Last time around we started a look at the short movies of Marian Dora, one of the most controversial directors around and someone whose movies have been a feature here at Film Gutter – in fact the series kicked off years back with his movie Debris Documentar. This time around we'll e completing the set of short films from the World of Marian Dora boxset before kicking off with a series of reviews looking at the I Spit On Your Grave movies.

Anyway, here are the remainder of the short films on offer...


EROTIC FANTASY (7 mins)

We open with a soft shot of two burning candles, but that's the only concession to any kind of romance here. From there, a female victim is chained to the floor or what appears to be a church – or some sort of religious building – before being wrapped in plastic with selective holes cut in it. We then see our male captor cutting away at the corpse of (I think) a pig, which unsurprisingly is shown in unwavering detail. There's more than a hint of that infamous scene in Melancholie Der Engel here. The head of the pig is brought over – with burning matches in its eyes – as the woman has raw meat placed upon her, which I think is then eaten off her by a dog (the filming is a little dark and confusing, probably deliberately). Of course there's worse to come, as our male tormentor begins to slice at his captive. We cut away quite swiftly – dare I say mercifully? Very odd, pretty disturbing and I must add I genuinely hope I don't get to meet the kind of person who consider this to actually be erotic... It's captivating in its own way anyway, and Dora somehow manages again to find something compelling in the worst of horrors.
RATING: 7/10.
 
OPUS HOMINIS 2 (13 mins)
 
Sure, the music here might be glorious and neo-religious, but that's about as pleasant at this one gets – even that fades away to be replaced by something much more sinister as this short film wears on. This could almost be something that PETA would use in its campaigns, an unflinching look at animal butchery complete with all the hideous visuals and gutwrenching sound effects of animal suffering you would expect. It's obviously not one of those cases where the animals are being killed for the film – a la Cannibal Holocaust – just a look inside an abattoir that simply doesn't pull any punches. We see innards pulled out, bodies cut in half with cleavers, meat pulled away from bones... even as a dyed in the wool meat-eater, this one left me feeling distinctly queasy. Those ham sandwiches for lunch very nearly repeated on me over the course of this thirteen minutes. It has most of the trademark style of Dora, but doesn't really seem to be saying much ultimately – I don't even feel as though it's really an indictment of the meat industry, which could have been the obvious thing to take away. We close with a shot of a butcher selling the meat, with yet more uplifting music. It runs a bit long for me, even at a pretty meagre thirteen minutes. Not my favourite of the set. 
RATING: 4/10.
 
JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION (16 mins)

This short film is something very different to the remainder, beginning with a look at Jess Franco in a documentary style on some sort of tour – or perhaps even taking a break in between filming. It's very hard to find a lot of information on the short film online to back that up. The music is very different to anything before it also, being much more 70s in style and more 'filmic', taking in many different musical influences. There may even be some songs from Franco's movies. I would expect that someone with more of a love of Franco's movies would probably get a great deal more out of this neo-documentary piece. It's obviously very behind the scenes and candid, although I can't quite figure out what it is behind the scenes of personally. My best guess is that it's some sort of homage to 1970's Marquis De Sade's Philosophy in the Boudoir, also know as Eugenie... The Story of Her Journey Into Perversion. With all the above said, I don't feel so qualified in rating this one. Fans of Franco will no doubt get a lot more out of this one than I could, but as always it's well shot and framed and feels like a decent homage.
RATING: 5/10
 

So, having finally succumbed to the lure of the World of Marion Dora boxset, I wanted to check out some of the director's short films. Having in the last decade built a reputation as one of the most challenging, experimental and reclusive directors around – famous (or infamous) for transgressive movies such as Melancholie Der Engel and Cannibal – I was fascinated to see what his shorter work would bring compared to his feature films. It also interested me that of the whole bundle, there wasn't a single world of dialogue. So how would each of them fare? The below are effectively 'mini-reviews' of each short in the order the feature on Disc 3 of the boxset, and we'll be looking at the full set over the next couple of weeks.

CARIBBEAN SUNRISE (3 mins)

As you would expect from Dora, this one is beautifully shot, and starts with some lovely shots of a beach during the day and towards sunset. But of course, the beauty is married with horror, and as the camera veers slightly away from the beach itself, we find a dead, brutalised body open to the elements not far from the shore. The music and sound effects take a more sinister call along with it, although the sound of distant seagulls never leaves. We close with a final stunning short of the beach. Only about three minutes, so hard to rate, but it certainly has many of the facets of Dora that his fans has grown to love.
RATING: 6/10.

