One Eyed Monster

Year: 2008

Director: Adam Fields

Cast: Amber Benson, Jason Graham, Charles Napier, Jeff Denton, Caleb Mayo, Bart Fletcher, Jenny Guy, Veronica Hart, John Edward Lee, Carmen Hart, Frank Noel, Ron Jeremy, et al.

Format Viewed: Satellite Broadcast

MPAA Rating: R (Violence, Nudity, Raunchy Adult Dialogue)

Official URL: http://oneeyedmonstermovie.com/

Premise: During a porn video shoot in a remote area of the California mountains a shooting star that's in reality a chthuloid alien force streaks out of the sky and takes possession of porn legend Ron Jeremy's member, then proceeds to rape, pillage, and/or impregnate all those in it's path.

The Reality: ALIEN meets THE THING in ONE EYED MONSTER, a movie in the dark comedic tradition of KILLER CONDOM, KILLER TONGUE, and KILLER PUSSY (aka SEXUAL PARASITE).

The Story: Alien possessed killer penis wreaks havoc on a mountain cottage full of "porn actors" going after them one by one TEN LITTLE INDIANS style. That's it. Honest. There's no sex, barely any nudity, and minimal plot. The latter is probably intentional given this is really a spoof of a porn movie shoot gone wrong. (See below)

Assessment: The plot is minimal. Thus anything I say about the movie would likely give it all away. So I'll just comment on the movie in general, like the fact it has three writers. All with the same last name. Given that fact you may assume this is a movie full of heart but downright terrible writing or decent writing delivered in soulless performances by low rent day players. You'd be wrong.

One Eyed Monster isn't terrible. It's better than the average Sci-Fi/SyFy channel original movie. Granted as a comedy it's not exactly hilarious but it has its charm. But it may lack broad appeal. For instance aside from Ron Jeremy. .

Who's been in the mainstream media often enough to be recognizable even to those without porn collections, most will likely have no idea who Veronica Hart is/was. .

That may be a bad thing since there are a lot of in-jokes between these two porn actors that mainstream audiences aren't likely to get. Speaking of which be advised only one actress ever shows any skin, and even then she's only topless. So if you're only interested in seeing T&A forget about renting OEM. .

This is a nutty little horror spoof. Granted the balance of in-jokes given as nods to those in the know to jokes suitable for mainstream audiences, even mainstream horror audiences, seems to lean disproportionately to the "in the know" crowd but you don't need to get all the references. There is silliness, the usual trite moments of crazed absurdity one would expect of a low budget horror movie, and while knee-slapping gut busting belly laughs are lacking there are chuckle worthy moments.

Verdict: This movie is an irascible bit of implied tongue-in-cheek horror comedy deviancy that plays like a porno sans the porn. Alas it does retain the long, boring, if surprisingly coherent, talky bits. Yet for all its potential ONE EYED MONSTER remains average. It doesn't push the envelope but aims squarely for the mainstream bull's-eye on the dartboard of cinema.

To objectively review this we need to ask one simple question: Who was this movie made for?

I'm not sure the writers, producers, or directors had a real audience focus in mind. This really plays more like a personal film project that, if an audience happens to get it, that's fine too. OEM wasn't made explicitly for contemporary porn fans as it has a decent if threadbare story and minimal displays of skin. All most porn fans today care about is nudity and hardcore sex, a fact that's actually poked fun of in the movie. Horror audiences will expect thrills and chills, which OEM has far too few of. One assumes Amber Benson, formerly of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was attached to attract that horror audience. But Buffy this is not.

So if OEM is not really for porn fans or horror fans then who is it for? My theory is OEM was made for the fun of it. Of course I could be wrong. Too, while there are some jokes made at Ron Jeremy's expense, I'm guessing porn fans have likely already heard them and non-porn fans wont get them. But is the comedy angle really on shaky ground? Yes and no. Better to have called this a spoof as billing it as a comedy puts the onus of expectations of actual ha-ha humor on this farce. Then again humor is highly subjective. Not everyone liked Monty Python or Benny Hill, doesn't mean they weren't funny.

