The Butcher

By Jimmy Squarejaw

When you have Mr. Kim Jong-il living just to the north of you, you would think that might make people of South Korea a little edgy.  I would also like to assume having idiots go up to the Armistice Line to float balloons with Gideon Bibles tied to them over to North Korea would also put the regular people on edge.  Y’know one thing I’ve learned over time is the best way to deal with your resentment for assholes in and around your country is to make exploitation films focusing on completely insane violence and torture.  And that friends is how we arrive at the South Korean pseudo-snuff film, THE BUTCHER.

THE BUTCHER begins in the midst of a kidnapping situation.  Four people are tied up in a corner room of an abandoned chicken farm and are not too thrilled about the heavy cameras taped to the tops of their heads-amongst other unpleasantries.  The movie from here on out rotates between seeing footage from the cameras the captors have and the cameras the captives have taped to their heads.  We get to know the personalities to two of the captors as they mill around anxiously, taunting the captives and exchanging a few common complaints of the job while they wait for “the director.” They have gripes similar to county employees in the United States, “it’s too hot and we need a fan” and “this building smells like shit and we need a new one.”  The Director finally arrives and quickly hops to it, which is great because this movie was starting to lag ass!

The captives get names assigned to them based from their social merit and place in the Director’s film.  Evidently these guys are writers for the idiotic show, Big Bang Theory, because they came up with the clever topical monikers, Fat Fuck, Skin and Bones, and the husband and wife team who they call “hey asshole” and “whore.”  If I had a dollar every time I wanted to call husband and wife teams Hey Asshole and Whore while walking around Best Buy I’d have $24!  As the Director and his assistant starts to prep the captured folks, the husband gets free and runs like hell out of the room screaming…..and by screaming I mean wailing like he was giving birth to a WWF wrestler out of his asshole sideways. Naturally the evil captors get him and drag him into view of “Fat Fuck” about to be brutally murdered by a gigantic Korean in a pig mask and butcher’s apron.  This scene serves as a precursor to the carnage that comes at the hand of a plagiarized South Korean version of Leather Face mixed with the pig mask wearing Farmer Vincent from MOTEL HELL.

The married couple gets brought into the kill room, which could also double as a set for one of the stuff your fat fuckin’ mouth shows on the Food Network.  Everything is covered in thick plastic, there are two chairs facing each other and there is gore and blood everywhere.  Take a clue Guy Fieri!  So the Director starts taunting the husband and does the classic flip a coin to determine if you die quickly gag. The result is if the husband can handle ten minutes at the hand of Pig Headed Korean, both he and his wife can be set free.  Out of all the movies I’ve seen with this similar situation I really thought this time the husband would make it.  Just seemed reasonable.  But no, the husband pusses out and begs Pig Man to stop.  The Director gives the weeping husband one more chance to get free; if he thinks of a creative way for his wife to be killed the Director would let the husband go.  Just like all the classic love stories the husband goes, “fuck yes I want to save my own life and not my bitch wife’s,” and the husband starts lobbing out ideas finally settling with cut her guts out and feed them to her to then remove the bite sized morsel from her open stomach to re-feed her.  The nightmare ensues and the fate of the couple will have to be found out when you watch THE BUTCHER.

The grim atmosphere to THE BUTCHER was the best part of this movie.  It takes place in a dilapidated chicken farm that looks like where 90% of the heroin influenced songs of the mid-90’s were probably written.  The filmmakers did a great job creating a feeling of isolation and hopelessness by showing not one of the evil captors cared when everyone is screaming and chainsaws are blazing. I figure this chicken farm was probably in the middle of nowhere or somewhere that doesn’t mind the noise of people being dismantled.  There isn’t any silver lining or redeeming quality to the film either being reminiscent to FLOWERS OF FLESH & BLOOD in that there is no plot other than people being tortured but the realism of FOF&B is lost on some dramatic dialog and the presence of the Pig Headed Killer in THE BUTCHER.  The only glimpse to any details to the killer’s identity or background is a phone call with one of the Director’s associates in the beginning of the movie where he talks to his Mom about her misplacing her bible somewhere. N’yuk n’yuk n’yuk.  I didn’t think anything was necessarily clever, there are no real plot twists and the main “star” to the snuff film, the Pig Headed Killer, is a blatant rip off as I previously stated.  It was worth a watch, but that’s about it.  To be fair, I'm sure the impact of this movie is lost on someone from America who has seen a lot of this kind of crap though.

