Controversial Dutch sex comedy comes to Blu-ray from Cult Epics
Blending edgy MIDNIGHT COWBOY arthouse neorealism with cheeky softcore pornography, director Wim Verstappen’s controversial and long unseen 1971 Dutch sex comedy BLUE MOVIE has finally spurted its way to Blu-ray courtesy of Eurotrash heroes Cult Epics and it’s cause for a kind of celebration. Because the movie (produced by the notorious Pim de la Parra) is a vital piece of the Dutch film industry’s evolution. It’s also tons of dirty, breezy fun and a fascinating time capsule of its time and place.
The lanky, Hugh Metsers plays Michael, an amiable lad just out of prison for shagging an underage girl who suddenly finds himself appendage deep in the early days of the swingin’ 70s. With the help from his ever-stressed and oddly paternal parole office, Michael is set up in a modern apartment complex and urged to both find a job and a nice single lady to settle down with. Alone and horny, Michael catches the eye of a slew of sexy housewives and soon, he’s moving from suite to suite, “borrowing sugar” and getting his rocks off with a bevy of liberated ladies. Before he knows it, this Dutch Don Juan become a kind of sexual guru, setting up a series of orgies and milking his new found freedom for all its worth.
To time with the impending release of the upcoming DELIRIUM Magazine #18, artist and designer Chad Savage has totally re-vamped our web portal www.DeliriumMagazine.com! In the coming weeks, expect a new wave of fresh, original content, including film and music reviews, exclusive interviews, essays and news as well as sneak peek looks at pages from our acclaimed print magazine!
Here’s a page from our exclusive interview with Oscar nominated screenwriter (GLADIATOR, SWEENEY TODD, SKYFALL, ALIEN: COVENANT) and PENNY DREADFUL creator John Logan, discussing his adoration of both Shakespeare AND horror movies. It’s a wild read!
This feature and tons more await you in our David Cronenberg-heavy 18th issue (scroll down to see our incredible cover by photographer Ama Lea) and you can order that issue now by going HERE!
Keep visiting www.DeliriumMagazine.com and explore some of the great editorial we’ll be running. At DELIRIUM, we’re not just riffing on horror movies, but ALL cult, fantasy, exploitation and oddball cinema. We just throw all our messy shared psyches at the wall and whatever sticks ends up in our magazine, and now…here. You never know what you’re gonna get.
Thanks for reading and sticking with us. Things are about to get weird (er)!
– Chris Alexander, EIC and co-founder, DELIRIUM Magazine
Prolific Eurohorror auteur Jess Franco made over 200 films in his wildly erratic, fascinating career. Among them is the visually splendid, extremely violent and intense 1976 retelling of JACK THE RIPPER, starring the one and only madman of the arthouse Klaus Kinski as Dr. Orloff/The Ripper.
DELIRIUM has an exclusive new interview with legendary European exploitation http://premier-pharmacy.com/product-category/anti-fungal/ film producer Erwin C. Dietrich and Swiss actress Nikola Weisse on the making of this Franco classic and working with two of genre cinema’s most interesting artists.
Filled with amazing art and edifying words, this is our most outrageous issue yet!
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And look for a MAJOR Full Moon/Jess Franco announcement in the coming week!
By Jerry Smith
To call Bruno Mattei’s HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD (aka-NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES, VIRUS and ZOMBIE CREEPING FLESH) a guilty pleasure would be the understatement of the year. It’s in NO way a “good” movie. It’s incoherent at times, full of confusing actions by its characters and is easily one of the worst of the Italian zombie films that followed the craze set forth by George A. Romero’s 1978 classic, DAWN OF THE DEAD.
With that said, and with its warts and all, it’s impossible to say that the film is not one entertaining train wreck to watch, a film so full of randomness and blood, that you find yourself as a viewer completely enthralled by what’s playing out in front of you. With its story of a military experiment called the “Hope Project” gone horribly wrong, setting the undead loose on the world, HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD is a film that revels in its absurdity, showcasing everything from zombies chewing on peoples’ necks to one odd sequence in which a group of soldiers stumble upon a couple of journalists before coming across a tribal village. Having “Spent a year studying the tribe”, the female journalist does what anyone would do in that situation: strips completely naked, paints her breasts and acts like a tribal member. It is choices like those that make the film so odd, yet when the zombie action hits, you find yourself enthralled EVERY SINGLE TIME, no matter how absurd the rest of the film is. I dare anyone watching the film for the first time, to act like they saw the end of the film coming, with it giving gore fans one of the most unexpected yet welcomed death scenes in ages.
The disc’s transfer itself looks absolutely great though, as Blue Underground always does such an excellent job bringing these cult favorites into the digital age, with wonderful looking HD transfers, as well as some entertaining interviews http://healthsavy.com/product/amoxicillin/ with various people involved.
