Varied Celluloid

	Mystery Science Theater 3000: Master Ninja 1 (1992)

Director:	Jim Mallon
Writers:	Paul Chaplin, Frank Conniff, Mike Gandolfi and Joel Hodgson
Starring:	Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu and Kevin Murphy

The Plot: Joel Hodgson is an employee at Gizmonic Institute when the evil Dr. Forrester shoots him into outer space on the Satellite of Love. Here he is forced to endure bad movies on a weekly basis. Thankfully Joel was able to build himself a few robotic friends to help him deal with these bad movies. Among these robots are Gypsy who runs the ship, cam-bot who watches their every action and of course the wise-cracking Crow and Tom Servo who help him riff on the movies as they watch them. In this episode, Joel and his robot friends take in some 80′s cheese! Ripped from a television series called The Master and packaged down in VHS form as feature length movies, this “film” features Lee Van Cleef as John Peter McAllister who is a Korean war veteran who has spent the majority of his life in Japan learning the secret arts of the ninja. Unknown to McAllister, back at home in America he has left behind a daughter. With this knowledge, he sets off back to America despite this action leaving him as a man now marked for death by his ninja clan. When he arrives he soon runs into a brash young man named Max Keller (Timothy Van Patten) who agrees to help McAllister find his daughter as long as he too can learn the ways of the ninja. What kind of wacky adventures will these two get into!?

	The Review

Within the Mystery Science Theater 3000 pantheon, there are a certain number of episodes that will always stand out from my memory. There are the big ones, such as the Joe Don Baker epic Mitchell or the infamously horrible Manos: The Hands of Fate, but there are sporadic titles that really jumped out to me when I first discovered the series. Master Ninja was certainly one of those first titles I looked into when going through the back catalog of MST3K episodes. It goes without saying that ninjas are easily one of the most fun and campy of characters in all of cinema, so can you imagine the type of Ninja movie that would be chosen for riffing on MST3K? Considering how horrible most ninja movies really are, the concept that any one single ninja movie could be chosen for the MST3K treatment really boggles the mind! Then as I discovered some of the background history for Master Ninja 1, I knew I absolutely had to see this episode. You take Lee Van Cleef and Timothy Van Patton, you put the two of them in a very bad action-tv-serial and you get pure gold! Now, take this bad TV and edit down a couple of episodes into a feature length VHS release and you truly have a product that was meant for Mystery Science Theater 3000!

Yep, this was originally a television series known as The Master and ran for one season before being compiled into a series of straight to video VHS releases that found their way to the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew. The guys find a mountain of returning jokes to make throughout the “movie” as well as the returning sequel Master Ninja 2 which is also featured in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Volume XX box set. The fun that they have with Lee Van Cleef’s beer gut, which makes him look very pregnant, is priceless. Another returning joke revolves around Timothy Van Patten’s apparent mush-mouth which prevents the audience from understanding the majority of his dialogue. Although one could hardly expect anything more, another source of hilarity for the crew comes in the form of the non-existent continuity. Joel and the bots come out guns-a-blazing and they never let up, using their returning jokes to create some of the funniest moments in MST3K history as far as I am concerned. As the third act (or fourth act maybe? Considering the way this was slapped together, you can expect things to be a bit jumpy) finally rolls around, Joel and the bots really find their groove and lampoon this silly “movie” for all that it is worth.

Timothy Van Patten may ultimately be the main star of this show, even in a title featuring genre greats such as Lee Van Cleef and Sho Kosugi! This may simply be from the excellent riffing from the MST3K crew, who lampoon the poor guy relentlessly. His mumbling dialogue becomes a true source of entertainment that far outshines the cheap car chases and pathetic martial arts choreography. As the movie rolls around, Tom Servo’s Timothy Van Patten “impression” begins to really take over for some of the best moments. In almost every movie the riffers will latch on to one particular character who they feel they HAVE to make fun, and Timothy Van Patten receives a grilling best reserved for Joe Don Baker. This is where the fun comes in! Although I’m sure at this point the ridicule sounds mean-spirited, believe me it is not! Joel and the crew are witty and on-point throughout the episode and although they take shots, it is never personal.

