mayhem is genuine and it’s touching (in a twisted sort of way) to find someone taking up the mantle for such largely ignored, seem- ingly lost-cause films as SLAUGHTERHOUSE, RABID GRANNIES (uncut version only, natu- rally) and THE LAST HORROR FILM. On the other hand, mainstream horror hits like THE SIXTH SENSE, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and THE OTHERS are not to be found here, lacking as they are in explicit viscera. The gore’s the thing. In the chunkblower
subgenre, films varying wildly in terms of bud- get, style, and subject matter are allowed into the pantheon as long as they provide the bloody goods. A studio release like FRIDAY THE 13TH, an 8mm atrocity like NEKROMANTIK, an outrageous Asian film like STORY OF RICKY— all are held up as classics of the field, the SEVEN SAMURAIs and CITIZEN KANEs of the gore film. Balun will even include an art film l ike Pasol ini’s SALO: THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM if it’s disgusting enough. It’s a shame he didn’t include a few more of these shock- ing art films (say, IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES) for the enlightenment of the reader who loves gore but usually shuns anything with subtitles. It sometimes seems as if gore were his only criteria. BLOOD FEAST is a milestone of the gore genre and it matters little that the film is “a plodding, boring, in- eptly acted and directed mess... not much of a horror film.” Not much of a horror film, but def ini tely a gore f i lm. If inept i tude isn’t enough to ruin a splatter film, then what is? Why is MANIAC dismissed as “a catalogue of hateful and gruesome carnage” while some- thing l ike LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET is highly touted for its gruesome carnage? One thing you can be sure of is that
Balun’s an admirer of zombie movies, which are awarded BEYOND HORROR HOLOCAUST’s longest chapter. Presumably zombie films are gorier in general than werewolf or vampire pictures. Of course it goes without saying that the latter-day George Romero-inspired zom- bies are the ones the author cares about. One page is given to the pre-Romero PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES, but other than that, zombie films before Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIV- ING DEAD are treated as mere prologue, as everything before PLAGUE, including such moody classics as WHITE ZOMBIE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, is dispensed with in a single page.
As a gore fundamentalist, the author is dis-
approving of former goremongers who have left the faith in search of more mainstream work, as he feels Sam Raimi and Peter Jack- son did when they went on to do things like SPIDER-MAN and LORD OF THE RINGS. Of Jackson’s decision to make LOTR, Balun can only ask, “What the fuck is up with that?” (Mil- lions of dollars, a few Academy Awards-such enticements might explain what the fuck is up with Jackson’s decision to go mainstream.) Yet he himself describes Jackson’s DEAD ALIVE as the ne plus ultra of the gore film, a splatter epic so definitive that only a fool would dare try to top its non-stop bloodlet- ting. By his own argument, it would seem that Jackson was wise to try new things. BEYOND HORROR HOLOCAUST represents a
break from Balun’s continually updated GORE SCORE series (THE GORE SCORE, MORE GORE SCORE, GORE SCORE 2001). Those books are collections of brief, alphabetically listed re- views, which allow the reader to get right to the author’s no-holds-barred opinions. By contrast, BEYOND HORROR HOLOCAUST is al- most subdued by Balun’s standards though still pretty wild by almost anyone else’s. This is partly because Balun is mostly paying trib- ute to the bloody films he loves. In those ear- lier books he spends more time venting his displeasure at the ones that don’t deliver the bloody goods. It’s when BEYOND HORROR HO- LOCAUST tries to bridge together Balun’s re- views in some kind of framework that it’s weakest, as the reader will have a distinct feeling of traveling well-worn paths in order to get to the good stuff. For instance, Balun’s examination of Romero’s living dead films is the kind of thing that’s been written many times before. It can be repetitious, too, when information from one chapter is repeated in another, as when LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET is given two similar summaries. The many B&W stills aren’t necessarily at- tractive, or necessarily all that relevant (the CANDYMAN series is dispensed of in a single sentence, but nonetheless gets three stills) but they certainly can’t be found wanting in terms of gore or mayhem. Such things are Balun’s stock-in-trade, and he’s at his best when flying loose, as in the GORE SCORE books, but even so, BEYOND HORROR HOLOCAUST should win over those strong-stomached fans who appreci- ate a good splat. Balun’s obvious enthusiasm is what saves the book.
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