As far as I can tell, Ambassadors Day looks like a Samuel Beckett play in which all the characters must wear gas masks, a prospect that sets me aquiver with excitement and, if I’m honest, something not unlike arousal:
Ambassadors Day takes place thousands of years in the future, when the remnants of the human species have moved indoors to escape the wrath of an environment turned hostile. Many generations have passed, and all that’s left of communication between these isolated sanctuaries of humankind are the Ambassadors.
Long after the End of the World has passed into myth, two envoys meet to exchange the weekly numbers of their people. It is a day like any other in Rendezvous Zone Eight-Seven Northwest, until one of the Ambassadors is ordered to shoot the other. Refusing, the Ambassador tries to defuse the situation. Unfortunately the problem began thousands of years ago, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Rocks are thrown in glass houses, kettles are called black, and everyone manages to get their feelings hurt. When the dust has settled, the world is changed forever.
A short film, running twenty minutes total, it can be purchased here.
“Fear will pierce your flesh…until every nerve in your body…EXPLODES!!”
Giant leeches, no doubt created by some sort of accident involving radiation, feast upon human beings, draining them of their bodily fluids; only to bring them back to life as their slaves.
Trailers like this contain something that I find distinctly lacking in previews for more modern schlock: excitement! Wouldn’t the next Saw or Hostel seem more interesting if it was advertised with a bit more rabid, spittle-flecked enthusiasm? Perhaps what the filmmakers of today need is a lesson in the use of the exclamation mark.
Keeping with the fine Japanese, cinematic tradition of unconstrained insanity and over-the-top violence, comes Tokyo Gore Police by the same people who brought the world Machine Girl. The “plot” of Tokyo Gore Police is as follows: in the future, Tokyo is in the grip of a plague which allows infected individuals to turn their wounds into weapons. These individuals are called Engineers and in order to keep them under control a private, heavily armed police force — whose members are imaginatively named “Engineer Hunters” — is created.
All of this takes place in a world where the denizens of Tokyo are so tumid with fluids that one would expect to hear it sloshing in their bulbous, distended limbs as they waddled about. The aforementioned ability to use one’s wounds as weapons also leads to some inventive situations, such as a gentleman using his severed penis as a cannon, a woman who sprays acid from her chest after being separated from her breasts, and a woman whose torso terminates in a toothsome toothy, alligator vulva. The level of gore in this trailer reaches such a hysterical pitch that at times it appears that the filmmakers have stooped to just throwing rubber organs in the air and spraying fake blood on the camera lens. In one scene I cannot even be sure if what is being depicted is a truck driving through a pile of mannequin parts or if said parts are supposed to be human bodies.
Needless to say this clip is NSFW and brilliant in a way only something so completely ridiculous can be.
I’m not exactly sure what to think of this trailer, to be honest. My trepidation stems from Singh’s first film, The Cell, a movie whose arresting visuals were wrapped around a vapid plot and horrendous acting. It is a stunning example of the music video as feature film. His newest effort, eight years later, seems to be in much the same vein. The story is that of a young girl who, while recovering after breaking her collarbone, meets a bedridden man who tells her fantastical stories that reflect his deteriorating mental state. He also uses them as a bribe in order to get her to steal pharmaceuticals for him. In all it doesn’t seem as though much has changed. I have no doubt that The Fall will be gorgeous but one wonders if Mr. Singh shouldn’t just set the damned thing to music and be done with it.
“It happens two hunred an’ fifty thousan’ times a yea’. Where is your daughta tonight?”
Fifteen year-old Arlene-Sue is irresistible. She knows that “you have to put out if you’re gonna get back”, and she’s gone “all the way”. She knows that the best way to get a man is by seductively feasting on fried chicken. “She turned brother against brutha” and it was going to catch up with her eventually. After a tryst with a trucker she’s chased down and taught a lesson by an entire gang. Thankfully, we are informed that once we follow fifteen year-old Arlene-Sue as she gets into trouble we’ll also join her as she is educated about pregnancy, ostensibly by a woman who interned under Ilsa during her stint with the SS. The saga of Arlene-Sue is the story of our time. It is not to be missed.
A slightly different format this weekend. Oscar nominations have been announced and while the pithy award show is as much an indication of cinematic excellence as one of Eliza’s massive bowel movements, it does draw attention to films that may otherwise have gone unnoticed. With that in mind Ectomo presents the nominations for Best Short Animated Film. Hit the jump for enough embedded video to make your browser weep.
Based on a Taiwanese television show, Ninja The Final Duel consists of ninety minutes of utter nonsense, introduced by the voice of a WWII era newsreel reading such gems as: “Ninja light skill leaps and bounds. Acrobatics designed to bring a deathly swiftness.” and “Ninja rock climbing formation lightning streaks. Nothing stands in their way.” Featuring a woman who performs nude kung-fu, a rhyming, jive talking, African-American gentleman called “The Black Monk”, and, last but not least, the Water Spider Assault Team, which consists of ninjas on spider shaped paddle boats that occasionally leap into the air. The movie cheese factor was later increased by comedian Rudy Ray Moore, of Dolemite fame, re-dubbed the movie and released the result as Shaolin Dolemite.
Behold, the trailer for the blaxploitation classic Dolemite. Rudy Ray Moore stars as the titular Dolemite: pimp, kung-fu master, and all around badass. The trailer’s combination of Moore rhyming like a foul mouthed Dr. Seuss and footage of Dolemite striking an attacker, causing him to jump into the trunk of a car, or surrounded by a bevy of deadly, afroed hos sums up the film perfectly.
(Clip is NSFW not so much for, what can be described as, copious use of the word “muthafucka” but for a single, naked breast. Thankfully, said mammary does not belong to Moore.)
Seeing as some of my most popular work has involved parasites, it was with great excitement that I watched this video put together by the folks at mental_floss using footage from various sources in the public domain, much of it gleaned from the Prelinger Archives. A truly terrifying trailer for a feature film that is sure to scare you senseless!
When a new Coen Brothers movie comes out, something happens to me: my entire spinal column begins to quiver, from neck to coccyx. The sensation has not paled even after a couple of notably inferior Coen Brothers films: their mediocre remake of the The Ladykillers and the enjoyable but decidedly un-Coen-esque Intolerable Cruelty.
But good lord, this trailer for their upcoming version of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men is stunning. It’s a return to the darker side of the Coens, a throwback to their earlier films like Blood Simple and Fargo. And just from the trailer, Javier Bardem as Chigurh — a violent sociopath obsessed with chance and carrying a cattle gun — looks like he could just be one of the darkest and most frightening villains in Hollywood history.
I’ve never read any McCarthy, but both The Road and No Country for Old Men really look up my alley. Anyone care to give me a recommendation?
In sheer defiance of the World Wide Web Consortium's will, Ectomo was designed using a non-web-standard font. Luckily, it is included in the excellent font pack released by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which can be freely downloaded in Mac and PC formats here. Ectomo should still look fine without it, though.