Blake and Jimmy’s Extreme-O-Gauge!

Realistic Gore: 3 out of 5, not a lot of gore surprisingly but a few fun little scene.

Rape: 0 out of 0, it was threatened but never delivered.

Animal Death: 0 out of 0

Necrophilia: 0 out of 0

Torture: 4 out of 5, torture is the main focus of the flick.

Overall Movie: 3 out of 5, worth a watch but not groundbreaking by any means.

August Underground's PENANCE

By Jimmy Squarejaw
The honeymoon is just beginning for these two lovebirds.  After the batshit insanity of MORDUM, the AUGUST UNDERGROUND trilogy rounds itself out with a touching look at the budding relationship between the main killer, Fred Vogel, and his new squeeze.  But just like in real life they start to drive each other insane and the love story told in PENANCE quickly gets a little wacky.

The beginning of PENANCE is a collage of the good times between these two lunatics.  Just like all idiots in love, they are walking around and showing signs adornment to one in other in the likes of squeezing ketchup on the street, trying on wigs, making silly faces, and providing illustrious comments as they walk around whatever town they happen to be in.  For me this shit is nauseating and I’m sure it would annoy anyone walking near them.  The occasional torturous murder is thrown into the early part of the movie just to let us know that yes they are still psychotic killers.  Eventually during the disembowelment of a poor soul we get our first hint that not everything is well in murderland when Fred gets a little pissed when his ol’ lady is poking a little fun at him.  It’s as if he took a note from my life when he quickly responds, “SHUT YOUR FUCKING FACE.”  Unlike my life however, the scenario doesn’t escalate to his girlfriend calling the police and her fuckin’ mother to cry about me.  Whatever. 

The killer duo end up at a party complete with drugs, booze, good friends, and a shit load of aquariums-one of which contains a lil’ alligator.  Taking a cue from real idiots in love that have no relationship future, the duo sneak off to get it on in a skuzzy looking bathroom but another clue that not all is well comes to light; all of the sudden big Mr. Killer is having a hard time getting it up and in.  They make pills for that and back out in the living room the group of partiers feed a gigantic rat to the alligator and that bummed me out quite a bit. 

My favorite scene of PENANCE, and possibly the whole series comes next.  It’s now Christmas time and the killers linger around a decorated house peeking in the windows and giggling. Soon Fred knocks on the door and flips quickly around to hide his masked face.  The paternal head of the household answers and gets promptly fucked in the skull by, the now trademark method of death in the AUGUST UNDERGROUND series, a hammer.  After he hits the ground like he just got smashed in the fucking face with a hammer the lovebirds get the wife and kill her too, leading to the male killer disrobing the now deceased wife and he rapes her.  An interesting plot point to me that his girlfriend is totally fine and gets turned on by watching her man kill and rape chicks, but alas Fred again cannot maintain an erection and flips out a little.  After the complete insanity and over-the-top scenes in MORDUM, this scene brings the series back to a grim reality setup in the first AUGUST UNDERGROUND that is truly dark!  To make it worse a damn kid comes running down the steps to see what all the commotion is only to be killed next to her dead, nude, and raped Mother.  She must have made the good girl list this year because she is on her way up to Jesus, but at least in heaven the kid doesn’t have to deal with re-runs of Rudolph and Jingle All the Way anymore.

