Time for a trio of raunchy, offensive horror anthologies for those with a taste for tasteless horror. As exploitative as they may seem, some of these tales even explore genuine issues concerning human relations and sexuality.
LITTLE DEATHS (2011)
I guess you could say this is a threesome of horror “quickies,” each 30-minute tale based around a form of sexual slavery. It’s a bonus that segment is also very different in plot.
1st Story – In this tale of entitled vs. takers, a couple of “faith” has an issue…the wife doesn’t want to fuck the husband. So they abduct a homeless woman for the husband to do nasty things to—including shooting his load on her face and pissing on her. But that’s not even the good part, because things then get demon monster awesome.
2nd Story – This is the psychotic, trippy tale of the bunch. You don’t quite know what the frick is going on, you just know it’s disturbing as hell. There’s some mad doctor making a drug that gives people psychic powers…and the process involves a bondage slave with a massive dong that is “milked” daily.
3rd Story – This final tale is about a dysfunctional couple—he’s her bitch and she treats him like crap, but he seems to like it. He wears a doggy mask and crawls around on a leash. She straps one on and pegs him. She goes out and bangs other men while he’s waiting at home filled with jealousy.
Just when I though this one was not going to have a horror twist, it gets a really fucked up ending in which the guy finally makes the girlfriend the bitch. It’s what’s implied, not shown, that makes you go EEK.
As disturbing as the plots are, I was surprised to find the overall experience not as damaging to my sexual psyche as I feared it would be. I’m actually glad it didn’t step into over-the-top exploitation territory because the twisted sexual nature of each tale is better served seriously.
SCREAM MACHINE (2015)
When Lloyd Kaufman introduced this 70-minute anthology, I knew things could go either way. But I have to admit, these are pretty watchable short films that are just bad enough to keep you entertained for a little over an hour.
The hosts are pretty odd—a guy in a duck mask and top hat and another guy who is just a head, and they give some sort of backstory about an Ebola outbreak. Honestly, I could barely understand what they were saying, and they added nothing to the flow. In other words, they should have just cut that shit out of the film and made it a straight hour of short b-movies. Here’s a breakdown of the stories:
“Sledgehammer” – This is a 1-kill slasher, featuring a killer with a baseball for a head.
“Cannibal Pen Pals” – Talk about “darkly comic” exploitation horror. Taking place in the early 1990s, this one features a gay guy who is pen pals with Jeffrey Dahmer. He hates his wife because he married her just to hide his homosexuality from his family. So he hooks up with a dude in a public restroom, brings him to a hotel, and totally pulls a Dahmer on him. This one seriously goes there, with the guy fucking dead ass and dead head…and even shows the aftermath of the head job! So wrong.
“April Fools Party” – This is some trashy Tales from the Crypt fun. When a bunch of guys decides to terrorize a drug dealer as a prank, they can’t foresee how he’ll react.
“Septic Shock” – Toilet humor to the max. A wife and her lover drug her husband and toss him in a septic tank. The husband has some funny dialogue while he’s imprisoned, and the twist ending is gross!
“Deadly Indie Drive-In” – Not much story here, but it is sleazy gory goodness. At a drive-in, a guy goes to get some snacks, and while he’s gone, the film playing on the big screen actually tells his woman to do something really nasty to him. That’s not butter on the popcorn….
Perfectly summing up the tone of this indie is a rockin’ “Scream Machine” punk theme song during the closing credits.
THEATRE OF THE DERANGED II (2013)
If you liked the original Theatre of the Deranged, you’ll be glad to know the exploitation continues in this sequel. The goofy hosts give this a homebrewed feel—like they got into odd forms of drag in their basement and just began ad-libbing.
There are even some gay jokes (including a cutie in a tiara), but be warned that there’s also some off-color AIDS humor. Here’s a quick look at each tale:
1st story – A woman is visited by the ghost of her dead sister then they take an incestuous lesbian shower together. Moving on…
2nd story – Male sorority house fantasies abound with pillow fights, vibrators, etc. Finally, a cutie on a panty raid takes things a bit too far – and also brings on the gay male sorority fantasies….
3rd story – A killer mime story, this one is campy, gory fun with a very white trash twist, but I’m still a bigger fan of the killer mime short from director Armando Munoz.
However, this one does have a muscle cutie flexing for the camera.
4th story – A young woman’s life turns dark, evil, and very red when her Aunt Flo visits, both figuratively and literally. Meanwhile, her man is a fricking hunk – and has a moment enjoying solo nipple play.
5th story – A heavy-handed end to the anthology, this one is presented as a silent movie with a laugh track, while actually taking on the false concept of more “innocent” times, with a family wearing masks to hide what’s really going on behind closed doors – rape, incest, and other perversions. Definitely a change in tone compared to the rest of the film.
