It’s nice to review a good movie for this list; I wasn’t sure there would be one!

Shogun Assassin, I’m sure you know, is an edited down version of the first two movies in the Lone Wolf And Cub series. The basic plot follows Lone Wolf, who was the Shogun’s ‘decapitator’. The Shogun has become paranoid and senile, and believing Lone Wolf to be a threat, attempts to assassinate him, killing his wife in the process. Lone Wolf begins a journey to avenge his wife, killing all the would-be assassins the Shogun throws in his path, and taking with him his young son.

In terms of the violence, the first half of this movie is pretty much a sequence of somewhat cool fight scenes, which only suffer slightly from the choreography and editing of the era. We see lots of stabbing and dismembering, all resulting in fountains of blood we would later see in Kill Bill. Having not grown up in the seventies, it’s kind of odd to have watched something like Kill Bill and then going back to see where all the ideas came from. While pretty gory, the fights aren’t really all that graphic or realistic, and the blood is that orangey colour which make it look even less convincing. But the ridiculousness doesn’t detract from the fun at all. And not even in a ‘so bad it’s good’ way – it’s just good

I would be extremely interested to check out the Lone Wolf and Cub movies now. Part of me wondered whether they had removed the ‘boring’ dialogue heavy parts of the original movies, leaving mainly the fights. But I also recently found out that the other 4 movies in the series have been repackaged and resold as 4 sequels to Shogun Assassin which strikes me as incredibly cheeky, similar to the zombie movies of the 70s I guess.

There’s nothing I found all that disturbing about this movie, except maybe the synthesised score. One thing that struck me is the presence of the young boy in almost every fight scene. I don’t have a problem with children in horror movies (a discussion topic for later) but I could not believe the child’s parents would allow the filmmakers to shave his head in such a way, that has to be seen to be believed. All in all, nothing really ‘nasty’ about this movie, but nevertheless recommended.

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It soon became apparent that the three or four movies on the video nasties list that I had seen already, are probably the most well-known, and widely considered to be ‘disturbing’ controversial horror movies. So as to not blow my proverbial load too soon, I am trying to stagger them and throw in some mediocrity to mix them up, which sadly means I have to wait for LoveFilm to dispatch those I have yet to see. (Un)Fortunately, it was not long before 1974′s (or 1977′s, depending on the web site) Axe arrived in the post, and mediocrity did indeed ensue.

The plot of Axe (a.k.a. Lisa Lisa) is most likely that of half the films on the list; three no-good criminals are hiding from the law, and decide to stay in an isolated farmhouse, occupied only by shy young Lisa, and her paralysed grandfather. They take advantage, and are disposed of.

First off, these are the least threatening criminals in movie history. The opening scene involves them beating a guy to death (we can’t even make out why because they mumble too much), and one of them uses a child’s doll to do so. Later they call into a convenience store and terrorise the shop girl by throwing fruit at her and making obscene comments such as, “Lady sure has some nice melons… I’ll bet she’s got some nice melons of her own!”

It’s not long before they take up residence at Lisa’s house, to which Lisa puts up absolutely no resistence. After an attempted rape, she begins to off the intruders, but only kills one of them with the titular axe. I don’t expect anyone to watch this movie, so have no qualms in revealing that the first guy is killed with a razorblade (ok so he gets chopped up afterwards), the second is killed with an axe, and the third (the ‘nice’ one who was against all this the whole time, incidentally potrayed by the director) is shot by police at the end, in a poor attempt at irony.

The film does have some merit, and actually the character of Lisa was the best thing about this, and could even be considered ‘hot sauce’. She is what my boyfriend and I refer to as an ‘X-Files kid’, in that she does little but sit and stare, which takes very little acting ability. At the beginning of the film she beheads a chicken (off camera), and we see a close-up of the bloody axe; when your film is titled ‘Axe’, this foreshadowing is a tad unnecessary! There was a rather nice scene where Lisa eats cookies and milk, which is contrasted with the decapitated chicken bleeding into the kitchen sink behind her. There was also a rather neat bathroom clean-up scene, which I like to think was a nod to Psycho, but maybe that’s giving this movie too much credit.