The two killers start disintegrating as functional people that was alluded to earlier in the movie.  They both start looking beat to hell, screaming at each other and Fred turns to the bottle pretty hard in some scenes.  Finally the girlfriend gets pissed at the fact that her man was molesting a tied up chick and kills her out of jealousy.  Chicks are all the same aren’t they?!?  As always I don’t like to give away the ending or all of the scenes so people can still be surprised if they watch it.  But I will say, as with the other two movies in the AUGUST UNDERGROUND trilogy, PENACE is awesome.  It’s a great watch, interesting scenes that work well as a composition shot on video, and the story of the two killers trying to maintain a relationship is a great route for the series to take without fucking up the ingredients that made the previous two great.  I didn’t talk too much about the fucking brutality of this film nor do I want to go back and write anymore so I assure you it is intense and will not disappoint.

Blake and Jimmy’s Extreme-O-Gauge!

Realistic Gore: 5 out of 5, nutso gore scenes!

Rape: 5 out of 5, they cover the dead, the living AND spousal rape. 

Animal Death: 3 out of 5, the rat bummed me out! 

Necrophilia: 3 out of 5, a few of the ladies were dead but at least not decomposed.

Torture: 5 out of 5, pretty intense scenes on this one.

Overall Movie: 5 out of 5, the trilogy is classic.  Please get it.

Fred Vogel's AUGUST UNDERGROUND

By Jimmy Squarejaw

One of the most dividing genres in horror is the “found footage” and “caught on camera” flick.  You can polarize a group of people at the mere mention of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT or V/H/S and then watch how everyone takes a side, draws a line in the sand, and starts bitching at one another worse than Fox News supporters arguing with liberals.  One film and film series you don’t hear a lot about on major horror sites and top 10 lists is Fred Vogel’s AUGUST UNDERGROUND trilogy, the first of which got released in 2001-ish. 

AUGUST UNDERGROUND is about the exploits of two nameless killers, one of which is director Fred Vogel, going on a killing spree.  The beginning sets the tone immediately when the two killers go down into the basement of “Fred’s” house.  Other than a ton of porn glued and taped all over the walls and strewn across the floor, we find that they have a naked hostage duct taped to a chair, and her nipple is cut off.  We get the impression that these two are pretty comfortable in the situation and allude that they’ve done this before.  After torturing and degrading her for a bit they head on out and film their day to day tom foolery that includes a lot of the word "dude" and a lot of giggling.  The killers are your average white males in their early twenties that don’t have shit to do on a daily basis except turn their hats backwards, masturbate to Tomb Raider and drink Rockstar Energy drinks, and that makes them a little more creepy to me than a steroid pumped killer in a hockey mask but not as creepy as a football player from Steubenville, Ohio .

Soon they pickup a hitchhiker that doesn’t have a problem being frumpy or doing sexual favors for money and beat her to death.  Throw in a clip of one of there dogs who took a crap then it’s back to the basement where Fred is sawing apart a body in a bathtub, gagging on the horrible smell of his viscera.  After he pukes a bit Fred brings over body parts to the tied up girl and makes fun of the fact that they killed her boyfriend and wave his severed hand and foot in front of his face laughing their asses off all the while.  If they think that's funny wait til' they watch WEDDING CRASHERS starring Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn!  

The next outing the duo go on is at a rec hall with live music by a terrible band that covers Korn.  Shows you that there is shit to do in their town because the hall is packed with pookah shell necklaces, backwards hats, spitfire shirts and girls wearing Gap and Old Navy clothing.  Looks like I should’ve covered Korn instead of Blink 182 in my late 90’s early 2000’s band because we never played to anyone, but I digress. 

The duo go on more outings and kill more people taking time out of their schedules to visit an Amish part of Pennsylvania with a gift shop that has a gigantic model town built in it, a slaughterhouse where they talk about putting fingers in pig butts, and a church garden where they do an obligatory “have you seen my keys” joke next to a statue of a biblical figure.  I love all of these scenes because when the carnage starts happening you have a little insight into the motiveless intentions of their killings and the inane lives they lead. It’s very real and in my opinion very feasible that bumps on the log like the two killers really exist out there. 