DIE TOTEN VON SAN ANGELO (6 mins)
 
This piece immediately looks a little older than the previous somehow, and was shot in Mexico City. The short film splices together shots of dead and decaying bodies in some kind of crypt or vault – presumable beneath the church that holds them – alongside some crisp shots of the church as as well as life in Mexico City itself. You could take numerous things out of it – the idea that religion has been dead for a long time, that the poor beggars of Mexico City are as good as corpses, that the city is somehow born out of death – but ultimately that is down to individual interpretation. Again this one runs barely six minutes and remains more of a concept piece than anything particular coherent.
RATING: 5/10.

CADAVERICON (12 mins)

Aside from sounding like the kind of convention no-one would want to go to, this short film begins with a disturbing soundscape over what would appear to be pretty everyday scenes of a man driving a car and a clock ticking. We then have our title card – with Jesus on a cross in silhouette – before we are transported to a funeral home and a body bag being unloaded from a van and brought in. I suppose the clue was in the title here... The background noise (I can't really dub it music) continues in a discordant vein as the elderly man's body is brought in and undressed. Watching this in the grainy, rough sort of quality we see here genuinely had me wondering if this was a real piece of footage I was watching or not. There doesn't seem to be any concession to camera angles or indeed consideration for the viewer here. The body is then smartly redressed ready for a funeral before the coffin is neatly constructed, the body placed within and then loaded back into the van. We follow the scene all the way to the funeral, where we see the body laid in the casket with organ music playing over it. It's interesting in a sense of seeing what happens prior to a funeral, and the way the sound plays throughout is pretty effective, but it's more of a visual spectacle than anything with a true story thread to latch on to. A watchable enough arty piece nonetheless.
RATING: 7/10.
 
DER PUPPERSCHANDER 2 (7 mins)
 
Well, this one eschews the beautiful and is straight into the bizarre, with a man with a doll in the process of drilling a hole into a slightly delicate area with a corkscrew. Then we have a ring at the doorbell and none other than Dora favourite Carsten Frank at the door. He doesn't seem in the least bothered our protagonist is only wearing a leather jacket and pants, oddly. Anyway, our unnamed protagonist soon overpowers Frank and has him on the floor, attempting to beat him into submission. Soon enough he has his shirt, trousers and underwear off and has him laid down flat on his stomach. He then proceeds to lay his strangely hollowed-out doll on top of his victims' back and masturbate – pretty graphically – into the face of the doll. Certainly no messing about with artistry or glorious landscapes here – this thing is downright depraved and flat out pornographic, and not in a way you would want. However it still has a sort of grim fascination to it that's hard to ignore.
RATING: 7/10.

We'll be back with more Marian Dora short movies next week!
 

As regular readers will know, I'm partial to a short film, as they offer something distinctly different from the longer form. There have been a lot of standouts over the years from very good directors, and Treevenge comes to us from directos Jason Eisener, most famous for acclaimed grindhouse feature Hobo With A Shotgun as well as segments of V/H/S 2 and The ABCs of Death. That's not a bad pedigree, although of course Treevenge predates those two. I also realised just a few minutes in that this one was a distinctively Christmassy movie, but I figured we get Christmas episodes on TV all throughout the year, so why not just crack on with this one anyway? If it helps maybe you could just read it again in December...


Anyway, inappropriateness of time of year aside, Treevenge begins with a distinctly psychopathic-looking range of loggers off to cut down Christmas trees, which they seem to get a little too much pleasure from. The trees can be heard in their own chattering language asking what is going on, crying out for help or desperately trying to hang on to their tree husbands and wives, but the humans obviously can't hear them. Honestly they sound a little like Ewoks, if my recollections of Return of the Jedi are right.

So from there we follow the journey of one particular Christmas tree, which is taken to a lot and sold, then placed inside of someone'e home and decorated, all the time crying about being lost and feeling mightily confused about it all. A lot of this is shot from the tree's POV, and you can't help but feel a degree of weird sympathy for the tree as it goes through what must be a very strange ordeal for it. We see a few other trees in their homes and the festive decoration that they go through, before we come to the epic finale that the title promised us. Because after all of the sadness and dislocation, these trees have had enough...
 