	Host Segments and Special Features

The host segments for Master Ninja 1 may be some of the best from the Volume XX box set! The invention exchange (a spot that primarily came up during the intro for the Joel years which had Joel & the bots exchanging an invention with the evil Dr. Forrester) has some of the better prop comedy from the entire set as we see the positive effects that flavored IV drips can have as well as pop-up books for various classic pieces of literature! The Timothy Van Patten mania spreads from the screening room as Tom Servo explains the massive Illuminati-like conspiracy that the Van Patten family have plotted out for the American public. There are some dress-up moments with the guys donning the roles from their “movie” and finally we learn the many variations for the nunchaku, such as Nun-Clucks, Thumb-Chucks, Ground-Chucks and of course Up-Chucks! In the special features we actually have an interview with one of the stars from the movie! Bill McKinney who plays the sherriff who tries to hunt down our ninja friends. He expresses his appreciation for the show and also shows some affection for the original The Master television program that this entire project was ripped from.

	The Conclusion

There isn’t really a lot left to say, is there? The “movie” is utter nonsense and it can’t help that. Hours and hours worth of television product reduced to a series of endless scenes that ultimately don’t connect with one another due to the careless editing. Although we make fun, I think its important to realize the background information revolving around a movie like this. Who knows, perhaps The Master was a logical and fun TV show? In this current state however, it is rife with silly little problems that make for one of the very best MST3K episodes from the earlier years. I mean, this is the episode that gave us the Master Ninja Theme Song! Track down the box set for this episode alone and for the amazing theme song that Joel and the bots free style during the closing of the movie. Highly recommended!

	Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Magic Voyage of Sinbad (1993)

Director:	Kevin Murphy
Writers:	Joel Hodgson, Michael J. Nelson, etc.
Starring:	Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu and Kevin Murphy

The Plot: Joel Hodgson is an employee at Gizmonic Institute when the evil Dr. Forrester shoots him into outer space on the Satellite of Love. Here he is forced to endure bad movies on a weekly basis. Thankfully Joel was able to build himself a few robotic friends to help him deal with these bad movies. Among these robots are Gypsy who runs the ship, cam-bot who watches their every action and of course the wise-cracking Crow and Tom Servo who help him riff on the movies as they watch them. In this episode, the Russian import The Magic Voyage of Sinbad is screened for Joel and the bots. The movie showcases Sinbad’s return home where he finds the rich have tremendously dominated the poor. After speaking with the gods and then winning a chance to lead a magical voyage (by betting the local bourgeois that he could find a golden fish just off the shore), Sinbad acquires his crew and sets off to find the Blue Bird of Happiness!

	The Review

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 volume 20 box set from Shout! Factory carries with it four episodes of everyone’s favorite show about riffing on b-movies. This box set grabs up several never-before-released episodes from the years that Joel managed hosting duties. From the box set I had only seen two of the episodes previously, but today I am going to tackle one that I unfortunately had not seen. The Magic Voyage of Sinbad could only have been slightly more perfect for the MST3K treatment if it were actually slightly more realistically “bad”, instead of being an exploited piece of foreign cinema. A Russian fantasy epic based around a well known medieval legend, the movie was imported into the United States by well known exploitation master Roger Corman under the guise of a Sinbad film. In America, I suppose the original titular character Sadko wouldn’t have seemed as important for modern audiences. So with a retitled lead character those responsible then attempted to try and incorporate various aspects of Roman mythology into the equation as well. The result was a bizarre piece of entertainment that was simply MADE for Joel and the bots to do their thing over. That isn’t to say that the original Sadko looks like a bad movie. I would say that if you stripped away the awful dub and translation, this looks like a fairly solid adventure yarn with a sizable budget. There are some amazing set pieces throughout the movie, as well as multitudes of extras who run around vast and beautiful looking architecture that has a deep seated historical Russian significance. On top of being a film that looks fairly interesting, when compared to some brief outlines I have read of the original Sadko mythology, this looks to be a direct representation of the post-war Russian government’s party-line and it might have an even deeper cultural significance. All of this is completely lost within The Magic Voyage of Sinbad because Sinbad is supposed to be an Arab figure, so all references to Russia are ultimately lost despite the grand Russian architecture being ever apparent. Within the MST3K version of the story, this becomes one of the recurring jokes throughout the movie and certainly one of the funniest. This ultimately becomes a movie with no singular cultural identification and the audience, for those who have at least the most vague understanding of foreign culture, are left in the dark as what to expect.