AUGUST UNDERGROUND finishes off with a trip to the tattoo parlor/comicbook store and then the duo hiring overweight ebony and ivory prostitutes.  Both of these situations end badly to say the least.  In these scenes I really appreciate Fred’s character because we see him really snap a few times contradicting his usual giggling and bro-isms.   From the beginning to the end he noticeably gets more and more unhinged during the killings. 

This is a great movie and anyone who likes extreme movies has probably seen at least one of the AUGUST UNDERGROUND trilogy.  The film is gritty, the special effects are disgusting looking and as a joke if you sent this to a country bumpkin sheriff department it would probably be taken pretty seriously as a snuff film.  There isn’t a fake feeling in this movie and I can’t really catch any moments in it that make me think I’m watching a movie not something real.  I highly recommend getting these to everyone!

Blake and Jimmy’s Extreme-O-Gauge!

Violence:  I’d go 4 out of 5, it’s really violent, but the sequel MORDUM sets the bar one step higher!

Torture:  3 out of 5, not really a torture movie in my opinion because these guys like to kill.  But shit mashed into a cut open boob is pretty torturous.

Rape: 2 out of 5, some molesting and pushing faces into butts, but not full on rape…….sequels however.

Animal Death:  1 out of 5, no animal death but the one scene in the slaughterhouse is sad.
Overall Movie:  5 out of 5, classic!

V/H/S

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August Underground's Mordum

AUGUST UNDERGROUND: MORDUM
Review by Blake Redding

WARNING

All movies reviewed for SUNDAY SNUFF contain graphic depictions that may include rape, live animals being murdered, and extreme gore.  None of the writers condone such acts we just watch this shit.

A trio of psychopaths goes on a violent crime spree and films the whole thing. The group consists of two guys and a girl, caught up in a fucked up love triangle. It’s fucked up because one of the guys is the girl’s brother. Apparently incest IS best! The plot is simple, because basically there is no plot. Just a lot of scenes of rape, torture, murder, and even a little necrophilia mixed in for added vomit inducing fun. Hold on to your dicks!!

The AUGUST UNDERGROUND movies are pretty notorious in the underground horror scene, usually costing a fortune to get your hands on a shitty bootleg. Well, I was finally able to obtain a copy of MORDUM for a decent price. This is a movie that was made for a sole purpose: to shock, offend, and disgust the viewer. There is no hidden message or artistic value, just smut for the sake of smut. So does it accomplish this goal?

Abso-fuckin’-lutely.

The whole film has the look of a shot-on-video home movie. The majority of the budget was obviously put into the special effects and props. It’s all very real looking and gives the whole film a real ‘snuff’ feel. The trio obviously has a fetish for chubby gals. Three pleasantly plump women are kidnapped and held captive in a basement. They are humiliated and subjected to all kinds of torture. The demented female of the bunch can make herself vomit on command (yes, it is real puke.) She covers her captives’ half naked bodies in her putrid bile. While this atrocity is going on, one of the dudes is cutting off the dick of an already dead guy laid out naked on the concrete floor. He then proceeds to rape one of the girls with the severed member. After the rape fest of both girls, one of them is killed with a hammer while the other is stabbed in the stomach. One of the guys decides it is probably a good idea to have sex with the knife wound after the girl is deceased. All this is shown in graphic detail mind you. Still keeping your lunch down? Great, let’s talk dead babies and more necrophilia. The camera is now exploring one of the killer’s homes. It pans across a decaying, headless corpse of a dead infant. Maggots are the only things occupying the severed stump where its little baby head used to be.  The camera then enters into the bathroom where one of our crazy fucks is having sex with an already dead body in the bathtub. It turns out to be a child’s rotting corpse. In what might be the most disturbing part of the whole movie, the crazy vomit chick is shown stroking the dead kids head stating, “don’t worry, now you never have to grow up.”

MORDUM is definitely not for the faint of heart or the squeamish. It even found this seasoned hardcore horror vet feeling nauseous a few times. This is not a flick you will want to watch with someone who considers SAW the most hardcore movie ever. They might think you are insane.

You might not want to eat for a day before watching this movie!

Blake and Jimmy's Extreme-O-Gauge!

