Kid Vengeance - Joseph Manduke (1977)

I don’t say this very often, but holy shit is this movie ripe for a remake. An obscure western where Lee Van Cleef opposes the titular pre-teen and a hulking black man named Isaac? Yeah, you might say it’s got that je ne sais quoi. Maybe it’s all marketing, but to be honest, it’s probably the prospect of watching a pint-sized Lief Garrett grab his shovel and go gangbusters on some sorry outlaw.

But before it’s rampage time, our plucky young lad learns to hunt, tracking a hare over rock and placing an arrow straight through its heart. As it shudders there next to the brush, he turns and asks of his doomed father, “Do you ever get used to killing?” When you’re Kid Vengeance, the obvious answer is “Heck yes,” which brings us to the real meat and potatoes of this late night gem. As has been proven time and again, the greatest luxury afforded by revenge flicks is the ability to shamelessly revel in gratuitous violence. Remember the scene in Dirty Harry where Clint is chasing a hijacked school bus, and how after the killer smacks that kid in the face, he could be graphically dismembered and even your mom would still be all, “F YEAH!”? This movie is like that, but all the time.

Now, for those with a refined sense of morality, don’t worry, ‘cause these corpses have it coming. Try to relieve the Kid’s very dead parents of their wedding rings and you probably won’t make it through the 94 minute run time. We’re not talking execution style or anything like that, the Kid doesn’t roll that way. He’s got his wits about him and can sneak a snake into a saddlebag like a pro.

Sure you can buy this movie for a buck at Walmart, but give the writers some credit – they know how to tug at those heartstrings and give a boulder to the head the weight of 10 Erin Brockoviches. Each scene is shaped with such good intentions that it’s easy to overlook Van Cleef’s shitty Dennis Hopper impersonation and focus on how great this movie would be if someone lengthened the set-ups and just ratcheted up the red.

DVD edition: A Van Cleef double feature that came backed with God’s Gun (co-starring Jack Palance). It was a dollar and is so chincy my PowerBook won’t recognize the disk for the proper screen grab treatment.

Worst Kid Vengeance IMDB Message Board Post – There are no message board posts. How are there no message board posts?!

What to Watch For: Did I mention there’s a side plot with brothers who try and steal gold from Isaac’s mine? And how one of them is so blind without his glasses he accidentally kills one of his own kin? Blatant plot device, but damn if it doesn’t hurt when they go.

The Holy Mountain - Alejandro Jodorowsky (1973)

When a movie’s called Karate Bullfighter, we here at Snuff Nation stop and take note. It’s a simple equation of karate, a male bovine and the illustrious Sonny Chiba, which of course for us equals money in the bank. We’re easy to please, really. Just give us one good scene so, at the end of the day, after the horns are ripped off and I call my buddy to say, “Dude, the blood squirted 10 feet in the air,” we can share a good laugh.

So what the hell went wrong with The Holy Mountain? Though it parades grotesqueries before us, and does so with a fair amount of panache, the film unforgivably fails to present itself as either coherent or relevant. The only way to suck the fun out saying something like, “Dude, some guy lactated onto a disciple from hand puppets in the shape of cheetah heads,” is by framing that memorable set piece with 2 hours of the most pretentious filmmaking possible. If Jodorowsky succeeds at anything, it’s in making the sacrilegious seem utterly banal; all the sumptuous sets can’t give a mute, caveman Jesus poignancy.

After a retelling of the New Testament, the movie veers off into a portrayal of the occult intertwined with modern capitalist society. Blah, blah, blah, heavy-handed, blah, blah. I’m sure I fail to appreciate all the symbolism that so carefully saturates the mise-en-scene, but I’m going with my gut here. I don’t need to perform due diligence to know that Jesus throwing a one-limbed midget into the ocean, thereby shedding his lamb of God mantle to become uber-Jesus, is complete crapola. Memorable? Absolutely. As filmmaking, however, it reaches so far beyond the director’s capabilities as to make a mockery of the medium. Try this for a pull quote: the majority of cinephiles championing this film are mistaking their own confusion for Jodorowsky’s brilliance.

