Bursting Chests, Kung-Fu Trannies and Bigger Helicopters
Exploitation movies are hard to define if you’re a fan of them. It’s easier for the non-fans, who just define them as “shit”, and that’s good enough for them. They can go about their lives with their good, quality films as merrily as they like.
But if you actually like exploitation movies, in all their crap hilarity, it’s a different kettle of stock footage fish altogether.
It’s not as simple as saying that exploitation movies are “cheapo movies from the 70s” or “Anything featuring Fred Williamson” – though that is true for a large part of the genre. It’s not a case of saying that Roger Corman was an exploitation filmmaker, even though he was. And you can’t just go “well the Video Nasties List pretty much covers it” despite the fact that it could, as well as being a genre unto itself.
Why you can’t just lump exploitation into a single genre or decade is because, in this writer’s opinion at least, exploitation is more a state of being than a genre of picture. It takes the right combination of ripping off popular ideas, oft-misguided directorial vision, lack of budget and inappropriate soundtrack to make a bad script a true exploitation movie and thus subject it to being watched and enjoyed in a whole different way.
The movies are almost like a microcosm of the industry itself; there are gems, there are turds, there are super-turds, and there’s lots of sex. There are wranglings over money, bad casting, the whole nine yards. Exploitation is the hilarious underbelly of film, exposed in the campiest possible way.
So reviewing exploitation films is going to be difficult, since the style defies the decades and covers all types of movie, except perhaps musicals. And there’s really only one way to do it – in as ramshackle a manner as possible.
There will be no rhyme or reason to these reviews, no format as such, no grading system. They will just be what they are.
If I could type a pointless blood geyser as a means of ending this paragraph, I would.
There’s really nothing like watching an exploitation style movie in the cinema. Not a modern homage like Kill Bill or Planet Terror, but a real, proper crappy cheap-o rip-off movie.
Seeing one of these filmic crud-balls in the cinema is a treat, not so much for the movie, but for the audience that usually attends. The denizens of the horror festival crowds turn out in their droves, the movie nerds who will laugh where you’re supposed to be scared and who are likely to punch anyone who utters “but that’s just not very good” within earshot just on principle. The people who enjoy the fact that everything is about as polished as a coalminer’s lung.
[Please note this article may contain some clips/language that some readers may find offensive … may!]
These are the people I had the privilege of watching Cruel Jaws (1995) with.
Firstly, yes, it’s an exploitation movie from 1995, a genre usually associated with the 70s and 80s, when quick bucks and bad haircuts were the norm. But when you hear it’s directed by Bruno Mattei (aka Jordan B. Matthews, Jimmy Matheus, Stefan Oblowsky, Vincent Dawn and about a thousand others), veteran of such films as Porno Holocaust and Caligula Reincarnated as Nero, and was marketed as Jaws 5: Cruel Jaws despite having no relation to the Jaws canon whatsoever other than being based on a Peter Benchley novel, you can see why it fits the profile.
If you’ve seen any Jaws movie – or for that matter, read any of Benchley’s killer shark books – you’ll know what to expect of the plot. Town, shark, battle to the death, etc. All of which is done in the ropiest manner possible.
There’s one classic giallo-style corpse special effect that could be considered good in the conventional sense, but that’s about it. The shark, that changes breeds seven or eight times during the script, looks like it should be mounted on a piece of board, hooked to a sensor, and sing a showtune when you walk by it. If acting could be shot, then the acting in this film would be in the firing line at least twice, such is the 80s tinged camping that takes place.
The plot throws gangsters and wheelchair-bound poppet-children at the film in an attempt to get emotion going, but the cuddly dolphin is about the only thing here that would get a reaction out of the standard film audience.
But none of that’s important, for two reasons: 1) One of the heroes, the preposterously monikered of Dag Snerensen (Richard Dew), really, really looks like Hulk Hogan, and 2) “We’re gonna need a bigger helicopter!”
The latter line is delivered in perfect exploitation manner, dubbed poorly over a “special” effects fight sequence between shark and chopper, and delivered like the actor is giving road directions. It stinks of last-gasp moviemaking, throwing in a reference to both pad out a script with no good lines and hop on the coattails of a better-made franchise in one wooden-as-a-bag-of-sticks swoop, resulting in the kind of hilarity most comedy movies can only dream of.