Rape: 5 out of 5- Very graphic scenes of realistic rape are shown throughout.

Realistic Gore: 4 out of 5- The effects are very well done and things get messy. It will have you ‘one eying’ your screen a couple times.

Animal Death: 0 out of 5- Only homo sapiens die here folks.

Necrophilia: 4 out of 5 - Well, kinda gross!

Overall Movie:  3 out of 5, it's a hell of a lot better than AUGUST UNDERGROUND, but not the best.  

The Poughkeepsie Tapes

THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES

By Jimmy Squarejaw

*WARNING*

All movies reviewed for SUNDAY SNUFF contain graphic depictions that may include rape, live animals being murdered, and extreme gore.  None of the writers condone such acts we just watch this shit.

Well here we are again kids, on a Monday instead of a Sunday for Sunday Snuff.  The last time something in my life was late two weeks in a row she got thrown down a flight of stairs wearing a pair of panties made of coat hangers……but I digress.  For week number two I chose to review POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES, a found footage type of movie that never gained a wide release, or a small release, or any release because the movie is still unreleased and I don’t understand why.  Good thing I have a worthless piece of shit hacker friend who burned a copy for me between stealing credit card numbers and cracking into sorority girl’s cell phones so here we go.

POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES is setup as a documentary surrounding the discovery of a serial killer’s homemade video collection.  The movie is a highlight reel from the 800 or so tapes found by police in his home mixed with interviews with criminologists and federal authorities weighing in on the tape’s content and their own theories about the killer’s criminal profile.  One of the main linear elements throughout POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES is the story of Cheryl Dempsey.  She is one of the killer’s victims who is abducted instead of viciously murdered.  The killer brings her back to his nice suburban home where she spends some time, a DECADE, locked up in the killers basement being tortured.  During this time the killer starts dressing Cheryl up and makes her kill his victims for him.  To say the least this girl gets royally fucked up mentally and when she gets rediscovered still alive she has one hell of case of Stockholm Syndrome.  Another linear storyline during the POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES is about police officer James Foley.  Foley gets framed as the killer but after he is executed a map is sent to authorities with the note, “missed one.”  Unfortunately the officer gets exonerated of the crimes on September 12, 2001.  So that wasn’t necessarily front-page news.

The movie is pretty disturbing and sets itself apart from a lot of the other major studio releases in the found footage genre.  Trust me I have seen a few that are A LOT more disturbing than the POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES but those will be discussed at a later date.  The filmmakers do a good job of setting up the story by stating the videos were all numbered when they were found so they can trace basically how the killer got started and how he evolved from tape to tape.  The killer himself is totally horrifying and the filmmakers tread on a lot of taboo subject matter like child abductions and murders, necrophilia, insane role-playing, and all around brutal torture.  But I think thePOUGHKEEPSIE TAPES wouldn’t be as effective of a movie if the actors who portray all of the interviewed experts throughout weren’t convincing.  The pace and editing between the killer’s tapes and interview segments make the POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES very convincing as a documentary. 

Another element I liked about the POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES is the focus on some of the victims’ family members.  Members of Cheryl Dempsey’s family, Officer Foley’s family and scores of other people weigh in on how horribly their lives have been affected by the Poughkeepsie murders. I feel this side to the story usually gets overlooked in conventional horror movies and adds a whole other disturbing element while watching POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES. 

The POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES is definitely not your average, pleasurable viewing experience.  The killer’s videos are all disturbing.  Couple that with the realistic portrayal of what a community would go through with a serial killer running loose creates a very powerful atmosphere.  The POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES doesn’t have a lot of exploitive elements like dicks being cut off or kittens being smashed by a shovel, but it does have a lot of people being tortured and an all around dreadful feeling during the whole movie without any resolve or upside.

****Update, our good friends at The Uneasy Archive did a release of this a few months ago. It's super rare, but if you find it BUY IT.  Or tell me and I'll buy it!

Blake and Jimmy's Extreme-O-Gauge!

This is no stroll though the park!