Joel and the bots are definitely on-point within this episode as their riffing is witty and the guys really get across how ludicrous this entire production is. Their references are as glib and obscure as they have ever been, with name-drops for John Rhys Davies pre-Lord of the Rings, Michael Nesbith and there’s even a hilarious moment where the guys riff on Dan Haggerty. The scene revolves around one character wrestling with a bear, a bear that Joel and company assure us is trying to have an intervention with the famed Life and Times of Grizzly Adams star. Strange? Absolutely. Obscure? Without a doubt. Funny? You bet your bottom dollar. That’s part of the MST3K joy though. Even when the guys are too obscure to understand, they still find a way to make things somehow tie together and work on a general comedic basis. Normally I tend not to enjoy the episodes where the guys riff on movies that are actually better than average (Hamlet always comes to mind), but with the absolute disrespect shown towards the original Russian film, watching this became a real pleasure. I mean… Vikings in a Sinbad movie?

	Host Segments and Special Features

Mystery Science Theater 3000 is as well known for its riffing on movies as it is the goofy host segments that come in between the movie breaks. There are a few really good bits from this episode, including an awards show spoof where Crow wins for “Best Performance by a Red Gumball Machine-Looking Robot” despite Tom Servo’s vocalized anger of the situation. At one point Crow also flies on a rocket ship outside the Satellite of Love in an attempt to go on a magical voyage similar to our her Sinbad… turns out, this is a pretty bad idea. The disc for Magic Voyage of Sinbad also packs a couple of special features. Included here is an introduction for the film from Trace Beaulieu (the voice of Crow T. Robot) as well as the Mystery Science Theater Hour wraps for the episode. This is essentially the bumper segments that were hosted by Mike Nelson whenever the show was split into segments for syndication by Comedy Central. Very neat!

	The Conclusion

While it doesn’t jump to the top of my list for best Joel episodes, The Magic Voyage of Sinbad turns out to be one of the best features on this box set and was a real surprise to me. If I were to vote on the actual movie itself, I would probably give it a two out of five. There’s no way for me to know whether the original Sadko was a decent enough film or not, but as things are, the picture we have here lacks a lot of the originality that so many fantasy films of the time had but it does make up for that with the quality special effects (for their time) and the tremendous set design and cinematography. As an episode of MST3K however, I have to call this a solid four out of five. I really liked this episode, almost to the point of love, and I think I will return to it several times over the years. Definitely check it out if you’re given the time!

	Penitentiary (1979)

Director:	Jamaa Fanaka
Writers:	Jamaa Fanaka
Starring:	Leon Isaac Kennedy, Wilbur ‘Hi-Fi’ White and Thommy Pollard

The Plot: Martel ‘Too Sweet’ Gordone (played by Leon Isaac Kennedy) is a tough young man who runs into some trouble with a couple of bikers who try their best to rough up a young prostitute. When ‘Too Sweet’ begins to batter the two goons, he is struck over the head with a bottle and knocked unconscious. When he awakens, he is in prison. A victim of the racist system, Too Sweet must now contend with life on the inside. The prison is ran by a group of individuals who are obsessed with breaking in the fresh meat, so that they can make them their sexual slaves. ‘Too Sweet’ however refuses to give in and displays his tremendous natural fighting ability. This gets him a shot in a boxing competition that offers many rewards, such as free time with a woman and even time taken off of a sentence! Will ‘Too Sweet’ make it through the tournament and what will happen with his new enemies within the penitentiary?

