Dog Dick or White Trash Holocaust

by Jimmy Squarejaw

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The mark of a truly great piece of film will be it's ability to subjugate the viewer.  Furthermore if one can be as captivated by a movie after numerous viewings in separate frames of mind, such as being shit faced drunk, being under the influence of fentanyl patches, or just plain ol’ sober proves the film’s aptitude to engage the viewer.  This, however, doesn’t mean a film has any redeeming qualities or has any integrity as a whole piece of work.  To draw a line in the sand and make any type of judgment about a movie is a completely subjective journey and as a viewer of the movie DOG DICK by filmmaker James Bell, I am crawling on the ceiling trying to wrap my head around what the hell I watched.  Is this the fucking dumbest movie ever made?  To some people it definitely is.  Is this an insanely brilliant piece of mondo filmmaking that is in tune with the dark comedic undertones and blunt social depictions of other mondo films such as the legendary MONDO CANE?  It could be, but I almost don’t trust DOG DICK enough to try and rationalize it in any way.  Am I fooled into trying to analyze something that has scenes of dead squirrels being run over by cars and some guy repeatedly slamming the dried out shell of a dead horse?  Or am I naïve to DOG DICK’S brilliance?  I don’t know, but I will continue to follow this mange infested rabbit down it’s fecal lined rabbit hole.  So friends, you might be asking, "What is DOG DICK?"

If David Lynch or Harmony Korine made a documentary about the monotonous life in a town where Beavis and Butthead could possibly live and set it to the artistic constraints of a handheld camera you would have at the very least the groundwork and tone to DOG DICK.  James Bell edits a stream of video full of the idiosyncrasies we have all seen living amongst the so called 99% of the American population - aka shit kicking uneducated rednecks who get drunk, use food stamps to buy cigarettes, gossip about dead coworkers, and try to make baby birds fly before they are physically able.  Bell also incorporates cringe worthy footage of dead cats being lit on fire, a retarded girl playing wii, and plenty of other clips that paints a reality known as white trash hell.  DOG DICK creates a claustrophobic nightmare that seems like the ideal environment to breed spree killers and school shooters and I loved every moment of it. 

It’s not too often you see a filmmaker who literally has no filter when it comes to filmmaking and actively participates in borderline criminal activity on film.  James Bell not only has a keen eye for deciphering and grimly presenting the ubiquitous surroundings he lives in, he created a fucking bleak documentary worthy of any Sociology class teaching about white trash and the blatantly obvious decline of civilization.  Like I said before, DOG DICK will either be one of the worst things you have ever seen or it will be a directionless and unsettling documentary that will require multiple viewings and a lot of head scratching.  As of now this is a small batch release that can be only obtained by contacting director James Bell at corpsehummper@yahoo.com, but soon our good buddies over at King of the Witches Video will be doing a limited release at http://kingofthewitches.storenvy.com. Viewer beware.    

Blake and Jimmy’s Extreme-O-Gauge!

Violence/Gore: 2 out of 5, just weird dead animal shit.

Rape: 0 out of 0.

Animal Death:  3 out of 5, there isn’t really anything killed on film except a nest of caterpillars, but there is a lot of weird dead animal footage.

Necrophilia: 0 out of 0.

Torture: 0 out of 0.

Overall Movie: 5 out of 5, fucking weird movie that is absolutely captivating!

 

MONDO PAZZO aka MONDO CANE 2

By Jimmy Squarejaw
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I feel that the appeal to death films, extreme films, insane cinematic violence, and the Mondo genre is not only the “front seat” intrigue they have, but also the often dark but hilarious undertones many of these movies have.  MONDO CANE for me was the top of the heap when it came to black comedy and you can read my inane ramblings on that film here, http://www.sundaysnuff.blogspot.com/2012/10/mondo-cane.html.  Not too many shockumentaries even try to match the wit put into this, I can only think of DYING: LAST SECONDS OF LIFE, so I was exuberant when I popped MONDO CANE PAZZO, aka MONDO CANE 2 into the ol’ cinematic picture decoder because MONDO PAZZO was not only a better movie for content, production, and visuals, it was fucking brilliantly written and narrated.

