Women's Prison Massacre (1983), by Bruno Mattei

"I'm not a part of this performance. I represent the captive audience. And what I want to know is: how can you suffer it? It makes me wanna throw up!"

Bruno Mattei was an international man of mystery. Many of his films will end up here eventually: SS Girls, Hell of the Living Dead, Rats: Night of Terror, and Zombi 3 have entered the ranks of some of my favorite movies of all time. As associate of Lucio Fulci, and a partner of the infamous Claudio Fragasso, Mattei explored genuine and heartfelt low-tier art in the context of extreme bottom-budget trash filmmaking. His movies aren't emotionally riveting, but they often tend to be comedic boons to all who watch, carrying sincere aesthetic interest. Of course, he made plenty of shit, just as his fellow cinematic superstar Jess Franco did in addition to his own great films.  

By being a Bruno Mattei movie, Women's Prison Massacre is already at risk, and is, in fact, doubly screwed: yep, it's part of the Black Emanuelle series starring Laura Gemser. I have only seen one Gemser Emanuelle film, and that was Joe D'Amato's Emanuelle in America. That movie had a scene where someone masturbated a horse. Scrubbed my computer after that one. You can expect that I had some degree of apprehension when wading into one of Mattei's cracks at the series, which, by the way, is a series much in the same way that all of the various in-name sequels to Fulci's Zombi (like Mattei's Zombi 3) are a series. However, I learned quickly that I would not be led astray, for lo and behold, this movie opens with a woman giving a monologue about how she calls herself "The Mantis." THE MANTIS. The Mark of Mattei is upon us. Joy to the world!

The usual Bruno stuff is here. There's at least one person with crazy eyes. People are simultaneously offended and excited by sex, of which there is a lot. The editing and effects make most of the violence cartoonish. And, naturally, everyone speaks with the ludicrous intensity of a Grant Morrison comic. "I hope...you can prove that claim!!" the warden mugs, after her guards torture some lesbians. "Can you not...prove the contrary?!?" Emanuelle snaps back.

Speaking of Emanuelle, Mattei's protagonists (or "protagonists") are always awesome--the post-apocalyptic hippie bikers from Rats, Zantoro from Hell of the Living Dead, and especially Hans Schellenberg from SS Girls are all impressive slabs of perplexing OTT ham whose dub actors should be given monuments. Emanuelle, of course, is not a Mattei original, but she keeps a badass stony face and makes us feel bad for her when she gets tortured. In this one, she's a reporter who was supposed to investigate the titular prison, but, of course, ends up becoming a prisoner in it, which one must admit is rather the twist, assuming this is the only movie involving a prison that one has ever watched. There are weird cutaways from the prison scenes to who I think is either the owner of the prisoner or Emanuelle's boss, who is shady and very pro-death penalty. Then, there are some male prisoners who end up in the women's prison, who give us zingers like this:

Prisoner 1: "If I didn't have these cuffs on me, I'd stick that gun up your ass!"
Prisoner 2: "No, that's too easy--and he might enjoy it! That'd be a real shame, huh?"

Unfortunately, I can't properly convey how the delivery is both inappropriately casual and unnecessarily dramatic. Like I said--monuments, please.

Actually, the male prisoner subplot leads into this movie's very important message: don't use a vehicle transporting prisoners to lead a raid on a terrorist organization. It's okay, though, because surprisingly the prisoners do not escape, and as far as I know the terrorists do not return to the movie. The convicts are instead placed in the women's prison, despite the fact that all of them are rapists. In addition, despite this fact, they are portrayed as jolly, goofy comedians, at least until they very easily kill a guard and seize control of the prison. However, with a few gruesome exceptions, there is naught but more cartoonishness ahead. The disturbing stuff (which should be obvious enough) is scored with proto-techno/post-disco beebops, and intercut with scenes of a Nazi forcing a woman to dance with a blow-up doll. It can be a really upsetting movie--I'll be the first to admit that I'm triggered by depictions of rape, and so I did have to fast forward quite a bit in that second half. And, trust me, lots of particular words with certain histories to 'em are thrown against the ladies, because it's a Women in Prison movie. That's something you just gotta blink over, I'm afraid. Ultimately, if you feel prepared or are content skipping around, the surrounding scenes are sweet 'n' surreal.

I have to admit, I'd rather watch SS Girls or Hell of the Living Dead than this, which is also how I feel about Rats: Night of Terror. But this is still definitely a favorite. And hey, it really is two movies in one: after all, it ends with a sped-up recap of all of the ostensibly important events.

So yes, there was some suffering. But for things like that, I didn't throw up.

