they’ve decided wisely to have an interesting take on the usual survival scenario. The picture wastes no time in getting straight into some bloody zombie action.
Matool is a survivor, a badass little dude who scorns guns in favor of big nails in his boots. He’s a good fighter, and likes to smack the zombies around a bit before puts a nail through their heads. Running from the zombies, he accepts a ride from a guy and is duct taped and taken to a desert compound. Dexie and Nathan are the kinky couple that lives there – Dexie likes a lot of men, and Nathan likes to watch. In the middle of the act, someone smacks Matool on the ass. It’s Dexie’s weird sister Sassy, who has a mutant sis Dottie, a growth coming out of her gut. Well, I guess you can’t have everything.
Matool ultimately gains Nathan’s trust, who shows him a secret. Chained up in a storage shed in the back, Nathan’s got a naked super-hot zombie chick. Too dangerous to do anything with, he keeps her around “just to look at.”
A new strain of fast moving “hyper-zombies” attacks a military truck, and the survivors, (one bitten) seek refuge at the compound. Dexie doesn’t mind some fresh meat, and neither will the zombies that you know will eventually come. Has an entertaining sequence where two men have a big brawl outside, continually getting interrupted by attacking zombies, and then resuming their fight.
The action scenes are a step up from the usual microbudget film, due to the supervision of actor Matool, who doubles as fight choreographer.
Nice creative kills and plenty of them. The zombies look decent, and the bright desert daylight is an interesting setting for zombies. Where do all the bodies keep coming from? Mob murders? Flash floods? With a rock and roll soundtrack and good old creepy mood music. The abrupt ending didn’t settle anything for me, but otherwise, I thought it was excellent. The ensemble of living actors were all fairly good, and if not, still used to best advantage. The husband was pretty believable. But I must take note of the sister Sassy, because I really started off hating her off-kilter portrayal. It pulled me out of believing the other characters, but by the end, after her role develops, like Dottie, she grew on me.
With making of, commentary, and some older shorts.
From www.TempeVideo.com.

-Hysteric Eric