BY ALEX DAVIS 

Good.
 
God.
 
Now, I was roughly aware of what I was getting myself into with this movie. It's featured on a huge range of worst horror films ever made, and has even ranked highly among lists of the worst movies made in any genre. I was under no illusions there was a chance of this being a sleeper hit, or a low-budget film that far exceeded expectations with great writing, plotting and acting. This was and could only be awful.

Yet somehow Black Devil Doll from Hell feels like a movie in its own category of awful. If awful were a zen art, you are witnessing it in action for 90 minutes here.
 
Let's cover the essentials before we dig a bit deeper – Black Devil Doll From Hell follows the story of Miss Helen Black, a young, god-fearing, churchgoing lady determined to retain her virginity until she gets married. She leads a simple and lonely life until she heads into a local antique store and discovers a large doll, which she is immediately drawn to. In a grand horror tradition, the shopkeeper tells her that the doll is supposed to give you your most heartfelt desire, but that it has been bought four times and always returned to the store. Helen decides to buy the doll anyway, despite this dire warning, and it's not long before it's in her house doing creepy doll stuff, moving around the house of its own volition, moving its head and opening its eyes to watch her in the shower. You know, creepy doll stuff. Then it goes even further by given Helen her most heartfelt wish – taking her virginity in what is probably the weirdest rape scene you're ever liable to see, not helped by the bonkers cartoonish voice of the doll itself. This creepy-as-hell incident sparks off a sexual awakening in Helen, who tries to find a man to satisfy her, but nothing can make her terrifying wooden companion – who has of course wound its way back to the antique store to await its next unsuspecting victim...
 
Now that plot may not sounds great, but that summary doesn't do justice to how far it misses 'great'. It moves slowly and ponderously, there are huge scenes where remarkably little happens and you suspect any film editor worth their salt would be looking to move through things at a much better pace. The editing that does exist is choppy and messy, cutting to another scene or a different angle seemingly at random, or as though it was a surprise to the person involved.
 
To diagnose everything wrong with this movie would take a long time, so I'll try and give some of the highlights here. The opening credits are nothing but a list of names that run for nearly seven minutes over a soundtrack literally played on an 80's Casio keyboard – and that is what makes up the majority of the soundtrack, often overly loud and grating. To top that of, it's shot on an old VHS camcorder and nobody seems to have sorted out the tracking issues before putting this movie out!

And from that opening you are deeply into 'what the hell' territory – almost everything about this movie defies belief. The acting is atrocious, the direction is terrible and the story meanders around, spending most of its time going nowhere, the soundtrack is monotonous and irritating, the effects are laughable – when you do see the doll walk around it's obviously a kid in a costume, and there is one scene where you can literally see the arm of the puppet operator – and the whole thing is generally a trainwreck.

Despite all of the above, or perhaps because of all the above, this movie remains a firm cult favourite and has an audience that loves it to this day – it's not that long since it had a DVD release with the director's other movie, Tales From The Quadead Zone. In the vein of Troll 2 or Manos: The Hands of Fate, by getting everything wrong in a perfect storm of lousiness it has retained a place in film history. This will probably last even longer in the collective consciousness than many good or OK films from its era, mainly because of people's bad movie nights and the presence of a good many beers. Watching it alone of a quiet afternoon as I did is probably entirely the wrong arena in which to enjoy this movie, I'm happy to admit that. But even then there was a certain appeal – this is a miracle of bad filmmaking and you can't help but marvel at the terrible decisions that made it be. And if you're out there trying to make a film, there is literally no way you could do it worse than this.

RATING: 4/10. This movie is terrible, don't get me wrong. But there is a certain degree of entertainment to be had in watching Black Devil Doll From Hell because it somehow gets literally everything wrong. And in that respect it is spectacular. It'll have you shaking your head, it'll have you cringing, and it'll probably have you laughing at the most horribly inappropriate moments with its direness. I've never much subscribed to the 'so bad it's good' theory, so for me this is more 'so bad it has to be seen to be believed.' It gets 4/10 because other movies have bored me more, and there were chuckles there, just probably not where anybody meant them to be...