The closing scenes of the movie show us plenty of creative deaths and fun special effects, and again you can't help but feel to a certain extent that this wave of violent revenge is justified. I wouldn't exactly say that it had put me in the mood for Christmas – after all, it's far too early for all that yet – but I could certainly see this becoming a bit of festive viewing for years to come, alongside the many favourite Christmas horror movies out there already.

Ultimately Treevenge is anything but high art, but is certainly entertaining and achieves the goals it sets out to admirably. It's a fine FX showcase too, and obviously a part of what launched Eisener's career going forward. There's more to come from him according to IMDB – including a mysteriously listed 'Untitled Underwater Jason Eisener film' – which you can certainly count me in for. If you've not yet had a chance to check out his feature Hobo With a Shotgun that's very much worth a look too, especially if you're a fan of grindhouse.


RATING: 7.5/10. It's hard to go really overboard on this one, as there are no real high aims other than just to make something fun and a little ridiculous. However it does those things well, and despite the short runtime there are a few laughs in here as well as some great visuals on the way through. I think it will be revisiting this one in December, as it's sure to give me a chuckle the second time around too. A good, solid, funny piece of work as a short film, and worth a strong 7.5/10.  

While the weekly visits to Film Gutter have offered me the chance to look at plenty of new material, sometimes it's nice to revisit something I've seen before, but not had a watch of for a while. Teeth was a movie that I watched at least five years ago, but had some fond recollections of. There were a few scenes that had certainly stayed with me, although all the precise ins and outs (maybe a slightly unfortunate expression in the circumstances) eluded me. And with this one announcing itself before the opening credits as 'Dimension Extreme Films', it certainly sets itself up as something that remains fairly mainstream but does push the boundaries a bit.

Teeth follows the story of teenager Dawn, a youngster who is part of a group called 'The Promise' who take a vow of chastity until marriage. She's got numerous friends in the group, although she gets plenty of ridicule from others around the school for her decision. After one of her rousing presentations, she meets newcomer Toby, and it's here that the teenage hormones really start to get going. Jess also has a fairly uneasy home life, with her mother being very ill and her douchebag older stepbrother still living at home. In fact it later emerges that he's hanging around because he thinks that Jess will ultimately give way to his charms, which is mighty weird as a motivation, but there it is.

It's not long before the mutual attraction between Jess and Toby becomes too much, and soon enough the two of them are down at the town's make-out spot. But what starts out as young love takes a darker turn when Toby attempts to rape Jess, but little does he know she's got a secret that even she didn't know – a set of teeth where one rather shouldn't be, the vagina dentata that gives the movie its title. Jess tries to figure out what on earth is going on, looking up the subject online before eventually deciding to go and see a gynaecologist. That scene ends up equally badly, with the doctor losing his fingers during his examination. Jess then realises just the power she has at her... um... fingertips, and decides to take a sharp revenge on some of the terrible individuals around her, including her awful stepbrother.

Teeth is certainly an interesting offering, and does plenty to keep you watching as you go along. With that said, I feel as though it doesn't quite know exactly what it wants to be. Some scenes are fairly serious and dramatic, while others are flat out of a B-movie, with some absurd music stings and hammy acting from those around our lead. To be fair, Jess Weixler is really good in the lead role, and has the kind of wide-eyed innocence that the role demands, and delivers the dark character arc really well, including in the movie's very final moments. But personally it falls between two stalls a bit too much, despite some good moments, including a few genuinely funny scenes. There are also a few moments that do seem genuinely out of place, particularly towards the end, where the slightly half-cooked family drama plays out. In watching this one I was put in mind of Excision, although I don't think this was quite up to that level.

RATING: 7/10. There are a number of good things about Teeth, not least the lead performance, the clever use of the chastity group as a setup for the story and some of the more humourous moments. However these are spliced in the midst of an underdeveloped family plotline, and some of the performances around the very good Jess Weixler don't quite cut the mustard. Certain elements feel pretty rushed, and maybe it's just a topic that it was always going to be hard to make any kind of coherent film about. Despite generally being well received, even winning an award at the Sundance Film Festival, this one barely made its money back and vanished without much of a trace, which is a slight shame because it's a pretty decent offering. It's a snappy 7/10 for this one.