P.S. Claudio Fragasso was 2nd unit director on this. I'm guessing he worked with Laura Gemser before, but I like to think that this was the movie where Fragasso just said, "Someday I'll make a movie about vegetarian goblins. And I want you to make the costumes for these goblins." Then she winked at him: "I have some potato sacks which'll do the job just fine."

Witchdoctor of the Living Dead (1985), by Charles Abi Enonchong

Witchdoctor of the Living Dead wastes no time in letting us know how fantastic it is. After all, how ballsy is it to open the film with a title card reading "WARNING," only to have no text follow such an exclamation? How equally ballsy, then, to show the opening not once but twice? Witchdoctor of the Living Dead thus informs from the start: "I am not a movie. I am a revelation. And I will end the world you know."

Welcome to the apocalypse, straight from Uganda! Horror cinema in Nigeria and Uganda has achieved minor urban legend status for the ludicrousness of the cinema they produce. From mindbending tales like End of the Wicked to epic serials like the four-part 666: Beware the End Time is At Hand, shocking camcorder effects, inexplicable dialogue, and incomprehensible editing are the names of the game. Unfortunately, many of these films are used by fundamentalist Christian groups to forward harmful and oppressive agendas--a context which can't be easily separated from the films on display. But when viewed independently of the real world, they are works of art that represent glimpses into a world as surreal as the low-budget cinema of Turkey or Indonesia. The types of movies this blog concerns itself with can be found all over the world, and each country does it different. We live in a cultural rainbow of beautiful trash and I am only just discovering the tip of the iceberg for African talent...and gorgeous madness.

A taxi driver takes his fare through the dusty Ugandan roads. He attempts to strike up a conversation, only to learn that his passenger is in fact a skeleton. He screams and the editing leads us to believe that the skeleton is screaming back. He flees only to be confronted by zombies. Shots of the zombies consist of accelerated slideshows, ala most of Andreas Schnaas' Violent Shit. The driver returns to the taxi, only for the skeleton to vomit snakes on him, leading to his demise. We go into the (second) opening credits sequence, wherein music that sounds like it would fit in the 1990 Captain America movie plays. It's okay, though, because the movie's soundtrack is also cobbled together with music from Godzilla, Dawn of the Dead, and Satan War (probably a library cue, but whatever).

In essence, the titular Witchdoctor of the Living Dead (spelled "Livingdead" on the main title card) is terrorizing a town full of characters who are probably named somewhere. A woman pukes snakes until she dies, a priest holds a crucifix up to the camera for ten minutes, and lines are read with the emotion and pacing of Microsoft Sam. All of this makes the movie incredibly hard to follow, and that is why I love it. What I don't love is a goat being bloodily killed in real life on camera. It's entirely unnecessary and somehow manages to become even more grueling than the animal cruelty shit from Cannibal Ferox. However, that's basically the only dip in the road. This movie may bore a lot of people, but not too many, really. I really doubt you could get goofier zombies, and I'm counting the ones from Zombie Lake--it is genuinely entertaining merely on an aesthetic level for the zombies alone.

There are two questions I kept asking while watching this. One, "What the fuck?"; and two, "Are you fucking kidding me?" However, both were said endearingly. There is almost no plot in this movie. Character development is nonexistent, and never established to begin with. As such, it can only be really be described as hallucinogenic; a psychedelic sea of cackling zombie faces, slow-mo shots, and an ending that would be disappointing if the events of it were portrayed with regards to real-life ammunition limitations. And people scream quite a lot, though the screams sound less like those of pain or fear, and more like anger. I love hearing those screams in movies, for how out of place they are, and I've found out through making my own movies that it's really the only way to do any sort of genuine scream while acting (assuming you're like me--I am an actor in the same way that cream of mushroom soup is an exotic and exciting dish). Everyone sounds pissed off over the fact that a zombie is eating their guts. I suppose that's kind of awesome. I mean, if I get killed by black magic, I want the sorcerer in question to know that as scary and painful as my death is, I'm still damn pissed off that my death means I will never taste honey-sriracha-crust mushroom pizza again.

To put it another way: Witchdoctor of the Living Dead has basically everything I could ever want in a horror film. The only other time I've felt such a thing so deeply was in Evil Dead, particularly in the wake of the scene where the Deadite grabs Ash's ankle while screaming "Join us! Join us!" Ghouls screaming "Join us!" has always made me laugh myself to tears.

I like to think that Witchdoctor could one day give someone else those same tears. Do yourself a favor and track it (just fast-forward through the animal violence). Then you will finally find out for yourself what the WARNING is. Or rather, why they didn't have time enough to tell you what that WARNING was. Because it is a WARNING that this movie is full of all kinds of batshit glory.