If I had a single complaint it's that the writers were too inhibited in their approach to humor and the horror aspect. (I was really hoping there'd be a gibbering, slathering, one-eyed puppet monster with either a saber toothed maw or giant glistening cycloptic eye dang-it!) Granted OEM avoided the trap most low budget b-movies fall into of overusing juvenile toilet humor, but the lack of even a few 'crap' lines stands out like a sore thumb. Yet, and this will probably shock some, ONE EYED MONSTER is a fairly decent b-movie. Could it have been better? Sure. And I'll admit to not knowing who Veronica Hart was and having to grab a reference book off the shelf to find out. So what? Once I knew she was a real veteran porn starlet, even though I didn't get the references, I got the gist of the humor.

This entire movie seems to be a grand farce in which two porn star legends (Ron Jeremy & Veronica Hart) poke fun at themselves, their industry, and filmmaking in general. Its' that self-deprecating humor that makes this fun to watch. I doubt any critic has yet to see the perfect movie but this is far from the worst movie ever made thus I would cautiously recommend it, doubly so to those who actually know who the porn stars mentioned herein are. (And if I missed mentioning others by name I apologize.) I look forward to the inevitable sequel: ONE EYED MONSTERS. And, yes, you can freely use that title.

One Eyed Monster is available on: DVD

# End of Line

Copyright © C. Demetrius Morgan

Budget Label Bargain Bin DVDs

Here's an update to a post from the original Mise-en-scene Crypt blog. The original publication date was: 07/24/2006 11:37:20. This was an examination of the video quality to be found on certain "PD" (wink wink nudge nudge) budget labels and asked the question: Are budget DVDs a bane or boon?

It's a question that's still very pertinent today as the budget labels have moved on to producing "multi movie" packs that cram anywhere from 10 to 20 to 100 or more movies onto a bare minimum of flipper discs. What's the big deal?

If you are like me you like movies. I wouldn't necessarily say I like all the movies I have on DVD, nor would I want every movie I've seen over the years on DVD, but when I buy a DVD I expect to actually be able to SEE the movie. Movies are meant to deliver on one important need, an escape from the dull routine of everyday life. Sort of like going to a mall. They are entertainment. Sure you never know going in what a movie has in store until you see it, but that's half the fun. Same with some of the DVDs released by certain budget labels. However the bargain bin holds treasures as well as junk. You can look at what's in the bargain bin but there's one problem with it, no matter what's in there you're buying blind.

Bargain bins are like Outlet or "Dollar" stores. Sadly not every mall has them but most video retailers do. Sure you often have a love-hate relationship with them, but there's almost always something chuckle worthy to be found in a bargain bin. (And I don't mean dump bins where some stores treat DVDs like garbage and just throw them into a mass heap like a farmer tossing slop to pigs.) On rare occasion you may find something interesting, like DVDs of old cult favorites and half-forgotten movies you may never have heard of. Savvy shoppers get to know labels as not all bargain bin labels take care to secure decent looking source prints. But that's a risk you sometimes have to take.

For instance I found my original DVD copies of Lady Frankenstein, Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman, Web of the Spider, Deep Red, Horror Express, and other movies too numerous to list here in video stores bargain sections. However Bargain Bin DVDs are like last years fashion. Nothing wrong with them, per se, just a bit questionable sometimes. Too, when you get that item home you find out it doesn't fit quite right, wont play properly, or wasn't at all what the packaging advertised. This happened with a 4-movie pack purchased out of a bargain bin. What a surprise it turned out to be!

Don't get me wrong the price was too good to pass up, so I've only got my self to blame. Yet one has to wonder what people thought that bought this set when it was first released and going for full price. But I am getting ahead of myself. The DVD set in question was..