It's time for another dip into the world of short films this week, and a look at a movie from an underground horror icon in the shape of Devanny Pinn. I immediately recognised her name as one of the voices from Jimmy ScreamerClauz's psychedelic Where The Dead Go To Die, and our recently reviewed Nude Nuns With Big Guns, but she's featured in more than 50 other horror movies over the years. This short movie remains her only directing credit – with IMDB listing only a forthcoming untitled documentary in the works – and having watched this one that feels like a bit of a shame. Like many first movies, it's not perfect, but it certainly has a lot of interesting ideas and something to say. So let's find out just how CathARTic it really is...

The story itself follows photographer Nila James, who is renowned for her work in photographing the recently dead, somehow capturing the beauty in those dark moments. The work is certainly controversial, but she's also out there wanting to push things further. Alongside this thread of story we see a women tied up in a basement and being abused by her captor, as well as a man wandering around filming all those scenes. These two elements combine when Nila meets her old professor, and he says that he's going to be involved in a truly innovative and cutting-edge art project. Nila is fascinated by the opportunity, where she find herself introduced to the female victim and her captors that we've already seen...

While CathARTic only runs for 23 mins, it actually packs in quite a few ideas and takes a lingering look at the importance of art in all its forms exploring violence and perhaps courting controversy. As the purveyor of a weekly column on extreme horror, there are a number of conversations and concepts in here that certainly appeal to me. The effects don't always look great – including one scene that feels a bit out of place – but generally don't jolt too much, most of the acting is good and there's definition ambition and scope here. For a short film this one even has a decent surprise at the end, not exactly a twist but certainly not something I was expecting.

It's not one of those short films that makes me think there'd be a whole lot more to explore – in fact a significantly longer runtime might make some of the concepts feel a bit stretched here. It's small but remains nicely formed, and while obviously made on a budget I think it does a good job with it. Although Pinn certainly seems to have switched more focus to her acting since this one was made in 2011, I wouldn't at all mind a return to the director's chair for more shorts or maybe even something more substantial in the future. I'll keep an eye out for that unspecified documentary for sure...

RATING: 7.5/10. Art that considers the idea of art is often a challenging area, and can feel a bit too on the money in some cases. While one or two scenes here might feel a bit much in that regard, it generally does a good job of considering the role of darkness and violence in art in general and looking at how far artists can and should push things in that regard. All pretty relevant territory here at Film Gutter for sure, and not one that often gets explored in this sort of depth. CathARTic is certainly an interesting experiment as a short film, and I'm happy to award it a very creditable 7.5/10.

Oh no, it's that time again...

A couple of months ago we had the 'pleasure' of acquainting ourselves with the work of Nick Philips, a busy director throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s covering everything from sex films, action films, a range of slashers and more besides. Last time around we explored both parts of Criminally Insane, a pretty lousy slasher in the first place that doubled down on the insult by making a sequel that recycled about half of the material of the original, and I'm not exaggerating – 25 minutes of the 61 were taken from the first film.

And so we come to Doctor Bloodbath, or should that be Butcher Knife, one of those random double-titled movies that seemed to prevail in the 80s. Imagine watching a movie like this once and then discovering that you're accidentally watching it again without realising? Despite the fact this was made much later than Criminally Insane, it scarcely looks any better in terms of budget and production values – in fact I would argue the only slight visual upgrades were in a less disjointed editing style (which is welcome) and some blood that actually looked rather more like blood than I might have predicted.

(Butcher Knife is the title given in the opening credits here, although IMDB only refers to it as Doctor Bloodbath, so from here I'm just going to refer to it as Butcher Knife for the sake of ease.)

Butcher Knife is the tale of Dr Thorn, a lead consultant in an abortion clinic who – unfortunately for someone in his profession – consider the very act to be evil. And he uses the information he has on these women to make his way into their houses before killing them. That's a large portion of what the movie is about really, with the killings being pretty random and fairly unspectacular – the effects again look pretty ropey, with none of the slasher-style murders looking persuasive in the least. The second thread to the story is about Thorn's uneasy relationship with his wife, with the two of them spending little time together – in fact Mrs Thorn prefers to spend her time with a poet in his tiny apartment above a chip shop. Yes, the locations are fairly random – in fact I'm reasonably sure that the house that Thorn lives in is the self-same house from Criminally Insane 2. But of course it's not long before Mrs Thorn reveals that she is pregnant – not by her husband, of course, but by the very dodgy-accented poet she has been having an affair with. And she asks her husband to give her an abortion – not a wise move given what we know about him...

