The Human Centipede

Not impressed: a real centipede yesterday

Oh dear. Who gave this mess the green light? It always happens with horror films though, so I shouldn't be surprised. Every so often a writer/director comes along and attempts to be as outrageous as possible, but in this eagerness to provoke a reaction they forget that supposedly shocking ideas often look ridiculous when they are 'assembled' on the silver screen. The Human Centipede is a fine example of this. Whats the matter Mr Tom Six? Couldn't come up with anything better? He claims it was inspired by a drunken idea and that I can well believe. Some ideas sound grand when floating on whisky clouds but alas it is time to sober up.
This movie is no David Cronenberg masterpiece. Stitching people together to create a pet centipede? Lame. An dea a group of stoned students might cobble together after a few weak spliffs. Sure its a nod in the direction of Nazi surgeons but its not shocking in the least. In fact I watched it as total comedy, more often than not wondering how I could get my crazy ideas funded for film. Did he drug them like Dr Heiter does his victims? And who were these 'actors'? Id never heard of any of them. Couldn't hire anyone decent huh?
After the success of movies like Saw and Hostel, directors are tearing down boundaries of decency in order to get the next gory hit but sooner or later you will hit a wall. Nothing seems as shocking anymore and this is what I feel happened with the Human Centipede; it thinks it has a mind blowing, new idea to cause revulsion and it probably would have done 20 years ago but today? No.
And yet weirdly, even after saying all of this I would still recommend people give it a spin. It does have a truly sinister vibe throughout and even though I personally didn't find the idea behind "The Human Centipede" shocking, its definitely creepy and pokes at the nerves of revulsion. Mainly because the very idea of a surgeon using his skills to 'sculpt' abominations reminds us like ive said of the Nazi horrors of WW2 and shakes our trust in the image of the kindly doctor (this is a profession meant to fix human bodies, not mutilate them.)
I just feel it missed the chance to be a classic horror due to being made at a time when audiences have mostly been desensitized owing to the amount of gore hitting the silver screen. Don't forget, this is an age where even zombies have their own television series (The Walking Dead) which is quite the leap from the Dallas and A Teams that I grew up with.
A mixed bag then for me, rather like the 'centipede' itself.

Gutterbox rating

Killjoy 2

Killjoy? He really is

So here we have Killjoy 2: Deliverance from Evil (2002), another movie (directed by Tammi Sutton) that I found for £1 in a discount store. Now as regualr readers of the Gutterbox will know, I have a 'Quid Club' which is just what it says on the tin: films I have spotted in shops that have only cost £1. But price alone doesn't automatically qualify movies for the 'Quid Club'. Oh no, they have to be entertaining too. They don't have to be necessarily good, these titles are allowed to be bad just as long as they are worth watching at least twice. You know, flicks so bad they're good type.
So does Killjoy 2 make the cut? Only if you can justify spending £1 just to see the funniest looking horror baddie this side of a LSD trip in a Nickolodeon nightnmare. Oh Killjoy! For a demon summoned up by black magic, this guy looks about as menacing as Dora the Explorer. Sporting a ludicrous wig, a red nose that looks more like a cold sore and daft oversized shoes (I know its a clown but still), if Killjoy were to suddenly appear before me on a walk home from the pub, im afraid Id be emptying my bladder on the spot. And it would have nothing to do with the beer. Just PMSL. Michael Myers he is NOT. He's more like Michael Moore but less threatening.
The movie opens with two cops (one the token female, the other the token badass) taking a group of gangbangers to a run down building so that they can renovate it as part of their community service. Of course this being a cheap horror flick, they encounter engine trouble on a desolate highway out in the sticks and end up stranded in the woods. So the guys leave the women in the van (naturally) and head off to find help.


Scary? Or plain rubbish? You decide.

