Flesh of the Unforgiven (2024)

This is one that producer Joe Williamson sent me a screener for a few months back, and I'm finally making it happen now--it was another one of those where, by the time I got to it, it was already available on Tubi, but better late than never, right? And at least that means now you can screen this on Tubi too.

Flesh of the Unforgiven stars Debbie Rochon and Joe Hollow (who also wrote and directed) as Sienna and Jack, an estranged couple trying to make it work after Sienna's indiscretions. Jack's also a writer dealing with writer's block, while Sienna is dealing with scary nightmares. When Jack gets a VHS in the mail with a piece of paper with the word "inspiration" written on it, he thinks it's from his publisher, who's on him for a new treatment. Luckily he's got a VHS player, and once he gets it all hooked up, he finds the video is about all kinds of creepy, gory stuff, including a guy with a disco ball mask keeping his own estranged girlfriend chained to her bed, where he's abusing her. At the same time, we have a woman named Vivienne (August Kyss) who's dealing with her own stuff and decides to end her own life. When she meets Jack for a fling at a local bar, Jack has a dream about her and his wife and the disco ball guy. What could it all mean?

This is probably not my kind of movie, but I think if it were, where it would lose me is that I wasn't sure whose story this was supposed to be focused on, Sienna's or Jack's, and then if it is one of theirs, what do I do with Vivienne's? Was it a situation maybe where this was always supposed to be Jack's story, but then Hollow was able to get Rochon attached and made her role bigger? In that case, I think that's a good move, because she's a stronger screen presence, and anytime a filmmaker is working with a budget, to have someone like Rochon onboard always helps, this film included. There were some other interesting elements that worked in some respects, like Adriana Uchishiba's Livinia character, who brought a twisted Harley Quinn vibe on the one hand that really worked, but her wicked laugh sounded like the laugh that opens The Surfaris' "Wipe Out," so every time I heard it, I was waiting for that iconic surf guitar to come in after it. The other big area I had trouble with was Debbie's nightmares, because she seemed like she didn't know where they were coming from, but she should've known the whole time, unless I missed something on that. But, again, with those nightmares, they were tense and powerful. In one of them her character is getting strangled, and the way she wakes up struggling to breathe was so realistic I found myself having trouble breathing too. And I think that's where I ultimately fall, between Rochon's performance, plus some of the other performances, combined with the other tense, scary moments in the film, if this is your kind of movie, you should definitely check it out, especially now while it's on Tubi.

I figured we'd had to have run across one or two Debbie Rochon films at some point on the site, and I was right, she was in Tromeo and Juliet, Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV, and Battledogs. Going through her CV, she shouldn't just have more films on the site, she should be a Hall of Famer, but she's another name who lost out when my site shifted to covering more low-budget action as those posts got more engagement than the horror ones. I do have the power to change that, especially considering she has over 40 movies on Tubi, and a good chunk of those look ripe for reviews. The thing I loved about her here, was she sold this premise completely, and not as much in a physical sense as a dramatic sense. It's like when you watch Loki and Jonathan Majors is sitting across from Tom Hiddleston saying "I'm a scientist from the 31st Century," you need to sell that, because the line by itself is ridiculous, right? And I don't know that this movie has anything quite so ridiculous as that, but especially at the end where Rochon is tying up loose ends and telling us who everyone we barely got to meet in the film was, normally you need to put on your eye goggles to protect yourself from those loose ends flying together like that, but Rochon is selling it, so it mitigates that need for eye protection. Hopefully we'll see her again on the site soon, but for fans of her work, this is one to watch her in.

In the scene where the Vivienne is about to kill herself, in the background the song "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes" from the film Dancing Sweeties is playing, and as you can imagine, 80s music fan that I am, I had to listen to the Ultravox song of the same name--which isn't related to the 30s song from this film. For this scene in the film, the 30s song created the haunting quality the scene required to make it work, and I think of all the music in this film, and there were a lot of original pieces, that one worked the best. The interesting thing is none of those songs are listed in the IMDb credits. That soundtrack section is a Godsend to reviewers like us, it means we don't need to go back to the end credits to find out what that hip hop song that was playing during the flashback montage was. Anyway, it's that time of year when "Do They Know It's Christmas?" gets played, which Ure co-wrote and produced, so it was fitting that the film got me to queue up Ultravox's "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes," which is one of my favorite 80s songs.