All the Nick Philips trademarks that we came to know are found here, including an awful lot of the same cast – the only person conspicuous by her absence is Priscilla Alden, Ethel Janwoski herself. In fact the cast is so similar it uses the same title card for them as both Criminally Insane movies – I'm not 100% sure that the first and third victim aren't the same actress with a different haircut either. The acting is wooden, the sound quality is poor, the plot is plodding and pedestrian and there's nothing to really scare, thrill or shock at all throughout. Worse than that, this apparently also reuses footage from another Philips film, Satan's Black Wedding – which I might just have to get around to at some point...

RATING: 1/10. I don't know why or how I had been expecting any improvement here – maybe it's because I felt like there was a hint of promise in Criminally Insane, and maybe that could be delivered on. Maybe time advancing and filming techniques coming on could deliver something better. Again, the central concept could work, but it's simply not done well enough to deliver on any of the potential promise in it. Everything here is badly done, and this one doesn't feel like it even has that splash of accidental humour to lighten it at all. Not the poorest of the three so far, but still a cutting 1/10 is the final score.

​If you want to see this disaster for yourself you'll have to go hunting for it a little, but hey maybe you'll like it more than me. After all, IMDB gives it 2/5 stars so apparently someone does."

Now there's a title, eh? On one of my regular browses of the forward schedule on Horror Channel UK this one certainly leapt out aplenty, and equally had the ring of the kind of movie worthy of the Film Gutter treatment. Admittedly it's been sat on the recordings list for a while, but we got to it in the end, eh? Made on a pretty slim $85,000 dollars, this one really screamed grindhouse, which is a genre that can throw up some good movies on a real shoestring. It can also be a subgenre that is pretty hit and miss – so would this particular slice of nunsploitation be heavenly or hellish?
 
Nude Nuns with Big Guns follows the story of Sister Sarah, a nun who finds herself kidnapped and forced into a life of drug abuse and prostitution after a horrible incident on a lonely road. When she does finally make her escape and get her act together, she only has one thing on her mind – vengeance, and she's more than happy to throw away old habits – in more ways than one – in order to get it. Her 'revenge list' includes the biker gang of the local crime lynchpin Chavo, as well as many of her brothers and sisters of the cloth implicit in her nightmarish ordeal.
 
The premise of this one sounds like it should be plenty entertaining, with lots of of opportunity to play with the idea or religion in what could have been a fun way, as well as having plenty of action to go along with it. Unfortunately this movie never really delivers on the promise of a cracking title, and you can't help but wonder whether the moniker for this one actually came before the plot, characterisation or anything else you would typically expect in a film. I can't claim to be a true grindhouse expert, or even a massive fan of the subgenre, but this one didn't match up to movies in the patch I had heartily enjoyed such as Hobo With a Shotgun and Pervert!. The storyline simply didn't feel organic, and all the way there were too many laboured attempts to add style and make an effort to leap out from the crowd. With the aforementioned movies the plots were nothing revelatory, but they were allowed to stand on their two feet and generally were done really well, as well as having a strong element of fun. Nude Nuns just feels far too slim, and tries too hard to make up for many of its shortcomings with vapid visual and sound touches that are, to quote The Bard, 'all sound and fury, signifying nothing'.
 
Who said you can't quote Shakespeare when exploring extreme horror? Ooh, must do Tromeo and Juliet at some point...
 
Anyway, this was a film that I was looking forward to that just seemed to fall flat for me. It has all the shape of a good piece of grindhouse, but not enough of the substance – and a few titillating lesbian scenes are simply not enough to fix that.
 
RATING: 2.5/10. A fun title is about the best thing going for this movie, as it's rather messy from the plot perspective, has very few memorable characters and tries to ladle on flashy touches that are just basically throwing glitter on things in a way that doesn't disguise just how bland it is underneath. There's just a sense of the whole thing reaching all the way, and in the end it's not that big, funny or clever. Unless you're an absolutely obsessive viewer of grindhouse – as in you simply have to see everything – then I would say you could safely sit this one out. With a total 2.5/10, it's worth 'nun' of your time...