Do you think they find it? Not on yer popcorn! Instead they find a static carvan but one thug gets plugged by the crazed woman owner who in turn gets a shot of lead to the head from Mr Badass Cop. To protect and serve! Cop wanders off looking for a phone, while the two healthy criminals carry their bleeding comrade back to the women in the van. You would think with all that training the female police officer would now take charge but instead what does she do? She hands her gun over to one of the hoodlums and allows him to take control. Good thinking lady! He leads the gang to yet another deserted place and they are welcomed inside by a voodoo witch with large breasts. It is here the legend of Killjoy is revealed but of course its met with disbelieving snorts. That is until the psychotic clown appears before them at individual stages and rehabilitates the young offenders. Permanantly. The first murder is particularly bizarre/funny as Killjoy lobs his dentures at a woman hiding in an outside toilet and she proceeds to get bitten to death (although its never shown in grisly detail). Another slashes his face to ribbons under the demons dastardly spell but in the end clowny is defeated by the person who had seemed the weakest during the entire movie, when she she melts his funny face with what looks like plain water. Oh and Mr Badass Cop returns shortly before the credits roll with a big shotgun as if to prove his bad assery. Why we never really discover only that he's useless with shotguns.
Killjoy 2 suffers from a few things but what hurts it most is the fact that A) the acting is God awful, and B) it feels like its been stitched together like its a series of sketches filmed by students after a night on the beer. And it oozes cheap. If the makers spent more than $100 making this they were fools to themselves. The 'star' of the show, Killjoy is a laughable character with no menace whatsoever and what makes it more pathetic is whoever played him probably genuinely felt he was creating a cinematic monster as evil as Jason Voorhees. Laughs Out Loud. Terrible film and so the Gutterbox Quid Club will have to wait for another cool member to join its gang. By the way I have never seen Killjoy 1 so there is mercy.


Gutterbox rating

Piranha

You never know when the nibbles may strike

Jaws only smaller, Piranha (1978) is a B movie that was directed by Joe Dante and like you have probably guessed, is about pesky carnivorous fish. (This film did for piranha what big J did for great whites). It wasn't the first horror I ever saw but its certainly one of the first five. And you know what? I like it! It has nice gory touches and has that 'small town Americana charm' like other old movies ive mentioned elsewhere on the Gutterbox. Its been remade twice, one in 1995 and more recently in 2010 in 3D and I must check them out sometime, though I highly doubt they are as good as the original.** Anyway, back to 1978.
Piranha starts with two teenagers skinny dipping in a deserted (they think) swimming pool, little knowing that the previous inhabitants of the pool were fish that love flesh. And the Army had been messing around with the piranha (they can't leave anything alone in B movies) with Operation Razortooth, making this fish even more ravenous. Uh oh. Notch up two dead teens and an insurance investigator named Maggie on the case to find out how they perished. (Bit of advice Mags, teens always die in horror films). She teams up with boozer Grogan and they end up draining the pool, letting loose hundreds of hungry piranha into the rivers. Oops! Enter a yelling Doctor Hoak who informs them of the mega boob they've just made. (The doc was in charge of the military operation).


He's feeling peckish

So off they go, saving children in summer camp and bugging the military to get the river system closed down which seems only fair as its their fault in the first place. A few scenes stand out for me: the part where Grogan drags his fishing chum from the rivers edge and we see his legs chewed down to the bone and the raft ride where pirahna attack and nibble on the ropes holding it together. Minor scenes in the great scheme of film granted but they stuck in my head all the same.
Piranha ends with a news repoter telling her viewers that theres nothing to fear because the waters have been cleared of hungry fish with sharp teeth but as she utters the words, we hear the ominous sound of the finny fiends making their way to the ocean. Presumably to keep Jaws company.

Check out the original trailer below


You can probably pick this movie up for pennies these days and Gutterbox recommends you do because while not being a classic in the usual sense of the word, it is a little gem to chill out with a few drinks. Also look out for the little creature dude at the beginning who peeps out from behind a few jars on a shelf in the army compound. I want one of those for a pet! Although he/she looks more like something from Star Wars than a horror flick.
Bit of trivia: Dr Hoak is played by Kevin McCarthy who appeared in over 200 films/television but will be remembered best for 1956's Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Gutterbox rating


** I watched Pirahna 3D last night and can confirm that it is garbage. Yes it has an abundance of near naked hotties and gyrating asses (by the way Kelly Brook is not as pretty in motion as she is in photographs) but even that cannot save this turgid mess of a film. Flush immediately down toilet.