If the formula aint broken don’t fix it is the age old adage, and the original directors Gualtiero Jocopetti and Franco Prosperi return to the shockumentary genre they created with MONDO PAZZO in 1963, only one year after MONDO CANE.  MONDO PAZZO is filled with the same type of anthropological study on societies mores, taboos, and rituals; but this time around watching it was trying to keep up with Groucho Marx narrating.

MONDO PAZZO begins with a disclaimer stating that the filmmakers love dogs and after complaints about the treatment on dogs in the first movie, they vow to not show any animal cruelty, except for showing surgery of a dog getting it’s vocal cords  snipped out.  But that was englishmen starting that, and they have no control over the Italians because the next scene is a god awful fashion show where the models wear clothing that is representative of their dyed dogs.  If Elena wants to wear a spotted dress, little Fifi will be dyed with spots, or if Maria wants to wear a neon green ensemble that looks like fashion designer Rei Kawakubo birthed an aborted fetus conceived by Motley Crue guitarist Mick Mars, well goddammit dye your dog aborted fetus green and parade him around to show how truly expendable you are to society!

As with MONDO CANE, MONDO PAZZO does an amazing job weaving clip into the next clip by matching a theme or idea, and by the end of the movie the filmmakers have literally done this 75 to 100 times.  Think the telephone game, but this version starts with dog shows and wig makers and ends with chicks puking paint onto a canvas and Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody being accompanied by a group of men being slapped in the face as accompaniment.

I don’t want to steer anyone wrong, there is some disturbing tidbits in MONDO PAZZO as well.  A scene of a buddhist setting himself on fire sets the bar high for shock value, although I’m not too sure if it was real and Rage Against the Machine’s eponymous album was way fucking cooler looking.  But ol’ burning Buddha B is topped by an animal death onslaught beginning with hundreds of dead and suffering white flamingoes across a raped landscape in Africa that has been poisoned by all of the waste from a recently built soda factory.  Next it’s bird fighting in China, one lil’ guy has been fed graciously in a cage next to another bird who has been starved for two weeks.  And when they both get into the same cage you get Floyd Mayweather versus his girlfriend, but the bird’s outcome isn’t 90 days in jail and Justin Bieber hanging in your posse, it’s death.  After that is Beta fish fighting, some might not be too irked by this, but I had a Beta once that I enjoyed in it’s 10 square inch fishbowl full of murky water so this scene made me a little squeamish.  

MONDO PAZZO is a heady watch, and I could watch it repeatedly for the continual onslaught of taught humor, goofy 1960’s imagery, and a stellar soundtrack reminiscent of the lush orchestrations of Les Baxter.    

Blake and Jimmy’s Extreme-O-Gauge!

Violence/Gore: 2 out of 5, not crazy by todays standards but I bet this got some 60’s cocks up in knots!
Rape: 0 out of 0 
Animal Death: 3 out of 5, I’m always sensitive on this shit, but it wasn’t the worst by far.
Necrophilia: 0 out of 0, not even necrophagia either!
Torture: 0 ouf of 0
Overall Movie: 5 out of 5, not putting up scores on the Extreme-O-Gauge but MONDO PAZZO fucking rules!

Junk Films

By Jimmy Squarejaw
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When FACES OF DEATH was released in 1978, it was originally produced for the death hungry population of Japan by an Italian documentarian who wanted to up the ante a little in the mondo/bizarro/documentary genre.  In the land of the rising sun it was originally titled JUNK, and according to the commentary on the FACES OF DEATH 30^th ANNIVERSARY release it eventually grossed more than STAR WARS at the box office in 1977.  (Why the FUCK do I live in America?)  In the tradition of the JUNK movie series Tsurisaki Kiyotaka, director of OROZCO THE EMBALMER, compiled a collection of his psychotic short films and titled it JUNK FILMS which was released in the states a little while ago by Massacre Video.  Shall we?