	The Review

By the time the seventies were coming to a close the blaxploitation genre was beginning to fade into obscurity, certainly when looked at in comparison to its popularity during the years previous. There were still films being made, such as Rudy Ray Moore’s Disco Godfather (1979) and South African Death of a Snow Man (1978) amongst many others, but the lines had been blurred so much at this point that this genre, that never really was a “genre”, was beginning to peter out. Director Jamaa Fanaka was a filmmaker from a specific time, who could only have worked within that very specific generation, and his time and place was within African American independent cinema during the 1970′s. Best known for the Penitentiary trilogy, Fanaka is a very different and interesting character from blaxploitation film history. Since the majority of all casts in blaxploitation films were obviously African American, many might have been left with the impression that these films were also directed and written by African Americans themselves. This was unfortunately not the case on most occasions. There were only a hand full of African Americans standing behind the camera within this movement. Fanaka is interesting because, unlike someone like Melvin Van Peoples, Fanaka had a definite love for genre filmmaking. Each one of his five films, made between the years of 1975 to 1992, all fall within the lines of genre-cinema in some form or another. Often times they were bent into weird and unrecognizable shapes along the way, but by and large his films had a certain commercial aesthetic to them that lead many to embrace his particular form of entertainment. Penitentiary itself stands out as easily one of the better, and certainly most interesting, prison films made within this time and era. The film opens up as a regular run of the mill exploitation film, starting off in a dusty desert surrounding with a group of bikers harassing ‘Too Sweet’. Your first impression is that this film will take us the route of a generic biker film similar to Born Losers (the first Billy Jack film which featured similar scenery and a biker’s run-amuck plot device), but in the very first moment where we actually enter into the prison system: we are transported to a different world. This is where the film delivers something completely unlike anything you have ever seen before. Characters break through the fourth wall on regular occurrence, walking directly into the camera and staring into it while mouthing inaudible words and threats while their happiness and anger scream intimidation. Their wild stares and incessant dancing gives the appearance of something foreign, or completely wild, hidden away within our “justice” system. The criminal system, within the first few shots, is shown to be a complete and total madhouse. Insanity at it’s most tantamount. This isn’t a place to be reformed, it’s a place where sanity is apparently deprived of all its citizenry. Within this secular society, all of societal norms have been flipped upside down and a war of sexual orientation is being battled about.

Although, at its very heart, this is a very simple boxing story set within a prison and has a fair amount of comedy thrown in to entertain, but one gets the idea that Fanaka definitely went for some of the social commentary that his film makes. The state of the criminal system is of course shown to be predominately black, with several allusions to slavery being made in the form of homosexual aggression lead by a select number of authoritative leaders within the prison. Fresh prisoners who aren’t acclimated to the rough and tumble way of life that is now in front of them are made into sexual slaves for the high ranking gang leaders. Human beings are treated as objects, expressed perfectly in one pivotal sequence where the young Laverne is chastised by another inmate and is told “You my stuff now! You my stuff!”. The heartlessness of slavery is captured within scenes such as this better than any civil war feature I believe that I have ever seen. Although the white warden isn’t shown to be as insufferable as many of the black inmates, he is still very much a plantation-owner of sorts. The character generally even looks the part. So, within this strange world of slavery upon slavery, the character of Too Sweet stands up as a strong black male who may be held within the confines of this system, the prison/America, but he will not play ball and he will fight to have what he desperately wants: freedom/equality. This is all very surface level observations, but what I like about Penitentiary is that we as the audience can pick up on these small bits of subtext but at the same time we can also enjoy the plentiful action sequences throughout. Never willing to abandon the fun nature of cinema, Fanaka crafts an action film in the midst of his counter-cultural observation on American “justice”. The action is generally divided into two parts: the realistic boxing sequences, and then the rehearsed and choreographed street fights. As a fight fan myself (boxing and mixed martial arts), I always keep an eye on fight choreography. What is interesting about Penitentiary is the way many of the in-ring boxing sequences are handled. Rather than a Rocky style of back and forth action, which is often well choreographed but entirely fake looking, the actors in Penitentiary look to really throw their punches and are legitimately trying to make contact with one another. If you have ever seen a legitimate street fight between two untrained guys who simply want to slug it out and throw the most ridiculous haymakers that they possibly can, then you have seen what some of the boxing in Penitentiary looks like. Overhand lefts and overhand rights, thrown in succession without halting, by both combatants… that is really all there is to these boxing sequences, but in the context of the movie it works tremendously well. After all, these are just men throwing punches at each other without any kind of legitimate training. When a fighter who has no self control steps into the ring within any full contact sport, they will act in basically the same fashion. When offense seems to work, who cares about defense?

	The Conclusion

Does Penitentiary have issues? Sure! You can pick it apart, with the budget obviously being a factor in many of the goals Fanaka likely had for his film. However, I must say, Penitentiary succeeds as a piece of entertainment and as a time capsule for independent African American filmmaking. I have become such a fan of this movie, I can’t help but recommend it. I give it a four out of five stars and hope others take the time to track it down if they have not already!