Bad Boys of the West

DVD Type: 4-movie pack (2 double sided DVDs)

Label: Brentwood

Cost: $3.99

The Movies - Disc One Side A: Vendetta

This is an extremely grainy version of Poncho Villa sourced from VHS with its original title crudely replaced by a still image insert. In all honesty I actually stood in the store and read the write-up and said to myself, "This sounds like Poncho Villa!" yet bought it anyway. Caveat emptor indeed! Funny thing is the sound track is louder on this DVD than my WS version, which isn't to say it's better, rather the person responsible for the re-dub work just cranked up the volume.

Disc One Side B: A Town Called Hell

[NOTE: I'M SEARCHING MY CDs TO SEE IF I KEPT A BACK-UP OF THE BELOW IMAGE.]

There was a feature on certain consumer grade analogue video editors that allowed you to zoom in or out to reframe the picture during dubbing. One assumes this was intended to allow creative minded home video editors to play around with SFX. Alas too many dubbers had no real clue how to properly utilize this feature thus they usually ended up with improperly framed and severely overscanned dubs. You see a lot of this in PD (wink wink nudge nudge) type releases taken from broadcast television where the dubber was trying to hide onscreen logos or create a faux letterbox effect. Alas Westerns seem to be plagued by this more than any other genre, witness this video, which was obviously sourced from such a dub.

Disc Two Side A: Hunt the Man Down

Another cheap looking retitling job, this time for "Bad Man's River". As if you are going to fool anyone. The song playing during the intro repeats the title in chorus several times over. How Brentwood slipped through the cracks with this one boggles the mind. To add insult to injury whatever source was used is dark, murky, and so poorly filtered through whatever cheap analog video processor the garage dubbers used as to render the movie virtually black and white.

Disc Two Side B: Deathwork

Yes, you guessed it, this is yet another retitled western. This time it's "Captain Apache". How can I be certain? Because the song that plays during the intro has a chorus that repeats the original title over and over. However it's hard to tell if the colors are murky or if the guy operating the dubbing machine was colorblind. It also doesn't help that the contrast was turned too far up (when viewed on screen there's a bright haze in evidence throughout that the thumbnails don't really show that well). Obviously sourced from an amateurish dub job.

One is moved to ask what Brentwood was thinking when they released this box set, alas; the likely answer is they weren't thinking so much as laughing all the way to the bank. After all these are "PD" titles. So any money they made on these sets was gravy.

Then there were DVDs like this..

Metropolis

DVD Type: single sided DVD (bare bones)

Label: Front Row Entertainment

Cost: $2.99

To be blunt this DVD is a heinous example of hideous video that is excruciating to watch. Alas, believe it or not, I've actually seen worse. This DVD, at least, is well authored with no intrusive compression artifacts though the picture does have an odd curvature that might lead the imaginative to wonder if someone didn't use a camcorder to record it off a TV screen. Alas the source appears to be a copy of the print PBS stations used to broadcast during the eighties, which was not very good to begin with, thus making the video herein barely tolerable.

A Few Observations

Metropolis is one of many Public Domain titles that have been making the rounds on budget label video in dark and murky, washed out and blurry, barely viewable prints of questionable provenance for years. If there was no other version of it available one could argue that such companies are providing a service given difficult circumstances. Alas there not only is another much better version available it's a restoration print!

True it costs roughly six to seven times as much as the average bargain bin fare, and this is an black and white movie, which means the average consumer is likely to balk at the price tag. It's also a rare DVD in comparison to these mass produced low-end DVDs. But for the movie buff this premium edition is the way to go, even if it takes a big hit to the wallet. More importantly the picture quality will be a marked improvement.

Which is not to say every budget label release is bad. True, picture quality varies wildly, but then so does the quality of the movies themselves. Over the years I've even purchased a few such titles that turned out to be letterboxed. Alas these are few and far between. Usually what you have on these ultra cheap DVDs are full screen versions of movies, often over scanned, and seldom with any extras.