I usually don't do screens with captions, but I had to get that interchange below. "You look like a wet fart"? What does that mean? And I guess I know what "I feel like a wet fart" means, but how does that feeling equate to the feeling of having a hangover? When I was in college, a large group of us were going out, and we broke off into two groups, then as we reformed into one, we noticed one of our number was missing. Someone in that second group informed us that that missing individual told them "oh no, guys, I gambled and lost," and had to run home to change, and even though I don't think the "wet fart" interchange in this was that deep, it could be a metaphor for someone who gambled and lost themselves, which technically the Jack character did. During the final credits, Joe Hollow was singing a song called something like "Diary of Pain," and it sounded like "Diarrhea of Pain," which may be another "wet fart" reference. You may or may not be asking "now that we're going lowest common denominator, Matt, you've done the 'fart' half of 'dick and fart' jokes, when do we get the 'dick' half?" No worries, I'm getting there. We have ourselves another prosthetic penis mutilation, in this case it's a double prosthetic penis amputation--could we say "disarticulation" if an erect penis is technically referred to as a "boner?" And what is the deal with indie horror doing prosthetic penis mutilations, after we had one in Brute 1976 too? I think the only other prosthetic penis mutilation we've ever had on the site was when we covered Street Trash in 2007, so one in 18 years, and now we have two in a matter of months. I may have to put up a "no prosthetic penis mutilation" policy for screeners.

Finally, the word "inspiration" comes up a lot in this, and it reminded me of when Adam Richman got into hot water on social media when he used the term "thinspiration," and people got on him because that term can be triggering for people dealing with eating disorders. Instead of saying "I'm sorry, I was trying to be the quirky, husky, Gen Xer that people love, but I can do that in other ways," he chose violence, in one instance telling a commenter to get a razor blade and draw a bath. Richman apologized after, and I think as a result wasn't cancelled for it, because he's still doing shows now, but I think there was a sense that by the mid-2010s that that trend from five-to-ten years before of these husky, coastal Gen Xers in their open coats layered with quirky T-shirts underneath them, complete with charming puns-a-plenty, had run its course, but man, was that a thing in the mid-to-late 2000s. For some reason Richman's show, Man v. Food, doesn't have his episodes on HBOMax, but they are on Tubi, so I watched one where he went to the Research Triangle in North Carolina to eat a bunch of chili dogs. I realized that for me, it was more about the traveling and seeing parts of the US I haven't seen before, the same way I liked Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives for the travel more than for Guy Fieri, who was bringing a different kind of West Coast energy compared to Richman's East Coast vibe (instead of open coats over quirky T-shirts, it was quirky bowler shirts and sunglasses on the back of the head). And while I do think that's why I connected better with Richman, because he made more sense to me as an East Coaster myself, I also kind of see how the market was saturated with those guys--I think Top Chef had one in every season, and when Bourdain was a guest judge that guy was always his favorite. Anyway, because they're on Tubi, it's fun to go back and watch some of those Man v. Food episodes. Maybe I don't need a market saturated with husky, quirky, coastal Gen Xers, but sometimes in smaller doses they're a nice slice of all right.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Speaking of Tubi, you can now get this on their too, or you can rent it for $1.99, which isn't a bad deal either. Between Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, supporting indie creatives is always a great move, and this is some indie horror you can get behind. Thanks again to Joe Williamson for sending this one our way!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32421430

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Battledogs (2013)

I saw this was added recently to Netflix Instant, and I really wanted to give it a look.  It's an Asylum joint with a prodigious cast, and it's about werewolves.  All things I could go for.  The Asylum has had a pretty decent track record lately, and this looked like it had every chance to be another winner.  Let's see what happened.

Battledogs is about a woman who is bitten by a wolf in a forest outside of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, and it's given her the werewolf virus, which she proceeds to give to a bunch of people in JFK airport after she lands there and turns.  Not cool.  President Bill Duke calls in the big guns: General Dennis Haysbert and contagious disease specialist Major Craig Sheffer.  Now they have all the werewolves from JFK in quarantine under armed guard while Sheffer races for a cure, the only problem is, Haysbert thinks a cure is a bad idea, and he wants werewolves to fight in the US Army.  I can't imagine that wouldn't end well.