	The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971)

Director:	Sergio Martino
Writers:	Vittorio Caronia, Ernesto Gastaldi, Eduardo Manzanos Brochero
Starring:	Edwige Fenech, George Hilton and Ivan Rassimov

The Plot: Our film begins with a prostitute being picked up from the side of the road and eventually being murdered with a straight razor, by an unknown assailant. We skip forward and meet Julie Wardh (Edwige Fenech), who is being utterly ignored by her businessman husband. He’s more interested in stocks than her, which has led to some disillusionment within their marriage. When Mrs. Wardh first hears about this murder, which happened very close by to her home, a slight amount of paranoia begins to creep into her mind. She finds that her former boyfriend, Jean, is still hanging around town after her long departure for America and he hasn’t let go of the past. Jean and Julie had a torrid love affair at one point, and Jean is well known for his enjoyment of kinky and rough sexual activities. Soon, George (George Hilton) enters into the picture as well and the young man seems to understand where Julie is coming from and desperately wants to protect her. Now, with this murderer on a rampage and Julie’s own sexual desires going unfulfilled she will find herself wrapped up in a torrid wind of violence, sexual awakening and mystery.

	The Review

The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, on paper, is a total Eurocult wet dream. Any self proclaimed fan of genre film would be hard pressed not to salivate upon first reading up on the film. Directed by genre great Sergio Martino, who brought us the Giallo favorite Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key amongst a litany of other works, and also starring the number one Giallo vixen of all time: Edwige Fenech. How could you not be excited? Throw in George Hilton as well as Ivan Rassimov (the creepy blonde haired guy from another Martino/Fenech teamup, All the Colors of the Dark) and you have an all-star cast with a brilliant director and a script that dares to compile more than just your basic top-layer content. The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh is actually a surprisingly psycho-sexual piece of Giallo cinema that delves heavily into the words of sado-masochism while also delivering the expected doses of mystery and suspense that we have come to expect. While the very end product may not be the very best the genre has ever produced, Martino displays all of his best traits with this film and we are ultimately left with a very strong genre-bending thriller that is sure to please the fans. This film, as with much of the entire Giallo film genre, is comprised of both visually impressive properties and a strong linear-narrative focus. A all too common problem with Giallo pictures however is when filmmakers have dared to be wittier than their audience, and in the process craft stories that are near impossible to decipher. So often in these films you’ll find a murder mystery that the audience has no ability to solve, due to the handicap that the filmmakers take advantage of by proudly using their ability to manipulate the entire plot to service their purpose. Martino’s film may not have the most fair twists and turns, as he also takes advantage of his position as master puppeteer, but at the very least you can say that the red herrings aren’t entirely without purpose and the general plot moves along with a sense of purpose and thus we, the audience, are able to keep up with these narrative tropes. It’s an easy enough film to keep up with as a viewer, and being as linear as it is we are able to absorb so much more than just the pretty shades of red.

There’s no question about it however, the visual flare is part of what makes the entire experience so magical. The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh is easily one of Martino’s most visually impressive films, which is interesting since it is hist first foray into the world of Giallo cinema. This young effort displays a brilliant exhibition of everything that made the Giallo such an amazing genre, and solidified Sergio Martino as one of the most prominate filmmakers within the Eurocult film world. There are little bursts of creativity throughout Mrs. Wardh… that simply left me, as a viewer and lover of the genre, with a wide grin across my face. Martino is let loose here, and completely decorates the screen with as many wild and unnaturally vibrant primary colors as one could possibly find. Martino frames shots without any care for blase film school techniques. He is a filmmaker that creates what he feels will look best, and if that makes him a style over substance director then so be it. In example, during a tense moment where a female character is being stalked, Martino uses a low angle that looks up toward the female as she walks around an absolutely gorgeous park setting. While the normal frame of mind would tell you this is a shot used to show superiority and strength, Martino manages to get quite the opposite effect by his use of audio cues and the simple narrative formula up until this point. We know that this is a woman in trouble, our soundtrack reinforces this and Martino manages to use whatever angles and techniques are at his disposal in order to get his point across. A sexual travelogue, what vices may have been considered “strange” by the standards of the 1970′s are seen in a different light by today’s standards. The “strange vice” from our title refers to the S&M relationship that the titular Mrs. Wardh had with Jean (Rassimov) before leaving and restarting her life. Sex dominates the world that our characters live within, but rarely does the film seem to simply feature sex for the sake of titilation. There are moments such as a bathing sequence where Fenech displays her skin, as well as the party scene where two women rip the clothes off of one another for no real reason, but this enters the audience into this strange fantasy world of heightened sexuality. Dreamlike in its eroticism, the flashbacks that Fenech’s character has are some of the most beautiful and exquisite shots of their type that I have ever seen. Played entirely in slow motion, with the beautiful score provided by Nora Orlandi () playing along gently in the background, we watch as Mrs. Wardh is slapped around and made love to by the dangerous and violent Jean. These sequences, where we also see Jean playing around with sharp objects, go far beyond what these sequences probably call for but are spectacular for delving so far into cinematic style.