Only last week I was saying it's pretty rare that Film Gutter actually makes a stop on home shores – whilst there seems to be a welter of extreme horror made around the world, and we've had the opportunity to review movies from locations as far spread as Georgia, Brazil, Argentina, Turkey and many more besides, only a handful of our reviews have come from within the UK. So to take a look at two British short films in a row is is a small chance to redress that balance – it's one I had heard of previously, and it certainly doesn't take a mindreader to tell you what the movie is about given the title, which is almost uncomfortably on point. But would this be worthwhile way to spend 11 minutes?

Ultimately I would have to say yes and no. The story itself is extremely slim (maybe not surprisingly) and follows an unnamed couple, beginning with a voiceover from our female lead saying that she asked her partner to take his skin off for her – which he did. We never see that particular act, but we do see plenty of her skinless partner and the initial joy that she feels being able to see him so much more clearly and sharply without that intervening layer of flesh. Initially there's a great thrill in that for her, but it's fair to say that the appeal wears off over time and over the course of this short film – all the cleaning up the patches of blood from around the house, the endless washing of the sheets and then the naturally uneasy and uncertain reactions from their friends. The male lead leaves his 'skin suit' hanging up in the wardrobe and looks at it longingly a number of times – things are starting to go wrong for him at work, again not surprisingly, as clients are put off by his unusual appearance. Our finale isn't much of a twist but is delivered pretty sharply, almost in moments before we cut to our credits.

It's an interesting enough idea, and I like the fact that it doesn't gloss over many of the practical elements of his life choice and equally goes a little into the stresses and strains it takes on both of their lives and the relationship between them. It was a little disappointing that we only heard of his flensing himself in the opening credits, and didn't really see anything of the event that leads into the story – it feels a lot like we've missed some key scenes. In fact, it's less the fact of him taking his flesh off but what leads to it – where does a relationship have to get to for someone to be willing to do something so extreme? It's a nice special effects showcase for sure, and looks good in that respect, but it doesn't really have much by way of a storyline. Fundamentally it's an interesting concept without any real interesting developments or surprises. Maybe with a longer runtime they could have done more with this one – a sort of grotesque Nekromantik-style dark romance might have bloomed out of this set-up. But as it is there's a sense of ultimately being pretty unsatisfied with something that might have been a very worthwhile experimental piece.

RATING: 5.5/10. Sometimes a short film feels complete or near-complete in its form, and other times it can feel like an extended trailer for something that may or may not happen in the future. Unfortunately this falls into the latter, with a sense of incompleteness and the chance for this to be much more, given the running time. There are some nice moments throughout, but not enough to really grab you and leave a lasting impression. As such, it's a fair 5.5/10 from me.

It's a rare stop on our worldwide your of extreme cinema to my home country – I've yet to establish a strong feeling of a big UK extreme horror scene right now, but presumably it is out there and maybe it's something that's growing and we may come to see a bit more of. Admittedly today's piece is only a short one, and is more of a documentary than anything, but I was certainly interested to check it out nonetheless. It did also beg the question of why the title is in another language if it's an English movie, but let's not get too distracted by that. Today's offering for your delectation is Cibo Di Violenza.
 
The film itself concerns the use of dead baby foetuses being sold as a delicacy to sometimes suspecting and sometimes unsuspecting people, as well as them being used in some rather more common products that you may recognise (although I won't mention those brand names here). The opening is pretty confronting as we see some fairly graphic and bloody medical-style footage, before we slip into a narration by blogger Mike Lima. His is the voice we'll hear most throughout, and his work is pretty solid. There's a look at some of the famous cases of cannibalism in the world – including controversial Chinese artist Zhu Yu, whose man-eating antics proved to be a fake – as well as the rumours of restaurants purchasing foetuses to sell in their restaurants, before a glimpse into the world of aborted foetuses being imported into the UK for upwards of £3000 and a man apparently cooking one up to eat himself. ('Look, it's gone white like chicken.') We close with some talk of the flesh of the foetuses being used in far more mainstream products before we check out with the credits, which again include some pretty unpleasant and unremitting images.
 