I didn't care for this.  First off, we get some sweet werewolf action right away, and then it tapers off to a dull howl until we get to the end when it becomes that silly craziness we've come to expect from The Asylum.  In the middle, we're treated to two plot devices that I don't like: first, our hero is looking for case zero, our lady from Yellowknife, and he's talking to her, telling her how he needs to find case zero, and she falls asleep from the drugs before she can tell him, so we're given 15 minutes of our hero trying to figure out what we already know, which was very annoying, especially when it was in lieu of hot werewolf action; and second, Haysbert as our baddie was more like a heel with more power, which is always a bad baddie.  His main evilness was that he was too stupid to figure out what was going on, which isn't fun.  We need a calculating baddie who schemes much more effectively than the average heel.  This isn't the worst we've seen from The Asylum, but I think the bad outweighed the good, so overall it's a pass.

Craig Sheffer as the main hero was pretty great though.  He seemed like such a nice guy, but he had all those lantern-jawed 50s schlock scientist lead type qualities that worked so well.  What might have worked better, is if he and Haysbert had been on a team, as opposed to adversaries.  Like one of Haysbert's soldiers, playing the perfect heel, lets a werewolf out and then they all get out or something.  And then Haybert and Sheffer working together would've made for a fun crew, maybe leading different groups and coming together in the end to finish things off.  Then I think we would've had the movie we wanted.



As I mentioned above, this movie is full of name actors.  The Yellowknife woman was played by Ariana Richards, who you may remember from Jurassic Park.  She and I are about the same age, so I won't do the "it's crazy how much she's grown up since then", because I have too-- kinda.  The great Ernie Hudson pops in as the TSA head at the airport.  We always love to see him here, and he doesn't disappoint.  Veteran Canadian character actor Kate Vernon plays a doctor working with Sheffer, and like most Canadian character actors, she's solid and helps fill out the movie.  I can't forget Wes Studi, who plays a colonel working under Haysbert.  When you talk about character actors who take care of business, he's another one.

Oh, and I almost forgot, Bill Duke as the President.  I was trying to think if he was the best person cast for the President since we've been doing this at the DTVC.  We have Jerry Springer in the Dolph flick The Defender.  Rutger Hauer, who isn't even American, played him in Scorcher.  I gotta put Bill Duke up there though, if only for his iconic roles in The Predator and Commando.  No, he didn't buy a car and run over the salesman as he drove it through the showroom window, nor did he have his brains splattered on a rock, so that was disappointing, but you can't have everything.  It was an inspired casting decision, and it's too bad the rest of the film didn't live up to that.



Finally, Buffalo played the part of NYC in this, only with plenty of CGI filling out the rest of the skyline.  I remember one scene when Sheffer drove by the HSBC Center, which is where the Sabres play.  I see they've gone back to their old logo, which I love, it reminds me of their old Adams Division days playing against my Bruins.  I know a lot of the Rust Belt cities have been having a bad time of it since the recession-- or more accurately before the rest of us felt it--, so it's nice to see some movies shot there to help boost the economy.

So this is a pass for me, but it has some elements that I think some people might enjoy, especially those Asylum touches we're used to.  There are also some good inside jokes, like Sheffer finding the remains of a guy's face on the floor, a la Nightbreed, so someone might forgive the bad parts more than I did.  You can check it on Instant, or SyFy might show it from time to time too.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2457138/

Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2000)

We finish our look at the Toxic Avenger sequels, as forced by Netflix when I had to watch them all before they dumped them from Watch Instantly on the first of the year, with Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV. This is one I'm glad I fit in, because it looks like the Hulu one is the R rated version. I haven't watched that one, but I'm guessing it's the R rated one because it's 20 minutes shorter than the one Netflix had. Good thing I made the unrated one happen, because I can only imagine how neutered the R rated version would be.

Citizen Toxie: Toxic Avenger IV starts off with our hero Toxie and his trusted sidekick Lardass trying to save a classroom of developmentally delayed students from a gang of thugs wearing diapers. When the gang sets off a bomb, Lardass tries to eat it in order to save everyone, but he fails, and the explosion creates a dimensional rift, sending our hero to Amortville, a twisted alternate dimension version of Tromaville, and his counterpart from there, Noxie, into Tromaville. Can Toxie get back to our dimension before Noxie destroys Tromaville and Toxie's reputation with it?