	The Conclusion

A tremendous piece of Giallo cinema. While it may not top the very pillars of what the genre is capable of, it certainly establishes everything that makes these films so though provoking and fun. A taboo pushing piece of mystery storytelling, with a brilliant cast and visual style for days, I have to say I definitely recommend it. If you’re in the mood for something interest in the world of the Giallo, you can’t go wrong with this title. I give it a four out of five!

	The Taint (2010)

Director:	Drew Bolduc & Dan G. Nelson
Writers:	Drew Bolduc
Starring:	Drew Bolduc, Ariel Canton and Cody Crenshaw

The Plot: Phil O’Ginny is a bleach-blonde-mullet-haired young man who awakens next to his girlfriend while out camping. He is coming off a rough patch with his previous girlfriend and is looking to have some fun pre-marital sex. His weekend plans are ruined however when a crazy redneck, dripping feces from his pajama bottoms, startles him by running out of the woods holding a sickle. He attempts to kill our mullet-haired hero, but O’Ginny runs away from this insane farmer who also happens to have his giant penis standing outside of his pants. As Phil travels the woods, he runs into a former forest ranger who explains how the water supply has turned all of the men in town into raging psychopaths whose penises have taken over their brains. Now all these psychos want to do is kill and hump! Can Phil and this young lady discover just what happened to the ‘tainted’ water supply and put a stop to this madness before its too late?

	The Review

I was first contacted about The Taint via an e-mail from the director a few weeks back, where he forwarded me a link to the official website which also hosts a streaming copy of the trailer. From there, I found myself hypnotized by the dazzling color-inverted image of a young man surrounded by a ring of floating penises that seemed to drag on into infinity. Drew Bolduc, the co director and writer of The Taint, must keep an eye on Varied Celluloid, because he seems to know precisely the type of things that would catch my attention. I have a pretty expansive collection revolving around strange and trangressive cinematic oddities, and The Taint is something that will sit right alongside films such as Hanzo the Razor: Sword of Justice and Bad Biology, but it will also sit proudly next to any Troma collection that one might have. The Taint, to be short, is a strange mix of very cool ideas, very crude ideas and an infatuation with the male anatomy quite unlike anything I have ever seen before. The sheer number of mangled penises you are going to see in this movie will blow your mind… I have no real segue from that sentence, but only with a movie like this could you ever start off a paragraph with that precise string of words. While the trailer for The Taint gave me visions of Gaspar Noe and various arthouse influences, the actual film itself is much more in line with the works of John Waters or other various deviant filmmakers who intentionally push the envelope for what is considered acceptable in modern cinema. What I think I like about the film though is the level of intelligence that seems to run throughout, despite the incredibly juvenile content. Drew Bolduc and his crew did not simply want to make a Troma movie with squirting penises, that is obvious. The film is infused with a deft pace that starts off at a jog and quickly escalates into a full blown run, after only a few minutes time. The pace, combined with the very modern and stylish look help the audience buy into the movie, even if the acting can lean towards the Troma level of intentional-unintentional-comedy.

We have seen digital FX creators become more and more involved in the creation of independent films in a stronger fashion than prosthetic FX artists ever dared to dream of in the past. This comes from the easy access that filmmakers now have with software that can reproduce CGI that rivals the large corporate Hollywood machine. District 9 and Monsters are two of the better known examples of self made CGI, made by the director, helping get a film made and a story told, and while the FX work in The Taint pales in comparison – so does the budget and the amount of people actually involved in creating the FX work here. Drew Bolduc and his friend collaborated and created an indie film, with no budget, that actually does a decent job in showing a somewhat believable apocalyptic scenario. Well, it’s hard to take any apocalyptic scenario serious when there are so many exposed penises on display throughout the movie, but there are some very interesting and hard to accomplish shots that Bolduc and crew were able to get for their movie through their use of CGI, and it looks surprisingly good.