JUNK FILMS opens in India (I think) with a few nice shots of an incredibly overcrowded tent town full of cripples, the impoverished, and amputees; it really sets a nice theme of “hey, life can be total shit.”  Scenes from Tsurisaki’s ambulance chasing days follow including first hand aftermath footage of, amongst others: a guy who got into a motor scooter accident and looks like a skin chalupa crammed full of guts, a lady stabbed to death with an eerie ceiling fan lingering above her, and a guy with his head split open displaying a plethora of webbed meninges everywhere.  One scene in this grouping of shorts I particularly like is a scene in an apartment above an alley where a guy has passed away by what seems to be natural causes while surrounded by his family and a lot of confused emergency service crew looking at each other trying figure out how to get this dude out of the apartment two stories up.  Take note kids, a lot of people don’t realize when you die you have to be transported to either a funeral home or morgue before you turn into a heap of jellied human jambalaya hosting a maggot orgy.  So the next time you think about shooting up and jerking off with a bag around your head, don’t fucking do it in your attic unless you weigh 80 pounds!  Moving along.  

One of Tsurisaki’s more elaborate shorts included in JUNK FILMS is of the Vegetarian Festival on Phuket Island, Thailand.  If you haven’t partied at the vegetarian festival you ain’t livin.’  These guys wail the fuck out of themselves on the back with blades until they split open like a hyman being ripped apart by a Los Angeles Laker.  After that stunt they stick guns, bars, and swords through their faces and follow in procession through the city.  I predict in 30 years this shall replace the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and we can all kill ourselves at any point before that happens.  Really, all we are missing is keg stands, twerking, and high fives and we got one hell of a vegetarian party!  But seriously this stuff is fucked up to watch and these people must have balls the size of skulls! Too bad that’s probably the reason smite was delivered to Phuket shortly after these films were shot in the form of a tsunami created by the righteous Pat Robertson and Jesus. 

The last scene in JUNK FILMS drove me fucking crazy and I really wish I didn’t ever have to watch it again.  Taking place in a nicer than nice looking crematorium, a group of Japanese people in their 30’s surrounds an urn containing the cremated remains of their buddy.  Instead of their brain using a two second buffer to restrain some of their idiotic comments, this group of hip folks just spout out the fucking stupidest shit for twenty minutes about death, and dying, and bones, and blah fuckin’ blah fuckin’ blah!  I cannot believe no one has ever pointed out to them how ANNOYING they sound as they try to weigh out life’s ultimate mysteries!  I bet Mr. Cremated Remains committed suicide because listening to these introspective morons for a short amount of time made me want to swallow a bee hive and ask a bear to fuck it out of me!

Other than that scene, I enjoyed JUNK FILMS quite a bit.  Tsurisaki did a good job making every segment interesting; whether it was with editing, camera effects, spooky music, or the subject matter itself, JUNK FILMS stands apart from the otherwise distended corpse known as the death film genre. There are a lot of scenes in this film I didn’t chat about so don’t let my brief synopsis throw you, it’s well worth picking up!

For Purchasing go to 

http://massacrevideo.com/site/shop/junk-films-standard-dvd/

Blake and Jimmy’s Extreme-O-Gauge!

Violence/Gore: 5 out of 5, it’s a death film for real.

Rape: 0 out of 0

Animal Death: 0 out of 0, a nice reprieve from the usual animal massacre in death vids.

Necrophilia: 0 out of 0.

Torture: 0 out of 0, no one is seen tortured but I bet the family of the dead guy in an urn surrounded by his fucking moron friends at the funeral home were slightly tortured listening to those fucking idiots.

Overall Movie: 4 out of 5, very nice, very good, very well!