Jawsome? No it really isn't.

Killer Klowns From Outer Space

In space nobody can eat ice cream

Killer Klowns From Outer Space is one of my favourite comedy horror movies of all time so I make no apology for slobbering praise all over it like a teenage lad and his first snog. I bloody well love this film, down to its oversized clown shoes. So there.
It was made in 1988 by the Chiodo brothers and has alien posing as clowns (complete with cool spaceship disguised as a circus tent) landing on earth to bring us their unique form of mayhem. Like stuffing folk into giant candyfloss cocoons, jabbing a straw in and drinking their blood. Eek!
Killer Klowns possesses a certain dark 'charm', also for a boy who wasn't a big clown fan in the first place, it just seemed to make it official ~ clowns are evil. Run from them!
Anyway after they arrive in a small town, the fun begins. Grisly fun including a biker getting his head punched clean off his shoulders by a 'baby' clown and another one turning his shadow puppet into a T-Rex, and having it eat a group of people waiting for a bus. I heart that scene.
They then kidnap (clown~nap?) the gorgeous Suzanne Snyder (my 80's babe crush) and whisk her off to the circus ship and encase her in a giant bubble. Poor Suzy!


My Klown figurine

Its then down to her boyfriend and her policeman ex (awkward) plus two ice cream sellers to track her down and save the world from clowny madness by getting into the circus tent space ship and battling a bad assed giant clown. Its not too difficult though because what with the smaller clowns thinking the ice cream van to be some kind of clown deity (think Popemobile), and one bop on daddy clowns red conk sending him into a thousand pieces and its job done.

Gutterbox rating

Class of Nuke 'Em High

Atomic high!

This was a find at a car boot (flea market) on sunday and another title for my ever growing 'Quid Club' (dvds for £1). Im considering it as a lucky find too because ive been on the look out for Class of Nuke 'Em High for a while now and its proved pretty elusive. (I suppose I could have found it easily online but thats not as fun as finding the dvd in the 'wild').
I rented this movie a bunch of times in the late 80's and im happy to report, it is still a blast all these years later.
Class of Nuke 'Em High was made in 1986 by cult B-movie team Troma Entertainment, and directed by Richard W. Haines and Lloyd Kaufman. Its a mix of horror and dark comedy, if you think Mad Max meets Return of the Living Dead then you wouldn't be far out.
The action revolves around the Tromaville High School which is within spitting distance of a nuclear power plant. Students and nuclear waste. What could possibly go wrong? Well quite a bit actually, especially if you figure in the schools motorcycle gang The Cretins. (A typical member is the lady in the pic below, complete with Hitler tash). The gang (who were once known as the 'Honour Society') start selling marijuana to fellow students, stuff that has been grown in radioactive goo. Lovely.
Obviously things begin to go downhill pretty darned quickly as pupils turn all kinds of mutant after smoking the toxic weed, and chaos reigns in Tromaville. The Cretins take over the school, hellbent on destryoing it, one poor lad sees his erection grow bigger than a hay bale. Oh and there is a monster covered in lethal spikes in the basement.
You know how its going end; old spikey kills the gang, then good student (himself a Hulklike mutie) treats the creature to a well aimed laser beam to the chops. Ends with the school in bits and the baddies dead. But in keeping with tradition to these type of movies, just before the credits roll a baby gunk monster pokes its head from the ruins as if to announce the sequel.


She shops with Avon

I like Class of Nuke 'Em High. Its fun and a perfect example of the bubblegum, switch-yer-brain-off movie that seemed to flood the video shops in the 1980's. Its all here from gratitious boob shots to horny students. I like The Cretins too, especially Gonzo with his oversized nose peircings and giant bone. Punk rock caveman! Oddly enough I never imagined the gang to be all that dangerous, just purely mad. Perfect mental hospital material.
If you've not seen Nuke 'Em, ignore the bad online reviews and try to get hold of a copy. You might be suprised at how much you enjoy it because its certainly not the steaming pile of garbage some would have you believe. There are dreadful creature feature B-movies out there but this isn't one of them.
Its worth a look if only to hear the worst rendition of the 'Star Spangled Banner'EVER. Shocking.

Gutterbox Rating