Then there are the multi-movie sets like Bad Boys of the West. I don't know what it is about budget labels and their multi-movie packs but they seem to think they can hide video prints of dubious origin on these and no one will notice. One assumes this is either done blatantly or out of a willful ignorance breed from the desire to make a quick buck. After all if one doesn't look at their source prints all that closely they can, like a good politician who tells his staff not to bother him with details, claim plausible ignorance.

Yet, and yet, there are so many titles that haven't ever appeared on DVD, even DVDs of questionable provenance, that one has to accede to the fact greed, alone, isn't the single driving force here. Sure there's the questionable (and often hard to find) DVDs released with alternate titles. Movies like Female Space Invaders (Star Crash) but there's also a ton of movies that, while not available (officially) in R1, have been released elsewhere. Premium editions exist of movies like Twins of Evil, The Humanoid, Star Crash, the Ator movies, and many other marginal genre titles. Alas, infuriatingly, not in R1! Which leaves gray market merchants and DVDs with alternate FS versions taken from dubious sources.

If these budget labels really were pirates they'd be ripping and re-burning these titles left and right. That they aren't would seem to indicate the state of video rights is just as murky, blurry, and shadowy as the movies these companies release to DVD. Mores the pity for cinephiles and movie buffs who've been waiting for years on end for that certain title to receive a proper DVD release.

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[Anatomy of a bad DVD] Virgin Terror

Poster Tag: Sweet sixteen ... they'll lose more than just their lives.

DVD Cover Blurb: Terror runs wild at the girls academy!

Theatrical/Video Run Time: U.S. 85 minutes; Italy 92 minutes

DVD Run Time: 81 minutes (movie)

Year: 1978

Country: Italy/ West Germany

Cast: Fabio Testi, Christine Kaufmann, Ivan Desny, Jack Taylor, Fausta Avelli, Bruno Alessandro, Caroline Ohrner, Silvia Aguilar, Taida Urruzola, Helga Liné, et al.

Director: Alberto Negrin.

AKA: Enigma Rosso/ Enigma Rojo/ Orgie des Todes/ Das Phantom im Mädchenpensionat/ Tráfico de menores/ Yön terrori/ Red Rings of Fear/ Rings of Fear/ Trauma/ Virgin Killer

With special thanks to everyone at the Latarnia Forums for their input.

Virgin Terror is a giallo, this being the name given to Italian pulp crime/mystery stories published between the 1930s and 1960s, but which has become a movie genre unto itself. Giallos are hard boiled crime movies that do not shy away from depictions of gratuitous sex or violence, all while throwing red herrings at the audience to keep them guessing. This genre is considered by some to be the apex of exploitation filmmaking with its voyeur raincoat wearing killers who stalk young women (often spying on them in the altogether) and bizarre plot twists that force the protagonists to think outside the box in their desperate efforts to solve surreal, often hideous, sex crimes perpetrated against nubile young women.

I was recently out looking for bargains, as you do, and having discovered that a Goodwill store stocks new items, including DVDs, I decided to stop by. Long story short they stock the type of DVDs that you find at flea markets; only they sell them cheaper. These are DVDs purchased in bulk wholesale lots so you never really know what you might find. It's like a treasure hunt. Usually I don't find anything so imagine my surprise when I found a DVD called "Virgin Terror" whose jacket blurb said.

"A detective investigating the murder of a teenage girl begins to focus his suspicions on the three girlfriends of the victim, who call themselves "The Inseperables""

Not very informative but it sounded interesting. I was reticent as I noticed this was a Passion Productions/Miracle Pictures (scan down) release but, it was Goodwill and only about 2 bucks, so I figured since it was for charity why not?

Mistake!

According to the IMDB this is an Italian/ West German co-production from 1978 originally titled Enigma rosso. The movie begins interestingly enough with the scene of a body being dumped into (what looked to me) like the sea, a body that's soon after discovered washed up on a river bank. Apparently this was the body of a 16 year old girl from an exclusive boarding school. Her young body had been mutilated and sexually violated. But who could have done such a thing and, more importantly, why?