This movie is bound to offend some of you, there’s no doubt about it. That is the entire purpose. The movie was made with the singular goal of making some laugh, and making some flee into a rage of anger. We start our film off with a real scene of vomit from our leading man Drew Bolduc, who proceeds to heave for several seconds. I didn’t even have to listen to the audio commentary to realize that this was indeed true vomit, as the disgusting amounts that pour out of his mouth tells us everything we need to know. The movie proceeds from there into just about every other form of offensive behavior a group of males could possibly get into. We watch as a young woman slices off a cute little squirrel’s head with a Indiana Jones style whip. We see dozens and dozens of penises (these are massive dildo’s that appropriately hang from every “infected” male’s zipper) explode via gunshots during one epic sequence near the end of the film. One of my personal favorite sequences features a group of 80′s style rockers who are living out in the woods, trying to avoid ‘the taint’, who sort of epitomize the most blatant homosexual trends of 80′s fashion. Indeed, they consistently make allusions to fisting and other acts involved in gay-sex but hide behind their macho attitudes. With nicknames like Balloon Knot, Suave Daddy, Chilli Dog, Pink Sock and Alligator Fuckhouse… you can just imagine the sort of movie that this is.

The Taint does have its issues, there’s no doubt. I don’t think even its most vocal proponents could deny that. The acting is over the top, as is customary for this sort of thing. Many of the actors are incredibly deadpan and lack any degree of believability. After years of going through indie films, I am rather immune to this sort of thing but I also realize that there are others who are not. The movie will also have troubles with audiences who aren’t as well prepared for this particular style of humor. This is offensive and occasionally disturbing material to be sure. Not everyone can lower their mind directly into the gutter, which is something that will benefit any audience member who decides to take on The Taint. It’s a movie that derives its humor from situations involving a woman smashing open her boyfriend’s head and then cuddling his brain while sentimental music plays in the background.

The movie does a good job in the splatstick department, but I will commend it for some witty writing as well. This, along with the competent special FX and AMAZING soundtrack, truly make it stand out as something different than your average “bad on purpose” indie project. As I am running out of time at this point, I will just take a quick moment to say that the soundtrack truly is something special. Similar to Cannibal Holocaust, Bolduc and company decided that the best route would be to include a soundtrack that doesn’t necessarily elicit a “disturbing” atmosphere, but instead went for something much more lighthearted. The soundtrack seems to be made up of 8-Bit musical cues, similar to what you would hear from older gaming consoles. I know of several bands that create music in this genre, and as a fan, I just adored the score here.

Despite bad line delivery, there are some truly funny moments throughout The Taint that stand on their own without any kind of prop or gore effect. There are small things, like the numerous times where we see Phill O’Ginny dramatically remove his sunglasses, in true CSI: Miami fashion, only to replace them with a different colored version of the same “Stunner Shades”. Bizarre but hilarious moments like this were what kept me tuned in, regardless of how wild the gory content may have been. There are numerous memorable lines within the movie as well. “Yield beast!”, yelled aloud during the previously mentioned scene involving the squirrel, certainly comes to mind. Ultimately, that’s just the beginning of the great lines. While watching the movie and taking notes, nearly all of my written notes were simply quotes pulled from the movie. “Who was that large c**ked man?”, “Must be f*gs! Total f***ing queers!” and “I HATE WOMEN!!” were definitely standouts, but this is a movie rife with contenders.

	The Conclusion

The Taint is so far into the realm of vulgarity, that it ceases to be shocking at times. You will find yourself absorbed in a bizarre and horrifying world, filled to the brim with exploding penises and fecal jokes. It’s smart enough to avoid some of the worst pitfalls that movies like this sometimes have, but it’s such a strange movie that I have a hard time rating it. I won’t lie, for pure entertainment value… I love The Taint. Will everyone else? Not likely. It should gain some cult notoriety however. This is too strange and violent for people not to want to pass around. If you think you might be one to enjoy the insanity, search this one out! I give a four out of five, which may be somewhat high for this sort of thing, but I have nothing but fond memories left from having watched it.