Ruptured Review: Moontrap

Country of origin- USA  

Year of release- 1989  

Director- Robert Dyke                             

Stars- Walter Koenig, Bruce Campbell, Leigh Lombardi 

The film follows two veteran space shuttle pilots, Colonel Grant played by Walter Koenig (Star Trek) and Tanner played by the brilliant Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead series) who are flying a routine mission. However the two pilots soon stumble across a vast spacecraft, of which neither the pilots nor NASA have any clue or information about. Colonel Grant suits up and leaves the shuttle to investigate. He eventually finds a metal pod embedded in a huge hole in the mysterious ship’s hull. Apparently not having seen Alien Colonel Grant decides to bring the mysterious alien pod on board the shuttle. The two pilots eventually return to earth with the pod in hand and it ultimately transpires that the pod originates from the surface of the Moon, and both the pilots become eager to investigate its origins. However, when the pod opens and proceeds to build a robotic killing machine of its own accord, which then go’s on a rampage in the NASA base, the need to investigate its origins becomes a little more urgent. Once on the Moon Colonel Grant and Tanner discover to their horror that the alien pod that they brought back, has some friends, and their a bit pissed off. 

This film is a good example of what happens when a fairly decent concept becomes polluted by poor writing and a bizarre urge by the film makers to try and take from just about every other Sci-fi film. In this film we see plagiaristic nods towards 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars: A New Hope and unsurprisingly, Star Trek to name just a few. The film becomes so bland, and filled with cliché that not even the hugely energetic and fun performance of the one and only Bruce Campbell can save it. The film is also marred by the wooden performance of Walter Koenig, who seems to reflect the feelings of the audience as he becomes increasingly distant and cardboard like as the plot progresses. But hey, at least he isn’t doing a ‘Russian’ accent.

The film does have its good points however. The practical effects on both the sets and the robots in the film are surprisingly well executed despite the films noticeably low budget, which shows very alarmingly in one or two moments throughout the film. The films score is also very good, although noticeably reminiscent in parts to that of 2001: A Space Odyssey, it still manages to deliver tension.

Overall however this film is a turd, and no matter how much you polish a turd by adding Bruce Campbell or enjoyable practical effects, it’s still a turd. While watching Moontrap it is impossible to ignore the poor script, pointless scenes, misguided ‘comedy’, lack of drive and just general blandness, enough to enjoy the sometimes worthy sceptical of Bruce Campbell fighting killer alien robots with an M16. This disappointment gets a 3.5/10 from me, this is wasted opportunity at its most boring.                  

           

Ruptured Review: Blastfighter

Country of origin- Italy 

Year of release- 1984  

Director- Lamberto Bava (as John Old Jr.)                            

Stars- Michael Sopkiw, Valentina Forte, George Eastman
          
The film follows Jake ‘Tiger’ Sharp (played by Michael Sopkiw of 2019: After the Fall of New York fame) who is a former police officer who has just been released from an 8-year prison after he tracked down and killed his wife’s murderer. Tiger returns to his hometown in Georgia as he tries to pursue a quiet life and escape from his past violent past which still haunts him. However this is an Italian action film from the 80s so the chances of poor old Tiger getting a moment of peace and quiet are fairly slim. And of course it isn’t long before Tiger must step up to restore order when he gets cruelly taunted and threatened by a group of deer poaches, led by an old acquaintance Tom, (played by the great George Eastman) who are employed by a rich businessman from Hong Kong, who is using the deer’s they maim and kill to make medicine. After shutting down the poaching operation Tiger and his long lost daughter Connie (played by the always wooden Valentina Forte) are brutally attacked by the poachers. Tiger is left with no other option but to deliver blazing justice with his experimental military shotgun in a bloody rampage of vengeance. Loaded with grenades, rockets and shells that will blow the limbs off a poacher at a hundred paces, Tiger once and for all takes out the trash.

This film is a very odd combination of Death Wish and First Blood in that we get both a very strong, if all be it short vengeance plotline, along with a story of a man trying to escape a dark past only to be dragged back into violence because of rednecks who ultimately get more than they bargained for. The First Blood style plot line takes up around two thirds of the film compared to the disappointingly short vengeance plotline. To the point that this could easily be considered as an Italian exploitation response to the Rambo boom of the early 80’s. Treating this as nothing more than Rambo knock off however is to do Blastfighter a bit of a disservice, it stands up fairly well on its own shell case strewn, blood soaked ground as a fun and solid, if slightly drawn out and cheap action effort from one of the masters of Italian exploitation Lamberto Bava.