Thus the stage is set for a good old fashioned murder mystery. From what I've watched the movie itself seems to be a fairly decent crime story. Sadly there's one problem. The video. It. .

Alexander the Great's Ghost the Video! It's Frigging Awful!

This has obviously been sourced from a dub of a dub that's been edited on consumer grade VHS decks. There's a bit of speckling (not quite snow), the kind you get when you are recording through cheap coax cables accompanied by intrusive blips that appear as white or black streaks in addition to random white specks. Overall a very poor quality video.

As if that's not bad enough the picture is too dark during the night/ indoor scenes, extremely washed out and hazy during the day scenes, and it's a hack job where even the best edits are readily apparent. .

And the worst edits are pulsating eyesores. .

The segment from which I excised the above, when viewed frame by frame, appears to have been a segment the video hacker was trying to edit out scenes of brutality/nudity while attempting to recycle footage to at least pad the segment out. Certain sections even have a moire pattern! All of which is proof positive this is the end product of a terrible hack job.

So what has been edited out? Having read reviews for the movie the edits cut out some very significant elements of the plot that appear in flashback as pertains to some sort of an orgy. What's left is not just a incoherent mess it's amateurish editing of the lowest caliber.

However it does appear the dub job might have been done using a signal booster as the picture is otherwise relatively stable. Not that it matters much as there's ample compression artifacting in evidence. For instance the video suffers from a double shot of blockiness. First, the block artifacting from being an analog tape source. Second, the block artifacting that's somewhat similar to what you get on a VCD. In other words this is a video that's made the rounds in it's journey to DVD.

How far has it come? Well there's a company logo- "Lettuce Entertain You"- which I initially thought said Lettuce Entertainment, that's how bad the video is, which I have been informed was a Canadian outfit that put out ultra cheap VHS. We're talking video quality that's scraping the bottom of the barrel.

However I'd say this video started life as a recording off either foreign broadcast TV or cable, probably recordr speakers with this kind of shite product.

Also noticeable, as already mentioned, are the edits. I can not stress how badly they were done. The first occurs during the intro. It's hard to say for sure what's going on here but it seems like an attempt to either cut in a new title or cut out something. It's very easy to detect because it's 1) a jump cut, and; 2) the music abruptly changes. As the music is instrumental through out I am guessing whoever did the editing was either tone deaf or just didn't care. But between the visual and audio distortions that occur during edits this is an appalling mess.

Oh, and my favorite, according to VLC media player this DVD runs 2 hours 17 minutes and 6 seconds. How is that possible?

Well, as I said, this is a dub of a dub. The credits roll and fade to black at roughly the 1 hour 21 minute 10 second mark, making for a total actual run time of 81 minutes. And those missing minutes are not because this was sourced from a PAL conversion.

How do we know this? Aside from the numerous snips made here and there the most telling is when the girls at the elite girls boarding school are running into the showers. I am assuming you see them remove their clothes as I found **warning link may be NSFW** this review **warning link may be NSFW** with a screen cap of part of the missing scenery. Sadly the itchy finger of the demented editor leaves us with a series of jump cuts apparently designed to remove as much nudity as possible. Which is baffling because they couldn't get it all since one of the characters has to stumble over to another stall and there is flashes of nudity later in the movie, and really isn't nudity what make most gialli cult favorites?

The point being this is a very obvious and poorly done hack job. There's significant visual and audio distortion, the latter very noticable due to music suddenly skipping stanzas et al. This video is a terrible mangling of what makes a giallo, or any movie for that matter, worth watching as the edits utterly ruin the flow of the movie. Worse, the sound is so bad you can't really hear anything half the time. Thus I would not recommend this DVD to any save the curious. Consider yourself duely warned.

