Nobody involved with any of these films likely considered the possibility that someday random dudes would be able to watch their wok for free on a screen the size of a tarot card while cooking breakfast for their kids. We live in an age of wonders. I'm not a very good cook, but I can whip up a pretty mean breakfast if you don't mind greasy food devoured to the sounds of cinematic gunplay.
CUT AND RUN (1984)
This is a gift from Ruggero Deodato of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST fame. CUT AND RUN is far less transgressive and really more of a sleazy jungle adventure than a journey into the depths of hell. You have an intrepid journalist and her MANLY~! camera man investigating the mysterious deaths of cocaine cartel members from around the world. It turns out that a guy who rolled with Jim Jones is now in the coke business and he has Micheal Berryman (THE HILLS HAVE EYES) and a squad of killer jungle dudes in loincloths running around chopping people up with machetes for...reasons. Of course they get lost in the jungle. Of course Micheal Berryman lurks in treetops and river beds in order to leap out and holler and wave his machete around. There are a lot of very Deodato touches. Everyone is very sweaty and desperate and rather shitty to each other. There are some neat JUNGLE TRAPS. Helicopters buzz around and people fire machine guns randomly into the air. The whole thing feels a bit like hanging out with the drugged-up dirt bike enthusiast stepbrother of APOCOLPYPSE NOW. You still get existentialist monologues, but this movie is way more about blowguns and funky disco than man's inhumanity toward man. (Although, B-movie sleaze aside; it's pretty clear to me that Deodato has himself a philosophy behind all this sex n' violence. Another time, perhaps)
I have a lot of love for Deodato's jungle loincloth dudes. I recognized a lot of faces from other cannibal/jungle movies, and I bet this was a really sweet gig for them. You get paid (I assume, who knows with Deodato?) to run around mostly naked and make scary faces. That's a nice gig if you can get it. This also features a bit of an all-star B-movie cast. In addition to Berryman, we get Eriq La Salle (ER), John Steiner (Caligula, among many others), Karen Black (House of 1000 Corpses, among many others), and Willie fuckin' Aames (Charles in Charge!) doing blow and shooting guns in a Mickey Mouse shirt. This is an easy reccomendation if you like grimy cocaine-fueled jungle shit, and really who among us can say that they do not? Check it out.
TENEMENT aka SLAUGHTER IN THE SOUTH BRONX aka GAME OF SURVIVAL (1985)
Oh hell yeah. You look at that cover art and you tell me that you don't want to see this movie. TENEMENT is a rather Troma-rific slice of urban despair that comes out of the same mold as DEADBEAT AT DAWN. That means you're going to get some uncanny-valley acting and a whole lot of seedy, gribbly stuff about the horrors of urban poverty. The plot is pretty simple, which is a plus for movies like this. A shitty street gang goes to war with the quirky old tennants of a shitty apartment building and whole lot of people die. It comes down to a sort of ultraviolent version of HOME ALONE mixed with ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13; instead of an 8-year-old using Micro Machines to trip up the wet bandits, you have villains from The Warriors getting electrocuted by octogenarians. And it works! This is a grim, nasty piece of work with the right balance of grit and low-budget charm. There's also a measure of true desperate urban pathos through the whole thing, as people lament being stuck in their tragic circumstances before doing bumps off their switchblades and throwing fridges at each other. Plus, it has its own early hip-hop theme song! TENEMENT has lived in legend among niche genre film afficiandos for years, but the line was that it was tough to find. That is no longer the case. Thank you, based Tubi. Go watch it right now if you've ever loved the things that I also love.
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