The films two major problems do set the film back a little however. Firstly, the films puts far too much focus on Tiger and Connie fleeing the poachers, this part of the film really drags and made me care a whole lot less about Connie. This brings me on to the second issue with Blastfighter, Connie. Every time she is on screen the combination of her resting bitchface, shrill voice and whiny dialogue and demeanour leaves me wanting to take Tigers shotgun and swiftly remove her appalling character from this film. 

Leaving aside this two issues the film has many strong points. Michael Sopkiw is superb as the troubled Tiger, although his dubbing is typically poor his acting is surprisingly good. The films action pieces are all very well executed from both a special effects point of view and lighting/cinematography point of view. There is also a nice amount of dismemberment and gore towards the films climax, which is made all the better by the superb synth soundtrack composed by the masterful Fabio Frizzi the whole film is set to. Overall this is very enjoyable watch despite its problems, and considering it is now available on Blu-ray from 88 Films you really don’t have an excuse not to check it out, I’m giving Blastfighter a 6.5/10.                        

Ruptured Review: The Coma-Brutal Duel (Das komabrutale Duell)

Country of origin- Germany

Year of release- 1999   

Director- Heiko Fipper                

Stars- Heiko Fipper, Mike Hoffman, Stefan Hoft  


 

Normally it is customary for me to begin a review with a short synopsis of the films basic plot and structure, however this will not be possible in the case of this film. The Coma-Brutal Duel is a feature film that was made up of several short films made between 1984 and 1999, the film makers make little attempt to try and string them together using such unnecessary adages as a story, so the whole film plays out as a series of barley connected gore scenes. Considering this is a German shot-on-video splatter film of the kind that stained the back gardens of Germanic Europe red during the 80’s and 90’s, the story isn’t that important, as directors such as Olaf Ittenbach or Andreas Schnaas have proven in the past. But there is so little effort put into even creating the illusion of a plot in this one that it does slowly but steadily begin to drag. This ultimately this is the films downfall, but the film is certainly not without its good points.

I don’t think I can recall watching a film with as much ultra-violent mutilation, torture and dismemberment as The Coma-Brutal Duel, in terms of shire amount of blood splatter, this film is only rivalled by Adam Chaplin. It is actually difficult to remember parts of this film that didn’t have blood and gore in them in some way. Some of the gore we see includes foetus crushing, limb lopping and dick shooting. The film actually features a large amount of gory gun violence as well, which is actually a nice surprise as we get to see people killed by multiple headshots, and have their appendages nearly blown clean off in some cases.

This brings me on to the most bizarre feature of the film, considering the huge amount of blood gore and general bodily destruction that we see on screen you would easily assume that it has a high body count, you would be wrong. This is because everyone in this film seems to be utterly indestructible. The films attitude to its characters being maimed is basically loose an arm, bolt it back on, bleed to death, just kick your friend in the face and walk it off. Characters in this film survive multiple dismemberments, beheadings and headshots, only to get back up out of a pool of blood and just keep on going. Weather this was due to a constraint on the amount of available actors the film makers had, or they simply decided to fuck reality and just do their own thing I will never know, but I like to assume it is the latter.

The gore and splatter effects themselves vary throughout the film, likely due to the varying budgets of the shot films The Coma-Brutal Duel is made of, we see brown blood one minute, and orange blood the next. The same variation in quality can be said for the cinematography, one minute it looks like filming was being done using a broken toaster, the next it’s not nearly as bad. If you looking for some no budget, extremely gory shot-on-video German splatter along the lines of Violent Shit or Blutnacht this is a fine watch. The makers clearly had a blast filming this (as can be heard by the laughing in some scenes and the gag reel at the end), they made it with not a lot of skill, but a whole bunch of enthusiasm, and chainsaws. I am going to give this one a 6.5/10 it does drag towards the end, but for the amount of gore and bad dialog it is hard to top it.                                      

 

                         

Ruptured Review: X-Ray

Country of origin- USA

Year of release- 1981   

Director- Boaz Davidson              

Stars- Barbi Benton, Charles Lucia, Jon Van Ness   

The film follows Susan (played by the 80s Playboy model Barbi Benton) who is attending a hospital to pick up her check-up results in what Susan thinks will be an extremely short visit, she couldn’t be more wrong however. Almost as soon as Susan enters the hospital she begins to be stalked by a deranged killer dress as a surgeon. The killer begins to engineer a situation in which Susan will be trapped within the hospital, first by killing off her actual DR and then switching her test results to those of someone with a serious illness. This eventually leads to Susan being prevented from leaving and forced to undergo one of the sleaziest of full body examinations I have ever seen. The oddly forceful DR’s and nurses eventually put Susan on a ward filled with a trio of cackling old women, and treat her though she is a Broadmoor patient and not someone who they think is possibly very ill. But as the killers plan begins to culminate Susan is forced to flee for her life amongst the old hospitals corridors, chased by a surgeon who isn’t too fond of anaesthetic.

