EXPLOITATION GIF OF THE WEEK - An unfortunate actress vomits live centipedes (Centipede Horror, 1982)

EXPLOITATION GIF OF THE WEEK - SuperLorna and her mighty knockers answer the phone (Supervixens, 1975)

HARD TO DIE (Jim Wynorski, 1990)

I'm just going to dive directly into the synopsis of Jim Wynorski's ridiculous Hard to Die as I think it tells us all we need to know - during a night of inventory in an LA skyscraper, five busty women dressed in lingerie must battle the spirit of a serial killer. Luckily for them, this building also houses a gun company and its supply of assault weapons. It's automated firearm toting booby beauties in underwear VS a body-jumping serial killer!

Wynorski is no stranger to blood and boobs, giving us the amazing Chopping Mall and the not-so-amazing-but-kind-of-alright-but-still-a-bit-flaps Sorority House Massacre II. A peek at his filmography shows some dignified titles: House on Hooter Hill, Busty Cops and Scared Topless - all dramatic powerhouses.

At the beginning of the film we are introduced to our five heroines. As they are given the depth and nuance of a phone box card advertising a call girl, I like to think of them as a tit focused version of the Spice Girls - each girl has an easily identifiable characteristic in place of an actual personality. We have Brenda - Yorkshire Tits, Jackie - Ginger Tits, Diana - Shifty Tits, Tess - Desperate Tits and Shawna - Tits Tits. As the women arrive for a hard night's stock taking (helpfully dressed as 1980s hookers) they bump into glaring imbecile Orville Ketchum. We are then subjected to the tale of his mysterious link to a massacre which took place in a local sorority house years earlier. This is basically just an excuse to stretch out an already thin running time with clips from The Slumber Party Massacre. Could Orville, the winking blinking maniac, be a threat to our brave semi-nude stock takers?

Just act natural.

Since the girls are such nosy parkers, they can't resist opening a delivery meant for an unconvincing professor, but delivered to the office of ACME Lingerie (imaginative branding) by mistake. Surprisingly, this wrong delivery contains the spirit of a serial killer, which wastes no time in rocketing around the room like a deflated ballon, blowing the films special meagre effects budget in one foul gasp. Our ladies stupidly shrug this off, and get down to the hard task of pointlessly moving boxes around. However, they get oh so dusty! Oh no! A wayward cigarette accidentally sets off the sprinklers and before we know it, mud covers their erotic bodies! Oh well, luckily there is a shower in the boss's office, and these girls waste no time in jumping in for a soapy rub-a-dub. Each girl has a shower in turn, and we as the audience are subjected / treated to each session. The best thing about this is the overuse of squeaky sound effects as the girls lather up their knockers. Each nipple cheeps and rasps as they get down to work, the girls having an unusually erotic shower session - almost as if they were told to perform.    

Phweeeeeeeeehhhhhh pfffff pffff pttttttrump!

Peppered between each display of blatant nudity, are some dull murders. One girl is killed with a hook, another girl is killed with presumably the same hook, a poor cow just coming to deliver Chinese food is set aflame and takes a pratfall down an elevator shaft. I was slightly obsessed with the delivery girl, as her wardrobe choices can only be construed as a cry for help. Clad in a muumuu, a bobble hat, and several layers of extra atrocities below this, she stumbles around in the dark until she is finally put out of her misery.

The film bumbles on, each girl being murdered until Yorkshire Tits decides to fight back with the stockpile of weapons stored in the offices of a gun company. This all leads to a shoot-out finale, as our lingerie clad heroines let rip with assault rifles - the money shot of the film.

Stock taking in action.

Without revealing any spoilers, there is a character in this film who seems to be invincible for absolutely no reason at all. They are stabbed, strangled, shot relentlessly and fall from the top of the building, only to appear five minutes later. If they were possessed by the killer then this would (kind of) make sense, but they are just a human person-creature. Is this a meta comment on the ridiculousness of slasher films? If you are feeling generous then yes, but probably not.

Also appearing in the film are two police officers who seem to serve no purpose whatsoever. They merely parrot the plot points already explained by our busty heroines. I can't even remember their names, but I think Detective Padding and Detective Time Extension seem about right. They even appear to bust a porno shoot in a scene which only has the most fanny hair thin tenuous link to the main plot. At least this scene gives us a cameo from Kelli Maroney - star of Chopping Mall and Night of the Comet, cast here in the meaty role of Porno Wife.

Overall, I can't say I would recommend Hard to Die. The script is dull, the murders are pedestrian, the acting is catatonic and the plot is glacial. There are some moments of hilarity, however. I particularly liked Brenda's wavering accent which swings wildly between Coronation Street and Beverly Hills 90210. The shamelessness of it also amused me, the girls running around in lingerie and high heels while blasting guns. High concept cinema indeed! 

Eat lead, you muddy funster!

For some reason, this film has become quite valuable due to its apparent rarity, but there is a shoddy full version on YouTube if you so desire. If you ever wanted to simulate watching a crappy action / horror film as a short-sighted person with a pair of tights over your eyes, then be my guest.

 

Muumuu abuse

 BEST SCENE: The confrontation on the roof top. Our hero Brenda wields a                  dustbin lid with terrifying accuracy.
   BEST EXTRA: Not really an extra, but the Chinese delivery girl deserves another  mention for her one-woman fashion holocaust.

   BEST DIALOGUE: "I just want to get my clothes on, and get the hell out of here!"

   DOUBLE BILL MATERIAL: Hide and Go Shriek (1988), Intruder (1989)

It's for the sake of all mankind.