And what's on the rest of the DVD? Believe it or not GREEN SCREEN. Which lasts for a short bit then turns into a test pattern with a gray streak running through the middle of the screen, which goes on for several minutes before the screen goes black. In other words it looks like someone put a VHS tape in a player hooked up to a DVD recorder, hit play, started recording, then left. However the fact that whoever did the DVD authoring didn't even put any effort into editing the video, opting instead to just rip the DVDr and burn it as is, is mind-boggling. That anyone could release such shoddy product if un-effing believable, yet here it is!

Caveat emptor indeed.

# End of Line

Copyright © C. Demetrius Morgan

[The above was originally posted in April 2007 to the orignal Mise-en-scene Crypt blog.]

The Thing Below (2004)

Caveo is est valde nocens! The Thing Below is an pathetically cheap looking CGI tentacle monster-alien-mutant something or the other. .

That gets loose in a oil rig/secret military lab/corporate research facility. .

Kills a bunch of (stupid) people. .

Forcing the military-government-corporate goons running the project-lab-insane asylum to send yet other people into the mutant-alien-crazed monster's lair. .

Which the hack filmmakers decide is excuse enough for a gratuitous stripper scene. .

Did I mention this scene stretches on for a while. .

Before the monster starts killing yet more people. .

Sadly THE THING BELOW plays like an dreadful, ineffective, plodding, illogical, and utterly pointless knock-off of DEEP EVIL. .

This movie is the bastard child of inbred morons from the planet Ludicrous. It's bad enough the premise is weak and clichéd but the plot, such as it is, is ill defined and never clearly developed within the movie itself. Considering the endless reams of inane exposition the characters bring the movie to a screeching halt to recite the lack of proper coherent and lucid plot and character development is inexcusable. If bad movies were a medieval village THE THING BELOW would be a murdered leper buried in the village dung heap. Recommended only for those cynical few who never believe reviewers when we say a movie is utter gobshite.

Caveat Emptor THE THING BELOW is available on: DVD

Scorecard:

# End of Line

Copyright © C. Demetrius Morgan

Deep Evil (2004)

Deus misereatur this is a clichéd alien-mutant-monster in a lab movie! For those who don't know the drill amoral yet stupid-evil scientists in an uber secret lab. .

Working with exotic-alien-mutant DNA accidentally on purpose create a monster-hybrid-alien. .

Which, d'oh, gets out of control and kills and/or infests the stupid-evil scientists with its parasitical offspring. .

Forcing the military-government-corporate goons running the project-lab-insane asylum to send yet other people into the mutant-alien-crazed monster's lair. .

But not before our lovable hack filmmakers find an excuse for a gratuitous nude scene. .

Which, sadly, is all too brief and not very well lit. .

Then it's back to boring the audience to death with predictable low budget wannabe ALIEN banality that's mostly a knock-off of THE THING starring the cousin of THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. .

On the bright side if you can put your brain in neutral and not ask probing questions about what the heck is going on or why nothing makes sense you may be able to enjoy watching this for the vacuous silly piece of z-grade nonsense it is. (Or at least have fun tormenting your friends with it MST3K style.) If not steer clear and rent something intelligent, like a Paris Hilton movie.

Caveat Emptor DEEP EVIL is available on: DVD

Scorecard:

# End of Line

Copyright © C. Demetrius Morgan

Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay (1971)

How does one describe Girl Slaves of Morgana le Fay. It's. . . Well, it's, that is to say. This movie is rather strange...

Very strange...

We're talking bugfuck bizarre...

This movie is utterly surreal...

Has dancing girls...

Contains Sapphism...

And LOTS of it...

Did I mention lesbianism figures prominently in this feature...

There is also some light bondage...

Girl Slaves is classic 70s Euro Erotic Horror. Trying to described this movie is like trying to explain the color blue to a blind person or the taste of chocolate to someone without taste buds, you just can't do it. They really don't make them like this anymore.

I give this 4 and a half out of 5 Sarah Palin's.

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Copyright © Demetrius Morgan