This is the everything but the kitchen sink sequel you either really wanted or have no stomach for-- and then there's me, somewhere in the middle but leaning more towards the really wanted end of the spectrum. On the one hand, especially early on, they leaned on a lot of jokes about crap and people that are learning disabled, the kind of thing that's just really lazy more than anything, and that was a disappointment; but like all the others, once it hits its stride, we're treated to another great combination of social commentary, hilarious satire, and gross-out gore that's a staple of great Troma. Not to mention, this had some sweet celebrity cameos. I had a few qualms outside of the beginning, in particular they wasted Sgt. Kabukiman by having him be just a drunk, but otherwise, this was a fun and entertaining way to wrap up the series.

One thing that hit me as I was watching this was how many of the references were time specific, and what that will mean for people who watch this ten years from now that were born in the early 2000s. The school shootings, the man who was dragged behind a truck to his death in Texas-- even the Twin Towers, which were a huge symbol because this film was first screened in New York in November of 2001, and Lloyd Kaufman decided to keep the images of the WTC in the film, something that garnered a huge ovation from the crowd. It's going to be up to people our age to watch these movies with that generation and explain these things, but I think that will be part of the experience, to say where we were when 9/11 happened, or what the climate was like in this country in the late 90s when Columbine happened.



Where do I start with the celebrity cameos? I guess with Corey Feldman, who plays an ob-gyn, and is listed in the credits under the name "Kinky Finkelstein". Lemmy is also back with a small cameo. Ron Jeremy played the town mayor. Then we had Joe Fleishaker, who, instead of having a cameo in this one like he did the others, has a bigger part as both Lardass, and then as the physicist that gets Toxie home. Is it right that I consider Joe Fleishaker to be a celebrity? (Maybe not, considering I initially fell for the Michael Herz ruse and thought that's what his name was...) One celebrity that didn't make it in though: Hugh Hefner, whose Playboy Mansion was used for the Citizen Kane shots, and who himself had some scenes, but they were cut out after his lawyers sent Troma a ceases and desist letter.

As the title suggests, this movie pokes fun at a lot of classics, in particular what is often held up as the greatest of all time, Citizen Kane. If you're expecting me to go on a rant about how Citizen Kane is overrated, you won't get it, because I love it and believe it's deserving of its status; but I liked that Kaufman and co. had a lot of fun Troma-tizing it. If anyone is going to poke fun at Citizen Kane, it has to be Troma, and I liked that they did it as well as I hoped. (I can't mention some of the other classics they poked fun at, because it'll give away too much of the movie.)



Finally, I left a celebrity cameo out of my list above, because I wanted to save it for here. The Sklar Brothers play Tromaville news anchormen (they're credited as Foofy and Skippy Applebaum). They used to do a show on ESPN Classic called Cheap Seats, where they'd watch videos of old, off-beat sporting events that used to air on ESPN or ABC Wild World of Sports, like celebrity fishing tournaments hosted by Steve Garvey, or early 80s professional wrestling. They'd mock the events MST3K style, and mix in some sketches. Anyone who's been rockin' with us for a while knows I love sports, and their sense of humor was pretty close to mine, so it was a great match. It was really cool to see them in this, plus, they were pretty funny too.

I don't know what to do about recommending this, because it looks like the Hulu one is edited-- pretty heavily too if it's 20 minutes shorter. In that case, look for a DVD. The best way to describe this is that it's a real Troma movie for real Troma fans, so if Troma's more hit and miss for you, you may not want to bother; but if you're a huge Troma honk (then you've probably already seen this, but if not) I'd go out and make this happen, because this movie has your name written all over it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212879/

Tromeo and Juliet (1996)

I had been meaning to watch this movie for a long time. I'm a huge Shakespeare fan, and a huge Troma fan, so this seemed like a perfect pairing. I remember seeing trailers for it on other Troma flicks I watched, with Motorhead's "Sacrifice" playing in the background, and thinking it looked pretty sweet, but for some reason or another I just never got around to it. Now Netflix, as they often do, are putting my feet to the fire and dumping this one from Watch Instantly, so I made it happen before they did.