I won't say too much more about this one plot-wise. It's pretty gruesome in places, the effects are realistic enough and I think the performances are OK from all involved. The two actors even keep their own names for the characters. The highlight of the movie is the real unease and relationship trouble that actually committing the act causes, as Jennifer revels in it and Farhang feels pangs of conscience. That's probably a more interesting angle than the actual violence and death, which is no bad things.
 
However I can't give it a hugely high rating, and here's why – in fact it's something I intimated at earlier. They obviously have had a conversation some point beforehand about deciding to kill a totally random person. And it just left me wondering why? The two don't seem especially unpleasant, or violent, or psychopathic. And that's what jarred me the most of all – if these two pretty normal folks are just going to wake up one day and say 'hey, why don't we kill someone' I would love some more motivation and justification. Without that, it just feels a bit like 'Five Go and Commit a Murder', like it's all some wonderfully jolly jape and a big adventure they'll look back on and laugh. Characters need motivation, and ultimately that's what we're missing here – and that does have a genuinely detrimental effect on the movie. Capture Kill Release does a number of things right, but in doing this major one wrong very much limits what it can hope to achieve as a movie.

RATING: 5/10. Capture Kill Release is a strange misnomer of a title, now I think about it – the first two are certainly happening but I didn't see anyone getting released here at all. Anyway, there was promise here and the found footage style was used better than in many movies. The acting wasn't stunning but it was certainly believable, and the relationship element and the impact that their decision to kill has on the relationship is pretty effective. However the fact that there's simply no motivation for their actions and nothing in their apparent characteristics for why they would do it is just a massive stumbling block for me on a personal level. It's something fundamental to storytelling they seems to be egregiously missed here, and it loses several marks for that, so it's only a fair mark of 5/10. ​

by Alex Davis 

Australia is a nation that has produced some very decent horror movies over the years, and has a pretty fair pedigree in terms of extreme horror as well. The Loved Ones remains a firm favourite of mine, and with other offerings like Wolf Creek and Hounds of Love to boot it's certainly seems to be a lively scene down under. This one had pretty much passed me by, but on a hunt through the body horror section of Shudder I thought this one sounded like it could be some fun. That's not often a phrase that I apply to body horror – a subgenre that has served up some of the movies I've personally found very hardest to watch, including the horrible Thanatomorphose. Thankfully this one wasn't anywhere near as hard as some of its bedfellows, and in fact was pretty enjoyable.
 
To be fair, the story is pretty disjointed, but it fundamentally follows the residents of Pebbles Court, Homesville. The characters are pretty broadly-drawn but suffice perfectly well for the plot in this one, which concerns a local health farm and pharmaceutical company who are producing a highly experimental drug. We see its first victim – a former employee who tries to go and warn the good folks of Homesville – die in a pretty gory fashion, and that's a precedent for what comes next as the denizens of Pebbles Court are slipped this new drug by one means or another, and gradually find themselves bursting, exploding, melting and plenty more besides.

It's all pretty silly, but it sets its stall out early enough in that respect. You know what you're letting yourself into in the space of a few minutes, beginning with the stunningly retro computer graphics and then more firmly established in our meeting the absurd dramatis personae. There are a few chuckles to be had along the way – the cast of 'rednecks' (I know it's technically Australia not America, but I can't think of a better word) are a stitch, as are the bonehead teens on the block – and the deaths are generally pretty inventive and interesting. It's hard to be horribly shocked by anything, given the context, but the effects are good for the time and there's some pleasure to be had in wondering what the next extravagant death will look like. The fact the characters are basically 'shreddies' means that you don't miss them, or really feel for them, but again given what this film is trying to do it doesn't make too much difference.
 
Body Melt isn't especially cutting, or visceral, or hard to watch as so many of our entries in Film Gutter have been before it. I don't think it's going to prove to be that memorable either. What it is – and I don't get the chance to say this enough -  is a fun piece of horror that plays with some extreme ideas but keeps the humour and the outrageousness at the heart of it. There are plenty of flaws, sure – the story jumps all over the shop, giving almost the sense of a portmanteau rather than a full movie, some of the acting is hammy – like beyond the kind of hammy you'd like too see  - and there's little to stir any sort of emotional response. But it was an enjoyable way to spend 80 minues, and on those grounds it's worth a nose as an antidote to the more gruesome and distressing offerings  we often encounter.