It's a slightly hard one to rate really, as it is obviously exploring a subject that is pretty taboo and that most folks out there are going to find – if you'll excuse the turn of phrase – pretty unsavoury. It's described as a 'shockumentary', which to me as a term casts a touch of doubt on how much of this is genuine and how much of this might be made up, or if scenes have been shot that aren't the real thing. It's not badly put together, although some of the shots and choices of images are clearly there just to make it all more extreme and hard to watch. The narration over the top is decent, although how credible some of those reports really are is questionable – the use of footage from Infowars certainly isn't what I'd call dependable news. Some of the links between things are also a bit tenuous for me. If you watch it and believe everything that you see in this movie, then the odds are you will be pretty appalled, but I just found it hard not to take a pinch of salt with what was being said. Overall it's decent but just tries a little too hard to be confrontational rather than just giving the facts, which – if taken at face value – are shocking enough without the need for any embellishment or elaboration.
 
RATING: 5/10: Odd titling aside, Cibo Di Violenza is OK. The visuals are generally good – although they do obviously reach for shock value in places – and the narrative itself is interesting enough. It may all be true, it may not – I suppose it's out to you to watch for yourself and take out of it what you will. Personally some of the content felt a bit farfetched and as such lost a bit of its sinister tone. It's also extremely short – although officially running at 12 minutes, without the closing and opening credits you probably have eight at tops. A decent effort but nothing unmissable – 5/10 seems about fair.

This was another one of those movies I've been meaning to get to for a while that seems to have something of a cult following – I've certainly heard it talked of pretty fondly in a few places. However having endured 93 minutes of this one, I'm a little lost as to what it is people seem to have liked about it. Worst of all, I was only about ten minutes in before it was self-evident this was going to be absolutely awful. If I weren't reviewing it, I probably would have switched it off, but the lot of any reviewer is to plough regardless of their own enjoyment or critical opinion of the movie. So here is my take on Charlie's Farm.
 
You may have noticed I wasn't that keen on this one...
 
Charlie's Farm takes place in Australia and begins with a group of four 'characters' – I use the term loosely – deciding to go on a break somewhere. One of the guys is a fan of haunted houses, so they decide to go to the aforementioned Charlie's Farm to check it out – without telling the two girls they are taking, of course. When they get nearer they have to ask for directions, and the locals at the nearby watering hole don't like the talk of Charlie's Farm at all. But eventually they find it and decide to stay there a night or two, despite it being creepy as hell and there fundamentally being nothing to do there. Throw in the fact that apparently stacks of backpackers have gone missing there and the place has a deeply troubled history and anyone who has done Horror 101 will know there's trouble ahead.
 
And 'Horror 101' seems basically to be the way to describe this. Everything about this movie is basic and simplistic. The pace is horribly lumbering and slow – it is literally an hour before we even get our first proper glimpse of Charlie, whose backstory is clumsily foisted in through three flashbacks. And it's not sad or tragic – his mother and father were basically cannibals, so any sympathy is distinctly lacking, if that was ever the idea. Then again, shock value seems to mostly be the order of the day. And despite the fact the action doesn't begin for an hour, we don't get to know anything about our 'characters' at all – I'm hard pressed to tell you what they even did in the first two-thirds of the movie. I literally watched this movie a few hours ago and that first 60 minutes is already mostly vanished from my memory.
 
To be honest, it's hard to say that the last half an hour is really any better. Sure, it's more gruesome and violent, if that's your thing, but it's been done a lot better in many other places. It's impossible to care as the paper-thin characters are chopped up one by one by the hulking figure of Charlie, because it's hard to tell what they were even doing there in the first place. There's nobody likeable enough for each kill to have any impact on you. These four – six if you include the two later arrivals – are just meat for the grinder. I was at least expecting some imaginative kills or some impressive visuals, but even those were missing – the final murder is particular uninspiring from an FX point of view.
 
I can only figure this has a cult following as a 'bad movie', but there are good bad movies and there are bad bad movies. I'm not a huge lover of flat-out trash, but there are some B-movies I have a liking for, things like Teeth, Pervert and Basket Case. But those at least have some energy and some imagination to them. This is lazy, derivative, badly-acted and boring, every horror cliché rolled into one big ball and spat out without any effort to set itself apart.
 
RATING: 0/10. I don't like to come in hard on movies – in fact I want everything I watch for Film Gutter to be good, and in many cases they are. Sometimes they are genuinely excellent. But occasionally – just occasionally – they are terrible, and that's where Charlie's Farm falls. An over-familiar plotline, ham acting, characters I couldn't tell you the first thing about, a draggingly slow pace and a tedious and entirely expected ending all combine to make this one of the worst movies I've reviewed here. You should take the advice of the patrons of the local pub and avoid Charlie's Farm like the plague.