This film is like that kid at a party constantly making abortion jokes who is ultimately lauded as being edgy, and in certain circles I’m sure name checking it might help you get you laid. So if you think that’s your thing, try saying, “I just love Jodorowsky’s grasp of the allegorical and its constant dialectic with empiricism,” and let me know how it goes over. Either way, I just saved you a couple hours with this monstrosity and the disappointment of realizing that oftentimes originality benefits from a little craft.

DVD Edition: Seriously? I ejected this shit the second it was over. Even if there is a Cliff’s Notes section, I promise I will never watch a single one of these special features.

Worst The Holy Mountain IMDB Message Board Post: What is the legality surrounding those naked boys?

What to Watch For: Straight up, naked chicks.

Combat Shock (1986) - Buddy Giovinazzo

To describe Combat Shock as life changing would be somewhat of an understatement. Love it or hate it so much you still can’t sleep right, you’ll always remember your first time laying eyes on Baby Napalm, and if you make it to the end, you’ll certainly remember seeing this grotesque bundle of joy stuffed into an oven.

Before all this goes down, though, first timer Buddy Giovinazzo reels you in with 90 minutes of what can only be described as Vetsploitation. The film opens with Frankie running through the rice paddies of Vietnam, where he stumbles upon mutilated bodies of women and children. Taken captive by VC, he is tortured but eventually released into hospice, only to find himself reliving the events in a crusty apartment with a mutant baby, an eviction notice and overly greasy hair. Some crazy shit for sure, but give the director credit for pursuing all of it with such straight-faced determination; even the leather-clad gang member with a Karate Kid headband is the real deal.

Unsurprisingly, a cast of mostly memorable caricatures inhabits the gritty world of Combat Shock. Pimps, dealers, addicts and child hookers parade before Frankie as he wanders the ghettos of Staten Island. Not content with always being at the business end of a fist, he visits the local Unemployment Office and tries reaching out to his ailing father, before ultimately turning to a career in crime he is ill suited for.

Though leaning on a certain nightmarish logic, the film flashes moments of intense realism. Simply watching Frankie put on his shoes is heartbreaking, as he hides the holes in his socks then tears a lace while tightening it. These small defeats – the meals of breadcrumbs mixed with water – not the beatings dealt by Paco, are what ultimately cause Frankie to view his life and that of his family as forfeit. All of this builds to a masochistic expression of love, overpowering in both its directness and arterial spray. Did I mention that baby in the oven? Well, Frankie goes all Terminator on it first.

Since the majority of Combat Shock is more Warriors than Jacob’s Ladder, draw parallels to Iraq at your own risk. Really, unless you’re a seasoned b-movie veteran, I’d recommend avoiding this one at all costs. Otherwise, just sit back, relax and learn how to get your fix with a coat hanger when you’re short the works.

DVD Edition: This Troma release is packed to the gills with useless features, which gives the disc much of its charm. Of note is the T.I.T quiz, which flashes soft-core porn for every correct answer and hardcore violence for every wrong one. Definitely check out the short director interview, where a cameraman is balled out for not shooting close-ups.

Worst Combat Shock IMDB message board post: Is this movie appropriate for like 12 year old kids?

What to watch for: a complete non sequitur of a director cameo that involves a Veg-O-Matic.

Honeymoon Killers (1970) - Leonard Kastle

The Honeymoon Killers is a nasty little piece of trim that cuts like a knife and stings like an electric razor to the groin. Martha Beck is an oversize Alabama nurse desperate for love and marriage. Raymond Hernandez is a smooth-talking con artist eager for a quick lay and an easy mark. Grab a pot, stir, add water and you have a nice strong mutually supportive relationship not to mention one of the largest murder sprees in American history.