This was a originally a The Cannon Group release, so with that in mind I was fully prepared for a sensory overload of bad 80s heir, bad acting and downright insane plot lines. But to my surprise X-Ray manages to be a little more than just the typical Cannon efforts. I am not saying that X-Ray doesn’t have problems, because my goodness it does. The acting is generally atrocious, the script is completely awful and makes Susan sound like a complete moron, and there are plot holes so vast it is possible to fit an entire other film into them. For example Susan actually leaves her boyfriend in the car waiting while she pops into the hospital for "a few minutes". Amazingly, several hours go by and darkness falls before he even comes to look for her! It is problems like this it is easy to get hung up on when watching this film, but at the same time you just have to let that stuff go and enjoy the positive elements the film has to offer.

Firstly, this film does not spend 30 minutes playing with itself while trying to ‘build tension’ in a forced and false way, instead it gets right into the action within just a few minutes, soon after this the kills begin to come think and fast. The kills are plentiful and generally pretty brutal considering we see people being dowsed in acid, beheaded with circular saws and repeatedly stabbed and hung in wardrobes. However the film doesn’t show its hand when it comes to gore, although we get a fair amount of the old crimson splatter there is a distinct and disappointing lack of gore. One surprising asset the film has is its use of lighting and cinematography to make the most of the films setting, which is an actual abandoned hospital that was partially restored for the film. The various shots of the long dimly lit corridors, and large empty rooms makes the films environment all the more effective at creating natural tension and gives the film a fairly effective nightmarish vibe.

Overall this is an extremely strong slasher that could have easily been utter garbage, but by the grace of a director that understood that what the audience wants to see is an atmospheric setting with complete human carnage and just a hint of sleaze, it was saved. I would very much recommend this one especially considering it has just received a superb Blu-ray release from 88 Films, X-Ray gets a 7/10 from me.                         

Ruptured Review: SS Experiment Camp

Country of origin- Italy

Year of release- 1976   

Director- Sergio Garrone             

Stars- Mircha Carven, Paola Corazzi, Giorgio Cerioni 

The film follows a group of female political prisoners who have just been sent to, as the title suggests, SS Experiment Camp for what can only be described as bizarre and pointless sexual experiments. Some of the prisoners are forced into prostitution for the camps built in brothel which is supposed to boost morale amongst the Nazi guards, who all seem to be more interested in lying in their Y-fronts in front of one another for most of the film. The rest of the prisoners are forced to basically just have sex with Nazi’s while a predatory lesbian makes notes, and molests one of the prisoners now and again. The film quickly loses its collective shit however, when it is discovered that the purpose of these experiments is to find the most Aryan set of balls from amongst the clearly not Aryan guards, which are then chopped off only to be transplanted to the camp commandant who, as we discover, lost his on the Russian front.

This whole film is just one giant clusterfuck. Within the first four minutes of the film we see full frontal nudity, electric chair torture, urine and a furnace for dead bodies that causes people to break into interpretive dance, don’t believe me, watch it for yourself. After this stunning opening that has about as much taste as a blind 70’s pimp, we are then treated to what I can only describe as a constant barrage of pornographic failure. The film constantly tries to be titillating, but its fumbled attempts simply come off as some kind of crude Benny Hill sketch just with more pubic hair and Nazi imagery. Even the camp itself is a joke, its more like Butlins than Belzec, the prisoners can even walk around outside at night, in their “uniforms” which are little more than old bathrobes. For the most part the oddly well fed prisoners don’t even seem to mind being there, and treat it more like a hen party than a concentration camp.

It is bizarre to think that this film was, and is still today one of the most talked about Video Nasties, and even one of the most famous Nazisploitation films of this era. Putting aside the sporadic unintentional humour the film provides, this film is downright boring. It isn’t nasty enough to be as shocking and entertaining as Ilsa, She Wolf Of The SS, and it isn’t as artistic as Salon Kitty or The Night Porter (which it so desperately wants to be) to be even remotely thought provoking. The director Sergio Garrone shot this back-to-back with another Nazisploitation sex film called SS Womens Camp which I thankfully haven’t had to suffer through…yet. Overall this is a very boring, slow, cheap and grotty vague rip-off of Salon Kitty, it does have moments that made me laugh but for all the wrong reasons, this one gets 3.5/10.            

