They're coming to get you!

Today on Screaming Streaming, let the invasion begin! ALIEN ABDUCTION INCIDENT IN LAKE COUNTY is on.

Here is the film.

This film originally aired on UPN in 1998 and claims to show the footage that the McPherson family recorded on Thanksgiving that documents a home invasion by aliens. It's an early found footage film.

But....

It's scary as hell.

...or at least it was to me the first time I saw it.

As they are enjoying their holiday, the power goes off so they go outside to investigate. There they see a transformer popping and exploding, accounting for the power outage. As they wander further from the house they witness an alien craft down a ravine with the occupants doing something to the cattle. When the aliens spot them, they bolt for the house and try to convince the family of what they saw, to the expected reactions.

They stop the camera to show them the footage they just recorded and in the next scene the family is all visibly frightened. But their night is just beginning because these extra terrestrials are pissed off and begin assaulting their home.

Yes, of course we all know this is fiction but it plays the scary alien card wonderfully. It preys on our fear of a home invasion with a scarier twist. But when the film was aired, many people were confused and some thought it was a real home movie. Remember that this was before the boom of found footage and even before the Blair Witch was scaring up audiences. It is actually a bigger budget remake of an earlier incarnation also available on YouTube but I have yet to watch this one.

Wikipedia has an extensive article about the film. For more information on it, click this link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Abduction:_Incident_in_Lake_County

Sunday screams

As I ready to head out and make a horror film of my own, I'm going to quickly toss a movie your way. So here it is.

                            It's AXE aka CALIFORNIA AXE MASSACRE aka LISA, LISA.


                                   

                                                                                Here is the film. Enjoy.

                                                         An alternate poster for the film.

AXE is a film released in 1977 that follows three killers. After doing their thing across a small town they decide to descend upon a farm house inhabited by a young woman named Lisa and her paralyzed grandfather. After being abused by the trio, Lisa goes on a rampage and gets even with the dickhead psychos.

AXE was yet another film targeted and prosecuted as a Video Nasty in 1984. If it wasn't for that designation, it would have been long forgotten and probably would never have ended up here.

It's not a bad film actually as many of the films on the list are far less entertaining than this one.

And you thought your work week was tough?

So today begins a long weekend for me. Jetting off to Seattle for the day and returning the same day. Then it's a movie shoot bright and early Sunday. What a weekend! Oh, speaking of which........

Today's Screaming Streaming is SAVAGE WEEKEND from 1979.

Here is the film. I don't have much time this weekend, but maybe you do and need something to watch.

Plot wise there isn't too much to say about SAVAGE WEEKEND. It's about a group of friends that head out for the weekend to watch a boat being built but they get picked off by a psycho in a ghoulish mask. But how about this?

That is William Sanderson, who is better known as Larry from NEWHART. But in the 1970s he was known for a variety of less likable characters, such as in the Video Nasty, FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE. He is equally scumbaggish here in the role of Otis, a piece of shit local.

The one thing SAVAGE WEEKEND has going for it is actually it's complete ineptitude. Make a drinking game from it. It's fun. Take a drink each time you see the boom mic!

Well I know it's a short blog today but I really have to get my feet up and moving. Have a great weekend. And have a SAVAGE WEEKEND on Screaming Streaming.

The legend lives.

Beware of the Madman Marz, because today we're marked for his wrath.

MADMAN

                            

                                                    Watch it here. If you dare!

This film probably needs no introduction but you never know. Even though MADMAN is considered a cult horror film, it still gets missed by a lot of people. So since it is widely known, there's no need for a long drawn out plot description. Plus I'm lazy.

So these campers are gathered around the fire when one of them tells the story of Madman Marz, a local farmer that killed his family with an axe, got his nose lopped off, was hanged but broke free and then vanished. The legend says never to say his name above a whisper or he'll get you. To which this asshole.......

mocks the tale and calls out to Marz and then throws a rock at his old house. Oops. Bad idea. Now it's on, bitch!

So now it's a killer in the woods ala FRIDAY THE 13th., THE BURNING, DON'T GO IN THE WOODS, and so on. Not too original but MADMAN does it right and is a creepy ass film. Plus the killer looks like this.

One of the great things about this film is also the super eerie theme song. Behold.

Here's the theme song. I love it. A lot. The legend lives. Beware of the Madman Marz today on Screaming Streaming!

Sniffing tobacco

Well that's another way of saying SNUFF.

                                                            Which is the film of the day.


