It’s Friday…
Ahem…I mean Frightday…
And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…
Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…
Gross-Out Horror Films.
By the time I saw Street Trash in 1987…
I had already seen a lot of gore…
This was the first film that I saw that made me go…
Um…
I think these guys are trying to gross me out…
And as bizarre as this tale of a homeless society that becomes mutated by tainted hooch is…
I still consider it a classic…
Because…
For me…
Anytime a film raises (or lowers depending on your ability to hold down your lunch) the bar on grossing out the audience…
Anytime I hear that people were barfing in the aisles…
Anytime I hear that people left a screening after fifteen minutes…
That’s when I raise my hand and shout…
Sign me up!
So, let’s take a chronological look at the grossest, gaggiest, and possibly even unknown to you, Gross-Out Horror Films…In the years following Street Trash.
Chillerama (2011) – I know…I skipped right through the 90’s again…Yep…Sure did…The only film from the 90’s that qualifies is Peter Jackson’s 1992 cult classic, Dead Alive…So there you go…But on to this film…This is a twisted anthology film that was born when Adam Rifkin and Tim Sullivan (2001 Maniacs) were working on Detroit Rock City…They wanted to do an anthology series that poked at all of those cheesy B-monster movies of the fifties…The two met up with Adam Rifkin (Hatchet) and Joe Lynch (Wrong Turn 2)…And the idea turned into this insane, low budget raunchfest…In the opening segment, Wadzilla…A man attempts to raise his sperm count, and in doing so, inadvertently creates a giant sperm that attacks New York City…And as a heaping helping of man-goo gets served up on the screen…You know you’ve stepped into B-Movie Gross Out Heaven.
Excision (2012) – Directed by Richard Bates Jr.…The man behind this year’s strange and terrifying film, Trash Fire…Took a beautiful actress, AnnaLynne McCord (Nip/Tuck) and transformed her into a girl who was ugly…Both inside, and out…McCord plays Pauline, a deranged high school student who has a rather unhealthy, and surprisingly carnal fascination with blood and guts…Let me tell you…This girl’s dreams may have her in an orgasmic state, but when I watched them…That wasn’t exactly the way that I reacted…This film may not gross everybody out…But it grossed me the hell out…This chick did some seriously nasty shit along the way towards what is a truly frightening climax…A climax that has stayed with me.
Eat (2014) – This film tells the story of professionally stagnant actress, Novella McClure…Who as she struggles to get noticed in Hollywood…Develops a really bad habit…Nope, not cocaine…No sir, she’s not addicted to hot yoga…Her thing…Her thing is that she enjoys snacking on her own flesh…This is sort of the disgusting cousin to the film Starry Eyes, which illustrates the desperation felt by the struggling Hollywood actress…This film takes that desperation…And the effects of having to endure such desperation for years…Now…Self-cannibalism is a concept that I was first introduced to, when I read Stephen King’s short story, Survivor Type…A short story that was a part of his Skeleton Crew collection…This was a story that King claimed, “goes a little bit too far, even for me.” And as this actress begins to unravel…Or be digested…Depending on how you look at it…It may just go a little too far, even for you.
Bite (2015) – Now here’s a film that when it premiered at the Fantasia Film Festival…The audience were handed barf bags as they entered the theater…Most thought it was a gimmick…But for many…Those bags were actually put to good use during the film…And…You had me at barf bags…This is transformative body horror in the vein of Cronenberg’s The Fly…When the film starts, you think it’s a found footage horror about a bunch of girls on a Costa Rican Bachelorette Party Weekend…But after Casey, the bride to be gets bit by a strange insect…She returns home and everything begins to change…Starting with the film switching from found footage horror, to a dark and cinematic body horror…As this insect bite begins to change Casey…She gets nastier and nastier and…Urrrp…Sorry…I just threw up in my mouth a little.
Antibirth (2016) – In this drug-addled horror comedy, writer-director Danny Perez tells a tale within the dark recesses of a remote Michigan town…It’s all about Lou, played by the ever-awesome Natasha Lyonne…She’s a girl who likes to party…Perhaps a bit too much…But, hey…Who’s judging? So after yet another dysphoric night of excessive drug and alcohol consumption…Lou wakes up with symptoms that seem eerily similar to those associated with pregnancy…Her BFF Sadie, played by the equally ever-awesome Chloë Sevigny, believes that Lou is actually pregnant, even though Lou insists that she hasn’t had sex…But as the symptoms increase and point to pregnancy…So do the moments of bizarre horrific hilarity…As well as some seriously gooey, gross-out moments…Moments that will probably take more drugs and alcohol than you watched Lou ingest…To erase the memories.
The Video Store Clerk 