Where the double feature REALLY stands out, is the second Mattei film in the set, the 1984 rodents vs. post-apocalyptic bikers feature, RATS: NIGHT OF TERROR. If HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD is the sillier and more absurd of the two, RATS is exactly what it sounds like it would be: an extremely entertaining film, full of memorable characters, sequences and some gnarly effects to boot.
Involving a gang of bikers (including DEMONS star Geretta Geretta, see DELIRIUM #3 for a full interview) coming across a seemingly empty village and discovering that not only is the village NOT deserted, but that rats have killed its residents and now have their sights on the gang. If battling hundreds of murderous rats wasn’t bad enough, the gang slowly lose their cool and begin to turn on each other as well, leading to a battle of who is truly in charge, something that seems quite silly, when some gnarly rats are wanting to make you into their snack.
RATS is pure entertainment from the beginning to the very end, a film that instantly transports you to the time in which we’d get a steady amount of films involving larger than life plots like that of films like these, a time that has sadly been lost in the genre films that tend to take themselves a bit too seriously these days. Seeing older films like RATS, filled to the brim with larger than life characters and situations puts a smile on my face from ear to ear.
Like HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD, RATS: NIGHT OF THE TERROR looks superb, yet another reason that Blue Underground is currently one of the best companies putting out genre favorite films onto brand new Blu-ray HD transfers. With this excellent double feature set and their recent Blu-ray release of Soavi’s STAGEFRIGHT, I can’t wait to see what the folks at Blue Underground have up their sleeve next.
DELIRIUM is at the 2014 TORONTO AFTER DARK FILM FESTIVAL and will be reviewing new horror and cult films right from the front lines of the festival. Here’s our first entry from critic and writer Cheryl Singleton.
By Cheryl Singleton
As a fan of Richard Bates Jr.’s deliciously disturbing 2012 debut EXCISION, I was anxious to feast my eyes on what would follow. A first taste via the trailer for SUBURBAN GOTHIC did not disappoint. With a super-saturated bubblegum palate, snappy dialogue and a killer cast including Matthew Gray Gubler (CRIMINAL MINDS), Kat Dennings (NICK AND NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST) and the fan favourite Ray Wise (TWIN PEAKS) I was ready to take another bloody ride with the director.
Having missed the World Premiere at Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival back in August, I was delighted to see it would be playing on the opening night of the 9 day Toronto After Dark Film Festival along with Gerard Johnstone’s popular genre mash-up HOUSEBOUND. The two were a perfect pair of oddly hilarious horror films that left a smile on my face for the rest of the night.
While not in the flesh at the screening, Bates Jr. provided a video intro where he warned that this film would be “totally a complete departure from my last movie” Noting that he was unable to get a film made after the graphically disturbing EXCISION, he fell into a depression that led him to revisit things from his childhood that made him happy including watching ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK and SCOOBY DOO cartoons and reading THE HARDY BOYS. With that in mind I was ready to sink into this “children’s film for adults” that he had created.
Unable to find a job in upper management after completing business school, Raymond (Gray Gubler) has no choice but to move back in with his parents in the small town he thought he had escaped years ago. Once an overweight kid obsessed with the supernatural and prone to ghostly visions and high-pitched http://premier-pharmacy.com/product-category/womans-health/ screams, Raymond has shed the pounds and stopped communicating with the dead, though he remains an outsider thanks to his “European” style of dress and hair that is a character unto itself. Raymond’s parents are split on his return. His mother Eve (Barbara Niven) channels the perfect 50’s housewife and is thrilled to have her little boy back home while his ridiculously bigoted football coach father Donald (Wise) couldn’t be more embarrassed by the arrival of his jobless metro-sexual son.
Bonding with the local bartender Becca (Dennings) over too many drinks, regrettable tattoos and the shared disdain for their town, the snarky pair become fast friends. When Raymond begins to experience strange paranormal occurrences at home (including a particularly cringe worthy piano/ toe nail duet) the two form a misfit ghost hunting team armed with Becca’s trusty crowbar to get to the bottom of it. Gray Gubler and Dennings each bring a crackling energy to the screen which is at its best when they are together. The end of the film suggests more mysteries are in store for the duo and I can only hope to see these explored in some fashion.
While the pace slows at the end of the second act, some secondary characters including the local bullies feel unnecessary and Donald’s prejudices begin to feel a bit heavy, it is not enough to derail the overall fun of the movie.
SUBURBAN GOTHIC is a grown up SCOOBY-DOO mystery complete with characters disguising themselves as ghosts by wearing bed sheets, but by no means is it childish. Between the razor sharp dialogue, the over the top costuming (kudos to designer Anthony Tran), the punk rock energy and the amount of time the characters spend speaking directly into the camera, this film is in your face from start to finish.
EXCISION and SUBURBAN GOTHIC could not be more different yet I was equally enthralled with both. I can’t wait to see what Richard Bates Jr. does next.