Overall, this is not a very well made film at all, and even at a mere 68 minutes it feels overly long and drawn out. Every technical aspect of this film is done badly, and frankly it is a boring piece of work. It feels like the kind of film that was born out of the desire to make a shocking horror movie, and the plot followed from there. It made its merry way onto ‘the list’ purely on the basis of its storyline; nobody that’s seen this could find it anything other than dull. Mary Whitehouse saw to it that this film got the slightest publicity, which is more than it deserves.

I’m giving it 2 wheelchair-bound grandfathers ouf of 10. In no way does it deserve to be labelled a Video Nasty.

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The first movie presented in this project is Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left, chosen because the remake of this film inspired me to do this in the first place (and frankly, I’ve seen like 3 films on the list, and until Lovefilm deliver more of them to me, I have to rely on memories of the ones I’ve seen!)

I have to preface this by stating: this is a terrible movie. Not well acted, scripted, edited, scored and generally not very well made. Something tells me this will apply to 98% of the movies on the aforementioned list, so I guess I’m gonna have to not let that influence me. The film is not especially explicit in it’s numerous scenes of torture, rape and murder, and when seeking a movie with such a reputation, this is the first thing one notices. It becomes an instant disappointment in that regard.

HOWEVER! Last House somehow manages to be as vile and disgusting as it is reputed to be, but only in places. I’m not quite sure how it pulls this off, but when I watched this for the first time, I remember constantly glancing over my shoulder to make sure nobody else had entered the room. It doesn’t quite make me feel like I want to take a shower, but I did feel genuinely uncomfortable during the film, and had the sense that it was something I shouldn’t be watching. Many films can successfully convey feelings of dread using atmosphere, without actually depicting any violence taking place. Films like Last House generally can’t do this successfully, and have to rely on gore effects and gruesome scenes. Often it is the case that you need more than just to ‘know’ what is taking place. But his movie gets under the skin in such a way that you only need to see David Hess drooling onto the girl’s face to make you squirm.

At the same time, in a spectacular display of ludicrousness (that sounds like it shouldn’t be a word) the film switches from girls being tortured in the woods, to the bumbling cops tripping over chickens to what sounds like the Benny Hill theme. Comic relief is one thing, but rape and Yakety Sax should never mix, I don’t care how funny it is! It’s not even like the juxtaposition is ‘supposed’ to be effective. It feels like I’d be giving the film too much credit to say those scenes have no business being in a film like this. The ‘comedy’ just pissed me off. I’m no filmmaker, but there must be better ways to break the tension than, “dur, Sarge, we ran outta gas, durr!”

My other major gripe with this was something that also bothered me about I Spit on Your Grave (I’ll fucking get to THAT, let me tell you). If you’ve just participated in the rape and murder of two teenage girls, don’t let one of their mums go down on you. That’s all I’m saying. And I’m not even going to talk about the whole ‘Willow’ thing.

I’m finding it hard to conclude on this, because frankly it’s not a film I like. But I have to give it credit for the genuine feeling of unease it generates. I guess I should have come up with a scoring system of sorts before I embarked on this venture. Perhaps I’ll say at this point, that in my opinion, Last House on the Left is, at least in parts, what it is cracked up to be. I’m giving it 6 bumbling cops out of 10.

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I was born in 1984, and I’ve always been fascinated with the ‘video nasties’ phenomenon of the time. I’m too young to have seen Margaret Thatcher and Mary Whitehouse campaigning for the morality of the country, leading to the introduction of the Video Recordings Act, but wish I’d been able to experience the era. It’s truly an interesting piece of British broadcast history, one I doubt will ever be repeated. This little project of mine will involve watching every single one of the official nasties, and discussing whether they deserve any kind of notoriety at all. Maybe it will culminate in some sort of essay on censorship, freedom of expression, and the definition of obscenity; who knows.

For now it will just be a case of ‘this film is fucking awesome/rough/lame’. First post will be up in a matter of hours.

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