You know the drill. Boy meets girl, girl falls in love, boy shows girl pictures of all girls he has wooed and married and cheated out of financial solvency before killing, girl says all right not bad bet you I can do you one better let’s go on rampage, boy says cool, boy and girl embark on a killing spree heretofore unrivaled in terms of either geographic scope or godless iniquity, girl gets jealous and turns boy in, girl and boy go to jail, boy and girl repent and write each other from separate prison cells apologizing for any harm they may have caused, girl and boy get electrocuted.


Simple, right? If only this were Mississippi Burning. Written and directed by a professional composer named Leonard Kastle following the departure of first director Martin Scorsese over budgetary concerns, the film refuses to judge its star-crossed lovers any more than a geriatric would a gallstone. If love is the answer, then ritual killing is a close second; violence is a fact of life and, as in life like in bed, sometimes it comes in spurts.

Kastle is a serious filmmaker, unafraid to track a homeless man defecating or cut away when the suggestion of an abrupt stabbing proves more powerful than a full-screen entry wound. Ray and Martha plot, kill, poison, and in one scene, hammer in heads of unsuspecting victims with glee, but the violence is never excessive, the camera never lingers too long. Rather, like a steely conductor, Kastle prefers to focus on the lovers themselves, mining tension in every glance, distrust in every spat, adding saltpeter to already lethal mix of plutononium and potassium nitrate.


Some films make you laugh. Other films just make you tired, angry, ready to hurt yourself or others. Honeymoon Killers is neither. The acting is heavy. The score is ominous to brooding. The sex, though off-screen, is implicitly hot. It’s your life. If you want to sit home all day and examine your johnson, by all means enjoy. If you want rent sick flick that literally grabs you by the shirtcuffs and tosses you across the room like a poor, confused child, then you’ve come to the right place. Highly recommended.

La Haine (1995) - Mathieu Kassovitz

Though La Haine is cited as the rare French film that tackles social issues, it is more accurately a fable about revenge bookended by political question marks. The film opens with documentary-style footage of rioting and a soundtrack that articulates what the bloodied mass cannot, yet, even with a setting ripped from the headlines, the movie betrays an incredibly personal core.

Watching the trio of Vinz, Hubert and Said is an experience slightly similar to The 400 Blows, taking us through their every small defeat in the projects and around Paris. Hubert, an ex-con and boxer in training, provides a moral center while his friend suffers oddball visions of cows and murder. He is the most intimate with the cyclical nature violence, but fails to break it despite the best of intentions. Said remains an observer, expressing his anger through bravado and occasional vandalism; he appreciates gunplay, specifically in cinema, but doesn’t have the heart for it when it’s in front of him. Even so, he ends up in an interrogation room along side Hubert, handcuffed and at the mercy of two policemen.

Despite indelible images of police brutality, it is Vinz that leaves the lasting impression. When a handgun falls into his possession he becomes burdened by the sudden and quite unexpected empowerment. As much as La Haine tries to avoid a main character, Vinz is it. Introduced through a dream sequence, he is the troubled youth that gives us pause; namely, one that shows promise and sensitivity, but also the stubbornness to waste it in a delusional game of parity. Though he vows to kill a cop, it’s questionable whether his boasts are enough to bring action. We are relieved when he finally cannot pull the trigger - on the most deserving of targets, ironically – and equally crushed when he dies by the hand of those he seemed so eager to strike against.

This controversial ending is what gives La Haine its much-touted stature as a politically minded film. Though we follow these characters ever so closely, seeing the lessons learned and friendships burnished, every possible balance is unsettled by an accidental gunshot. Unlike the ever popular ‘twist’ of many American films, this never seems forced, but reminds us of the issues at hand and dares us to come away with an easily articulated answer.

DVD edition: The accompanying documentary is rather informative in discussing the production of this film, but when the director, actors and even producers get on the topic of social significance, they start overusing the word "leitmotif." Also, it’s worth seeing Kassovitz chalk his long takes up to laziness and keep a straight face.

What to watch for: The choice of wardrobe, which shows a healthy amount of anti-American sentiment. Nike and Everlast get covered up as attitudes become less violent, but ol’ Notre Dame College on the right…

Worst La Haine IMDB message board post: Who do you think shot his gun first at the end?