                       

                                               And of course, here is the film.

This is a notorious film although frankly, it doesn't deserve it. SNUFF is also known as SLAUGHTER and AMERICAN CANNIBALS. It follows a Manson style killer family and was made in 1971 but distributor, Allan Shackleton held on to it for a few years before tacking on a new ending. This is the reason for the film's fame. He created a scene where the camera crew of the original film murders a woman on screen. It was toted as being authentic and gave rise to the term, "snuff". Obviously this new ending was fake but it was marketed as real and Shackleton even recruited actors posing as protesters for the film's release. Even after the self-made controversy had settled, the film went on to become a popular film in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. It also became a target of the Video Nasty controversy and was prosecuted as such.

The film itself is nothing too remarkable though. It's a South American exploitation film with a cheesy "real" murder added to the last minutes.

A harrowing experience

Today's film comes with a warning. If you are easily offended, upset, or shocked, please skip today's entry. Try coming back tomorrow. Because we are covering this film. I will keep the pictures as clean as possible but this film is a beast.

It's the notorious film from T.F. Mous, MEN BEHIND THE SUN.

There it is on YouTube. But be warned. I'll explain why below.

This film documents the atrocities committed by the Japanese at the secret war camp, Unit 731 during World War II. The camp was the site of numerous experiments on mostly Chinese prisoners in an attempt to develop biological weapons, study the effects of various forms of trauma, and honestly, just to torture their enemies.

Because of the nature of their acts, it's very hard to find pictures for this movie that don't outright display those horrors. But here is a sampling of the experiments and scenes you can expect to see.

A man inside a decompression chamber has his intestines shoot out of his anus.
Prisoners wired to crosses in a field are subjected to bomb drops.
A boy is vivisected and his organs removed. This scene was actually done with a real cadaver of a young boy.
A woman is left outside in the snow and ice and water is poured over her arms, freezing them solid. Then they bring her inside, dip her arms in hot water, and then the flesh is easily stripped from her bones.

But in my opinion, the worst scene involves a cat in a room where the floor is alive with hungry rats. I think you get the point there. It also looks very realistic and it is possible that it is.

The guy in charge of these atrocities is General Shiro Ishii. He treats all of the prisoners as simple logs for the fire, calling them "marutos", which means just that. They treat them as subhuman objects.

I can keep going with descriptions of this film but I don't think I need to. I will say that this film is widely regarded as one of the most extreme films in existence and therefore I feel the need to state again that this film is not for everybody. It's a realistic drama that documents historical facts. Unit 731 was Hell on Earth and the film actually glosses over some of the nastier events that happened within the walls of the camp.

When I first saw this film over ten years ago, it floored me. It took me four days to shake it off. Most extreme films fade from my immediate mind within hours but this one was a real downer that stayed with me. As the years have past, it has lost some of its power over me but I must warn newbies. This is some fucked up shit. Be warned.

Super gore!

Alas, this is going to be a bloody day on Screaming Streaming. Because we head back to dependable Germany, where gore is fact of life and you pour blood directly onto your breakfast cereal.

Presenting Olaf Ittenbach's THE BURNING MOON.

                                         

Here it is with subtitles.

I was not kidding when I said this movie was gory. That is a serious understatement. This ranks right up there close behind Braindead and Das Komabrutale Duell. It's super badass in the grue department.

So in this flick Olaf himself plays a mullet-headed delinquent teenager who shoots up before giving his little sister two bedtime stories. The first is "Julia's Love" and concerns a serial killer that stalks a woman. While the second, "The Purity" follows an evil priest that allows a groundskeeper to take the fall over the girls he is killing. In the end, he gets his. And how! Seriously, the last minutes of this story is a prolonged Hell sequence in which the viewer is assaulted with a barrage of carnage. People getting ripped apart and separated in every possible way.

This cannot be stated enough. This movie is heavy on the gore. And in a very satisfying way. In that it never becomes a bore or a chore like it does in films like MURDER SET PIECES. It still tells a decent story and the outrageous nature of the violence is so extreme that you will not be disappointed. 

I remember seeing the trailer for this one on an old VHS copy of another sicko movie that may get reviewed in the near future but I remember thinking that the trailer and the obnoxious voiceover claiming it to be the goriest movie ever to be pretty hokey. In trailers and even this review, it's impossible to really show you too much and because of that, I didn't buy into that trailer. It looked stupid. But I was wrong. This is a great gore film and my personal favorite film from Ittenbach.