          

Ruptured Go Fuck Yourself Christmas Special

Well it’s that time of year again. Make sure to put on your paper hat, crack open the eggnog and force a smile while trying to display emotions other than hate and lust so that your family think you’re a normal human being. It is of course Christmas, the perfect time to settle down with your loved ones around a cosy fire and enjoy a good film, preferable a light family orientated affair. Bollocks to that I say. The endless stream of sugar coated garbage (modern cinema) that gets stuffed down our throats at a rate that will probably give us diabetes is the reason I am writing this shit, as a rejection to normality. So allow me to introduce you to an alternative Christmas film that will have you and your family fucking dead people within minutes.

 
Country of origin- Spain

Year of release- 1994  

Director- Nacho Cerdà            

Stars- Pep Tosar, Jordi Tarrida, Ángel Tarris 

 

Aftermath is a 30 minute long short film that features no dialogue and an awful lot of dead people being molested. The films short plot follows a pathologist who seems to have an unhealthy obsession with his job. This ultimately culminates in a horrifically long and savage scene in which the pathologist strips, mutilates and has sex with the body of a female car crash victim. This prolonged scene gives the viewer a palpable sense of emersion into the sick and demented world of clinical necrophilia that this deranged pathologist lives in. The pathologist seems to take out what can only be described as fury upon the cadaver, going so far as to enact the Cannibal Corpse song, Fucked With A Knife before climbing on.

The whole film has a cold clinical feel to it that is greatly helped by the grim and authentic setting, along with the near constant silence expect for the occasional insertion of a classical score or the pathologists heavy breathing, and of course the stunning practical effects. The effects in this film really are amazing, the attention to detail and the incredibly realistic look make the cadavers look like something from a shockumentary rather than a well done effect. Overall it’s hard to find a better film to watch at Christmas. Aftermath has it all, romance, classical music and best of all necrophilia.

So there you have it folks another shitty Christmas special and another year of sick perversity on this rancid littler corner of the internet, all I can say is, I hope you hated it, and I love you all. See you in 2016 and don’t fuck too many corpses over Christmas.                

         

Ruptured Review: The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears

Country of origin- Belgium/France 

Year of release- 2014 

Directors- Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani           

Stars- Klaus Tange, Ursula Bedena, Joe Koener  

The film follows a husband who returns from a long business trip to find that his wife has gone missing from their apartment, leaving it locked from the inside. The rest of the film is focused upon him searching for his missing wife in their apartment complex, and that’s literally it in terms of plot. You may well be thinking that this rather simple plot has a great deal of potential to create a claustrophobic mystery thriller or even a psychological horror feature, and honestly you would be right. This plot, on paper anyway, is good, and if it wasn’t in the hands of the buffoons that made this pile of shit it could have created a very watchable film, however in the case of this film, that is not the case.

The film is made up of a series of unengaging and purposefully incomprehensible tangents that provide the viewer with nothing but frustration, and boredom. The characters within these tangents are nothing but a collection of moody/whiney cardboard cut outs trying their upmost to appear ‘dramatic’, while providing nothing in terms of performance but an urge within the audience to kill. The films script was clearly written during a break in a third rate art lecture by some Giallo fan boy who thinks their being outre by writing scenes and dialogue that have literally no purpose with or without context, and have tits, blood and knifes in them.

But to be honest, these issues almost pale in comparison to the huge elephant in the room when discussing this film, and that is the editing of Bernard Beets. The only good feature of this film is its stunning cinematography, which is brilliantly crafted and shows true dedication and artistry on the part of Manuel Dacosse, and this majesty of visual art is ruined by the editing. This film has some of the most sickening, choppy and pointless edits I have ever seen. The endless amounts of meaningless hard cuts and swirling visuals gave me an actual headache, and could easily trigger a seizure, so be warned. The editing try’s to appear as artistic, instead it, like the rest of the film just comes off as an empty soulless attempt by a pretentious art student to emulate the great Giallo directors of years gone by.

My final issue with this film is its desperation to try and be a 1970’s Italian Giallo film such as The Girl Who Knew Too Much, or my personal favourite The Bird With The Crystal Plumage. This film so desperately wants to be one of those films, but what it fails to realize is that those films at that time were made great by something this film totally lacks, tension. The great Giallo films of the 70’s were generally fantastic at creating atmosphere, something that is lost on this film as it ignores that and just tries to be an aftershave advert made by an art school dropout who can probably tell you what the inside of his own colon smells like. Overall, this is a dull, empty and obnoxious film that in its attempts to emulate classic Giallo films, simply cheapens and pollutes their artistry and legacy. I am going to give this film a 2.5/10, and I am only giving it that much because of the superb cinematography that is totally wasted on this trash.