If They Came From Within: An Alternative His- H CIRCLE DREADLINES
SUSHI GIRL - USA Kern Saxton
CIRCLE
“Reservoir Dogs spooged all over this film,” producer and co-writer Destin Pfaff admitted at the world pre- miere of Sushi Girl. While this may be metaphorically true, Sushi Girl is worth watching on its own merits. Who doesn’t love a good revenge tale? This love letter to exploitation cinema drips with blood, dismember- ment and backstabbing. Mark Hamill chews the scenery with all the nastiness we always knew was in him, while Tony Todd turns in his finest performance since Candyman. Badasses Jeff Fahey, Michael Biehn and Danny Trejo offer cameos, but the biggest surprise is the titular sushi girl herself (Cortney Palm). MG
FEATURES NINTH CIRCLE DREADLINES
TOAD ROAD - USA Jason Banker
It turns out that in York, Pennsylvania (the “factory tour capital of the world”), there isn’t much for the youth to do besides getting fucked up on psychedelics and light- ing each other’s pubic hair on fire. Well, that and testing the forbidden Toad Road, a wooded walkway that ends
Bodies Hit The Floor: (clockwise from top left) Zombie Ass, Mon Ami, The Human Race, and (inset) Chained.
at the gates of Hell. Based on a real-life urban legend, this semi-doc is a drug-fuelled experiment in no-bud- get psychological occult horror, and an angst-heavy portrait of the perils of small-town boredom. TZ
DREADLINES
ZOMBIE ASS: TOILET OF THE DEAD - Japan Noboru Iguchi
Prolific director Noboru Iguchi (The Machine Girl, Robo- geisha) is back with a film that must have been green- lit by a fetishist. In what can only be described as live-action-ass-tentacle-hentai, Zombie Ass is a (liter- ally) flatulent story of campers being turned into zom- bies by tapeworm-like parasites. This stinker, if you can imagine it, consummates with a battle high above the forest, the characters propelled by gas, fighting each other with vicious, biting tentacles. The zombie out- house scene must be seen to be believed, and tells you exactly where this one’s aiming. MG
[NOTE: ALSO SEE REVIEWS OF FANTASIA TITLES V/H/S (P. 37) AND ERRORS OF THE HUMAN BODY (P. 21)]
tory of Canadian Horror is just that – a gallery show of poster art for genre films that don’t, but arguably should, exist. Conceived by RM’s editor-in-chief, Dave Alexander, the show pairs Canadian horror filmmakers with designers to imagine Canuck flicks that would’ve been made as far back as the ’40s (as well as a few from the future). The multimedia show, set to original soundtrack recordings from Conrad Simon, also features props, stills, swag and even a British Betamax clamshell box featuring an alternate title and X-rating warning! Plus, there are actual sell sheets of aborted films from Montreal’s Cinépix company, procured from the late John Dunning’s collection, includ- ing one that may be a Basil Gogos piece. Among the scores of oddities: Jason Eisener
(Hobo with a Shotgun) concocts Caprice with James White, a post-apocalyptic, human-fish gangster tale, while Karim Hussain (The The- atre Bizarre) pits francophiles against anglo- phones in The Devil’s Box (created by Martin Plante), and Vincenzo Natali (Splice) conjures up a sequel to Blue Sunshine, called Red, White and Blue Sunshine (designed by Eric Robillard). Rodrigo Gudiño (The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh) delivers the anthology The Witching Hour, illustrated by Ghoulish Gary Pullin, and collective Astron-6 (Father’s Day) will “leave you on the cutting room floor!” with The Editor, gore-ified by RM art director Justin Erickson. For the sex-and-cannibalism set, Lee Demarbre (Smash Cut) dreams up Emanuelle, Eh? (illustrated by Richard Patmore). Hopefully some of these films will eventually escape their maple sap gestation to terrorize audiences. MICHELE GALGANA
Every year FanTasia treats the genre community to spe-
cial events. This year, writer and co-founder of Montreal’s Blue Sunshine Psychotronic Film Centre (now sadly closed), Kier-La Janisse, programmed a series of films in conjunction with her feverishly cinephilic autobiography House of Psychotic Women (see p.56). She presented four films highlighting the themes of female madness in exploitation and horror cinema: The Haunting of Julia (Richard Lon- craine, 1977), Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, 1981), Christiane F. (Uli Edel, 1981) and Dr. Jekyll and His Women (Walerian Borowczyk, 1981). The official book launch occurred alongside
The Haunting of Julia (a.k.a. Full Circle), with Mia Farrow in the titular role, playing a mother haunted by the accidental death of her daughter. With its seamless use of repe- tition and mirror images, this rarely seen
RM32
British-Canadian co-production is textbook uncanny. In her book, Janisse writes that “guilt ran through 1970s genre films like a parasite,” and here Julia’s guilt and other things lurking in the unconscious unfold within the conventions of a haunted house tale. A visceral parable of conjugal break-up,
Possession features Isabelle Adjani as a woman secretly harbouring a monstrous re- lationship. According to Janisse, the film is “one of the most flawless examples of a woman losing her mind onscreen.” After a showing of the drug-induced Christiane F., the programme capped off with erotic horror film Dr. Jekyll and His Women, in which the doctor’s wife-to-be partakes in the Hyde-cre- ating elixir, coming out from what Janisse calls “Victorian repression” in order to seek libidinal releases.
MARIO DEGIGLIO-BELLEMARE
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