Tuesday, February 07, 2006

The Revolting Dead – 2003

Revolting is right. Not in the gross sense, because there’s no gore to speak of. No in the rising up against oppression sense, although anyone who put money into this flick should rise up and smite the producers. No, what is is revolting is that money was WASTED on this flick. How bad is it? Well, I didn’t laugh, and although there were plenty of breasts displayed, I’m still only giving it a one. This is sad, sad, sad. Nothing here to recommend it. Acting ability, props, special affects, script, direction, all completely missing. Very sad indeed.

I am working on collecting all Zombie movies ever made, so I had to have this one. But it adds nothing new to the genre. No splatter affects, no characters that you care about, nothing. If I wasn’t a completist, this would be the first movie I’d be taking to Movie Trading Company to trade for something decent.

You know, you can usually find SOMETHING good in it to salvage a flick. There are no features on this disc except chapter breaks, so the disc author sure didn’t help the cause. And I’d really hate to say that the 15 minutes of nudity is the only thing going for this flick. I mean, its not from Seduction Cinema, for goodness sake. But darned if I can think of anything else positive to say. A sad day, I’ll admit.

One beer out of five, and that’s WITH nudity. So use your imagination, and stay away.

And now, to prove that there are no depths that I will not sink, I am starting to watch Blue Underground’s Box Set Shockumentaries, Vol. 2, which consists of three discs. The first I watched tonigh.

Africa Addio – 1966

Okay, you know going in that this is an exploitation “documentary”, but its still pretty shocking. Oh course, that’s the point of this series, but still… This one is about the end of colonialism and the “freeing” of Africa. And the riots and social upheaval that accompanied that. This includes a section on Apartide, which I remember from my youth.

I don’t know how much of this is actually true. I suspect more than one would like. I’d love for a History teacher to review this movie sometime and tell me how much of this is fantasy, and how much is factual. Exploitation gets its “punch” by mixing in a healthy dose of truth. That’s why I suspect that much of this stuff about the slaughter of arabs and nuns is true. Or it could all be bullshit. I really don’t know.

The soundtrack is really weird, as it doesn’t really match the mood of the film. I guess that this is a hallmark of these Italian exploitation “documentaries” of the 60’s. There were no special features on this disc, but the movie was over two hours, so in some ways that’s just as well.

Two beers out of five, all for the “shock” value of supposed slaughter.