The Hogan-alike Snerensen character was, and is, made fantastic purely by the audience’s reaction. You haven’t lived until you’ve sat in a cinema at two in the morning, surrounded by movie buffs shouting “Brotherrrr!” and “DUDE!” at the screen every time the actor utters a line. If you ever want to watch this film, this is how you should do it.
And speaking of poorly made inconsistent softcore sex pictures…Oh, we weren’t. Nevertheless, that’s what you get from Emmanuelle and The White Slave Trade (1978).
Part of the Black Emmanuelle series, the movie follows Emmanuelle – here a journalist with a cigarette-lighter camera that she both uses ridiculously obviously and seems to replace with a regular, non-camera lighter halfway through – as she stumbles into the world of prostitution and slavery, while having lots of poorly shot, obviously fake sex along the way.
This film is the epitome of bad: The soundtrack uses the same piece of music looped over and over so often that you can’t be sure it isn’t some sort of torture device. The editing and acting are sloppier than almost anything, and the whole thing is compounded by a dub so bad you’d think the boys from Eurotrash got hold of it and decided to have a laugh.
The plot is riddled with inconsistencies and logic jumps. How does black Emmanuelle infiltrate the white slave trade? Why is she brutally gang-raped in one scene, then two scenes later is opening herself to a gang of fishermen as a means of payment for her boat ride? Why is a large part of the middle section taken up with a balloon ride over some archive footage of Africa?
Trying to make sense of this film is pointless. It’s easier just to laugh at the hilarious “auction” scene where “hot” women are paraded around like cattle; at the bad wigs and worse suits; at the sight of an uncanny Stan Lee look-alike getting a little excelsior in the brothel; at the boob massage; and at the scene in the garage. Especially at the scene in the garage.
Oh and did I mention that one of the characters is a gay transvestite who turns straight and DOES KUNG-FU? That’s worth the price of the DVD right there.
Sticking with my own exploitation cinema-going experiences, here is one of the best of the bunch, a hilarious exploitation gem: Luigi Cozzi’s Contamination (1980), also known as Alien Contamination and Toxic Spawn.
If ever there were a film that exploited something, this is it. Taking the chest-burster scene from Alien and turning it into a plot, Contamination was placed on the Video Nasties List for what could best be described as “gratuitous torso explosion”. Actually, here’s a list of the cuts that were made to the film on its original release. See how many times variations of the word “explode” show up:
13 seconds cut from opening sequence showing a dead man’s mutilated and decomposing body in a cupboard.
73 seconds cut from opening sequence showing several men graphically exploding after tampering with alien pods. Footage includes facial explosions and several scientists exploding at the gut in lingering slow-motion.
19 seconds cut from warehouse sequence showing criminals exploding at the gut after unwisely standing amongst alien pods.
2 seconds cut from warehouse sequence in which remains of freshly-exploded men are shown.
9 seconds cut from climax, in which man’s head is devoured by queen alien.
11 seconds cut from climax showing a scientist exploding at the gut after being shot by Ian McCulloch.
33 seconds cut from climax showing chief villain’s chest exploding in slow-motion viscera-launch spectacle.
But even looking past the tons of gore, there’s still plenty of fun to be had: A clunky script that provides plot twists with lines like “Call it intuition, but they want to PUT IT IN THE SEWERS!”, cheap, cardboard 60s Batman-style sets, and a queen alien that looks like something the Power Rangers effects team would balk at and throw in the bin all contribute to the lo-fi, hi-larious feeling.
The best bit, though, is the acting. Led by Ian McCulloch (Zombie Flesh Eaters, BBC’s original Survivors TV series) the cast can be seen having fun with all the ham they are getting to serve up, brilliantly dead-panning the special effects and the dialogue. And the many, MANY explosions.
Contamination is trash, but it knows it’s trash, and it knows that we know it’s trash. Which makes it all the more trashily enjoyable. If you haven’t already watched it, go watch it. You won’t drink coffee the same way again.
Finally, I think it pertinent to mention a film I have yet to see, but want to see so badly that other people can taste it.
1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982) not only features exploitation legend Fred Williamson and was directed by Enzo “Inglorious Bastards” Castellari, but is a film where an actor’s real motorcycle accident is left in as part of the film. If anyone knows where to get it, let me know NOW.
Coming up in Part II:
REVENGE!!!
ACTION!!!
NUDITY!!!
and words.