EXPLOITATION GIF OF THE WEEK - Fat nurse runs through a glass door for no reason whatsoever (The Incredible Melting Man, 1977)

LADY TERMINATOR (H. TJUT DJALIL, 1989)

Although a great number of exploitation films definitely follow the marketing rule of "sell the sizzle, not the steak", Indonesian exploitation films sell the sizzle, the steak, and a a naked gaggle of zombie lesbian nuns in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. These are films which more than deliver on their outrageous concepts, lathering the screen in shoddy gore, black magic, hundreds of pairs of tits and unashamed rip-offs of Hollywood's finest. They really are a unique beast. In recent years Italian exploitation films have been re-evaluated by cinematic scholars. They stroke their chins with mouths full of organic quinoa while watching a shark fighting a zombie in Fulci's Zombie Flesh Eaters, before finally putting the official giant ART stamp on it. Somehow, even the trashiest Italian gore-fest has become acceptable. Given the content of Lady Terminator, I think it will be a while before we see the same for Indonesian exploitation films. 

Director H. Tjut Djalil is responsible for a number of notorious films from the country, including Dangerous Seductress and the frankly astonishing Mystics in Bali. This is the film that tells the tale of a black majicked disembodied head, complete with hanging lungs, heart and entrails, which flies around and eats babies from the wombs of pregnant women. I can't wait to see Platinum Dunes try and remake this nonsense. 

Bloody NHS cuts.

As you probably worked out from the title, Lady Terminator is a completely shameless rip-off of James Cameron's The Terminator. Whereas Cameron's masterpiece focuses on a naked male robot from the future, Djalil's trashterpiece focuses on a naked female anthropologist from the 80s. This is no normal anthropologist however, this permed and perfumed high-waisted bikini clad strumpet just happens to be possessed by a sea-snake queen from the past. The queen is miffed that one of her lovers stole the snake from her vagina and turned it into a magical dagger. Yes, really. She calls him a bastard and swears to take revenge on his great-granddaughter. 100 years later, our nosy anthropologist Tania goes snooping around the location of the legend until she ends up with a mystical snake wriggling up her hoo-ha. She seems to be unusually proud of her profession, even uttering "I'm not a lady, I'm an anthropologist" and "I'm an anthropoligist, huh!", just so we are bloody clear. Soon she emerges naked from the sea, looking to hunt down her very own Indonesian Sarah Connor. Stealing the leather jacket from a group of inane randy punks who want to have a bit of sexual sex with her, "Go on! You're not going to catch AIDS!" they lie, our lady terminator heads off into the night. From here on in, the film pretty much follows the story beats of Cameron's film but with an added layer of insanity. This terminator can castrate men with her fanny, shoot lazers from her eyes and has magical electric tits.

I don't know much about art, but I know what I like.

Our Sarah Connor for the tale, Erica, is an up and coming pop star, and a whiny ungrateful cow. Following her rescue by white bread police cock, Max (Kyle Reese), Erica whines about her high heels and is told to shut up about 5000 times. I would have left her for the lady terminator to terminate with her lady parts. She shows almost no sorrow for her 'best' friend who is terminated in shabby mall toilet for merely having a cheap knock-off necklace (probably from Argos). Personally, I think she should have faced the firing squad for daring to mingle with the public with such horrendous eyebrows.

Guilty of crimes against facial grooming.

After an obvious Tech-Noir disco death scene, the police station siege is recreated in its entirety, the terminator running amok and killing an insane amount of people. Although some people might balk at how much of a shameless rip-off the film is, nobody seems to give a shit when Tarantino takes the names of other films wholesale or Nicholas Winding-Refn takes the scores of mondo films and re-appropriates them. To me, it is just snobbery. Shitty cheap films don't seem to have the right to steal but 'respected' directors can pretty much trample all over the legacy of others' film careers no problem. 

Now that's a gun-shootin' mug!

The film comes to a head in a huge shoot out at an abandoned airport. Our Yankee Doodle cop calls in his buddies to assist in the killing of our sexy leather clad killing machine. This involves the use of a missile firing helicopter, an armoured vehicle, and a seemingly endless supply of guns. Eventually the terminator is blown-up and her true form is revealed. Will she have a sleek metal skeleton under her erotic frame? Nope! She ends up looking like an Italian zombie, juddering around the joint like an electric tampon and flapping menacingly towards our 'heroes'.

Beat it.

Lady Terminator is one hell of a good time. An endless string of action, gore, cheapo synth, boobs and amazingly bad dialogue. It is a gateway Indonesian Exploitation film, just a taster of the twisted delights to be found in the genre. I love it from the bottom of my little black heart and I thoroughly urge any fans of outrageous celluloid filth to check it out. 

Side eye of death.

Where the fuck am I going?

   BEST SCENE: Police station massacre. The amount of blood squibs used on the            hapless extras must have actually hurt.

   BEST EXTRA: Confused permaholic doctor.

  BEST DIALOGUE: "It says here all three of these guys died with their cocks bitten          off."

DOUBLE BILL MATERIAL: Virgins from Hell (1987), Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters (1982)

Suspiria the TV Series?

So it appears there is to be a TV Show loosely based on Dario Argento's nightmarish Technicolor masterpiece Suspiria.

http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/django-and-suspiria-set-to-be-adapted-into-high-end-international-tv-series-1201468262/

Although more based on the works of Thomas De Quincey, it seems pretty obvious that the TV series will be heavily influenced by the film, especially given the involvement of Argento himself.  This could be a striking return to form for the horror master or it could be a pile of imploded bumholes. I have a feeling that it is more likely to be the latter.....