Rape:  2 out of 5 – There are not specific scenes of rape, but enough details to know it occurs multiple times!

Realistic Gore:  1 out of 5 – Not a lot of murder on camera and one scene where Cheryl murders a victim is not done very well......but sound effects and camera tricks make it quite unsettling!
Necrophilia:  2 out of 5 -suggested but not exploited.

Animal Death:  0 out of 5 – Not an element to this movie.

Torture:  5 out of 5 – Mental, physical, and sexual torture are RAMPANT in this movie!

Overall Movie:  5 out of 5, great flick that I'll re-watch over and over.

Cannibal Holocaust

CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST

By Jimmy Squarejaw

One of the worst days of my life was when fellow Fun With Horror writer Blake Redding and I naively rented Cannibal Holocaust to pass a random Saturday.  We thought it was just another feature in the long line of exploitative horror movies we had grown to love.  Soon we found out that wasn’t the case at all!  Instead we subjected our psyche to one of the most insane movies either of us had ever seen involving rape, cannibalism, excessive realistic gore, and multiple animals being horribly slaughtered.  That movie fucked a fold in my brain for weeks after until I broke down and bought the damn thing.  Now we’re both huge fans of finding the most disturbing images captured on film and celebrate our love for all things extreme every week with Sunday Snuff. 

*WARNING*

All movies reviewed for SUNDAY SNUFF contain graphic depictions that may include rape, live animals being murdered, and extreme gore.  None of the writers condone such acts we just watch this shit.

Well, for week one I have to review the king, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST.  This movie is so extreme it’s hard for me to think of clever metaphors to randomly insert into this review. The story is about an anthropologist going into the Amazon jungle to find out what happened to a documentary film crew that disappeared months before.  The anthropologist hooks up with a local guide and assistant then venture into the jungle that is also known as “The Green Inferno.”  The group witnesses a ceremonial rape with a stone by a lone tribesman and follow him back to their village undetected.  Once there they cautiously build trust with the natives who were obviously traumatized by assumed hedonistic actions from the missing film crew.  The anthropologist eventually realizes all of the missing crew is dead after finding the remains of their bodies but now he has to retrieve the missing film canisters.  He comes up with a plan to show the natives a box that contains voices (it’s a tape player stupid natives).  Astounded they hand over the film reels because they fear the anthropologist can capture souls.

Now the first part of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST was insane but the second part is completely off the charts. Once back in New York the anthropologist sits in on a viewing of the found footage that a television channel plans to air as part of a documentary about the murdered film crew.  But what they don’t realize is the story told on the recovered reels is quite horrific.  The audience realizes that the film crew basically went power crazy in the jungle.  They started killing the tribes’ animals, burned down their huts, shot a few of the tribesman, two of them start fucking out in the open, and then they rape a few of their village women.  Wow!  Eventually the indigenous cannibal tribe has enough of their shit and decides to exact revenge on the filmmakers.  I won’t go into specifics, like usual, but the movie is so graphic that the director Ruggero Deodato was arrested for obscenity and then murder after a rumor got out that people were actually killed.

CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST is still top of the heap for me when it comes to intensity, and I’ve seen a lot of horrifying shit-hence Sunday Snuff.  The combination of realistic rape, violence, and multiple animals being brutally killed on film is a lot to take in for the casual viewer but there is a lot to be said for this movie aside from the shock. Every time I’ve watched this flick I become immersed in it even though I know what happens in the movie. 

Blake and Jimmy's Extreme-O-Gauge!

Faint of heart beware!

Rape:  5 out of 5 - Multiple explicit scenes of rape!

Realistic Gore:  5 out of 5 - Could pass as a snuff film!
Necrophilia: 0 out of 0 - Dead people get eaten not humped!

Animal Death:  5 out of 5 - A lot of animals die and it’s fucking sad! They are real, not props!

Torture: - 4 out of 5 – Not a pure torture kind've movie, but a lot of brutal killings!
Overall Movie:  5 out of 5, this is the Citizen Kane of extreme movies!