RATING: 7/10. Body Melt almost feels like a movie out of time, as it would have been a perfect fit for the 80's style of horror. Even for when it was made it was likely retro, and looks even more so now, but it holds up in terms of effects and approaches its slim idea with enough energy and verve to make for a chaotic but ultimately pretty funny experience. It's not unmissable, but you could certainly do a sight worse if you like your extreme horror on the less serious side. 

To begin with, it's worth saying this is a film I had been looking forward to for some time, and hats off to Shudder for picking this one up – it's a bold choice given what has been said about this movie prior to its release. Apparently enduring a host of walkouts during its screening at the Sundance Film Festival, and later being described online as 'the grossest movie ever made', this one screamed Film Gutter from the very get go. And given some of the talent involved at Brainfeeder Films – talent that certainly has a reputation for the bizarre – I was buzzing to get stuck into this one.
 
In many ways, it was everything that I expected, and really rather hard to describe adequately without actually watching. Kuso's framework is an occasionally-referenced earthquake that has caused a strange series of events to occur, which allows for a sort of montage style that provides a lot of creative freedom. So just what is it about? It's about a man who enters into a three-way relationship with a talking boil that has developed on his girlfriend, which we unfortunately get to see the consummation of. It's the story of a woman descending into hell to save her baby only to find herself physically attached to another woman. It's the story of a man determined to cure his fear of breasts by undergoing a trippy treatment after a cockroach, Mr Quiggle, emerges from his doctor's ass and squirts some sort of medicine (kind of) into his mouth (starring George Clinton and male porn star Lexington Steele, no less). It's about a woman who discovers she's pregnant by a creep that emerges through her toilet to say hello and the two bears (again, maybe not a perfect description) with TVs for faces that she lives with. It's about all of those things and an awful lot more, but that probably gives you some sense of just how odd this piece of work is.

I think whether this is to your taste or not, the craft and care that has gone into Kuso is undeniable. All the make-up work is meticulous, the visuals are breathtaking for the right reasons in places and all the wrong reasons in other – veering from glorious to horrifying – the soundtrack is wonderful (as you would expect from anything associated with directory Flying Lotus) and there is a freshness and originality here that is hard to deny. The film's detractors might argue a case that it is trying too hard to be different, but as any of my regular readers will know I prize originality in horror above a lot of other qualities, so you won't hear any complaints from me in that respect. I have a deep suspicion this is also a movie that will improve with repeat watching, as so much Adult Swim television.


And as I wrote that, I realised the best way I could describe Kuso is if Adult Swim decided to make a horror film, this would probably be it. It's relentlessly original, continually disturbing and takes pleasure in keeping its audience distinctly unbalanced. Just when you think you've figured something out, wham – we're onto the next thing. For me, it is entertaining and it kept my attention held tight all the way, but then Adult Swim has always produced some of my very favourite TV, and generally the stranger the better for me. But I think any reviewer would probably be wise to say this is not a movie for everybody – in fact Kuso is probably something that will be truly enjoyed by a small minority. Surreal, hilarious, artistic, sickening, energetic, twisted, intense, discombobulating – Kuso is all this and much more.
 
RATING: 9/10. If I were reaching for one word to described Kuso, it would probably be wild. This is a group of filmmakers well and truly let loose to create something that makes no concessions to its viewers or the film industry it is a part of. It is gross – not as gross as some movies we have watched, although Royal the Boil was a singularly queasy moment – but it is a flat-out assault in the sense with its off-the-wall imagery and mini stories it tells. I might have to watch it a few more times to be sure, but it might just be genius and I think is bound to gain a real cult status in years to come. I enjoyed it heartily, and although it certainly isn't a movie for everyone, it was undoubtedly a movie for me. One of the craziest rides ever here at Film Gutter and worthy of a great 9/10.