Tromeo and Juliet is a brutal-punk Troma take on the Bard's classic tale of love found and love lost under tragic circumstances. In this one, our hero, Tromeo, is the son of Monty Que, who was at one time in a partnership with the depraved Cappy Capulet, the two making high quality porno flicks. But Cappy betrayed Monty, and the two families have been feuding ever since. Now Cappy, who abuses his daughter Juliet and expects her to marry a billionaire meat packing company owner, is not too stoked to discover that she's in love with our hero. As things come to a head between the two families, can their love survive?



This, maybe more than any Troma film I've seen, pushes that envelope into bad taste as often as possible. At no point do they let you off easy. It's as if Lloyd Kaufman has a bone to pick with, maybe not Shakespeare, but this idea that some forms of art and culture are placed above others, so from his standpoint he wants to say "I'll show you what low-quality entertainment is!" I think, because it's Lloyd Kaufman and it's Troma, it works, but I'm not so sure anyone else could pull this off, and I wouldn't want to see them try. And it's not just the blood and guts factor, there are jokes about priest molestation and parental abuse that will probably test your sensibilities more than seeing someone's fingers chopped off of eye gouged out. This isn't simply a Shakespeare/Troma mash-up, this is Lloyd Kaufman sinking his teeth into Shakespeare, biting off a chunk, and spitting it out. And I dug it.

This is, as far as I can remember, the second Romeo and Juliet based movie we've seen here, the other being Ring of Fire with Don "The Dragon" Wilson, which, as you may remember, wasn't as good as this. I love seeing Shakespeare adapted in modern art, especially in something like Tromeo and Juliet that really plays with the elements, twisting this or that, while keeping this or that intact. Do I put this up there with Ran or Throne of Blood as far as Shakespeare adaptations go? Personally yes, though obviously on an objective level it's hard to put Lloyd Kaufman and Kurosawa in the same sentence with a straight face.



Right away, when you think music in Tromeo and Juliet, you think Lemmy (who was also the film's narrator) and Motorhead with "Sacrifice", which was pretty awesome. But this soundtrack also features songs by Sublime, Supernova, and my personal favorite, The Wesley Willis Fiasco. My buddy's sister saw Wesley Willis at our local small club, The Elvis Room, which was open in the 90s. She said he ordered a pizza from Dominoes while he played. Unfortunately, Willis is no longer with us, so here's to you Wesley Willis, rock over London, rock on Chicago, Pontiac, we are building excitement.

I don't know why, but people in animal suits are hilarious to me. In the famous masquerade ball scene, Tromeo went dressed like a cow, and had a dance with Juliet. I was in tears I was laughing so hard. If I ever date a girl that has a fetish for people in these suits, it could be a problem, especially the head portion. It's that blank stare with a goofy grin I think that gets me the most. About six or seven years ago the AHL all-star game was in Portland, ME, so my buddies and I went, and as you can imagine, that was mascot city, every team was represented. Anyway, this one T-Bone for the San Antonio team had an angry look on its face, and when my buddy was going up the stairs past him, he pantomimed like he was kicking my buddy in the ass, which was even funnier with the angry look on his face. Thinking about it now as I write it I'm laughing.



Finally, to kill the silliness a bit, I figured I'd go all cultural anthropologist on you, because this movie deals with incest taboos, specifically brother-sister relations. Other than the Hawaiian royal family, there has never been a culture in human history that didn't have an incest taboo forbidding brothers and sisters from hooking up. You'd think that was a biological imperative-- we erroneously think all incest taboos have a biological imperative behind them-- but that's not the case. If it had a biological basis, long lost siblings would still have the same aversion to one-another that ones that grew up together did-- and adopted siblings that grew up together wouldn't still have that aversion. It's a familiarity thing, and Shakespeare understood our attraction to the unfamiliar and demonstrated it to us perfectly in Romeo and Juliet; whereas Kaufman didn't quite get it-- he still has the basic erroneous idea of what incest taboos are based on biology--, but I liked that he included the incest taboo as another way that children of the 90s were finding to rebel, making fun of our attempts to find more and more forms of taboo.

By the time most of you read this review, this movie will no longer be available on Watch Instantly, so you'll have to track it down on DVD, which isn't that hard. Also, you can get it on Blu-Ray, though I have no idea what the Blu-Ray entails. Either way, this is worth checking out, it's a gory, gross, over-the-top good time. Shakespeare would've been proud-- or maybe not.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114733/