Ready to jump into the darkness head first? Hell opened up and spewed out these films, and I happened to stumble across them. Some you may have heard of, others you will swear I made up. Most of these are from other countries, and a couple had no subtitles at all. As a result, I may have misunderstood the plots (or not even got the title correct). Sometimes I just fast-forwarded till something interesting happened. So here are my thoughts on some "Movies From Hell". If you happen to have seen any of these, be sure and let me know!

LET ME DIE A WOMAN
You know, I've seen some of the most violent, disgusting movies out there. Sometimes I think they go too far, but normally I can handle it. After all, it's only a special effect, right? In this Doris Wishman gem, however, my stomach was literally put to the test. Yuck. It's a documentary about sex-change operations, and it uses real people who've had the surgery. I thought it was just a movie about transsexuals, because there is some acting and scripted stuff in there. However, when the actors remove their clothes, there's no doubting it's the real deal. AAAH! Man, they show the operations happening. It's so gross. They even go in close-up on the genital areas so you can see how they change a vagina to a penis and vice-versa. If you're a glutton for punishment, check this out. Just remember I said to have your finger on the stop button.

POOR CECILY
At first this movie is like one of those late 60's/early 70's nudie films like FANNY HILL or something, where you have a bunch of Victorian-types prancing around in their big white wigs and getting naked. Cecily is a servant (more like slave) to the "Countess", who makes her get naked and participate in orgies with all her uppity rich friends. Cecily is the narrator, so we get to know her personal perspectives on how horrible it all is. Eventually she escapes from the palace, only to be arrested and sent to a weird prison. That's when the movie turns into something else entirely. The prison is like one huge dungeon, where all the captive women are stripped naked and tortured endlessly (by more guys in big white wigs). They stretch the prisoners on the rack, whip them millions of times, and even have softcore sex with them. After Cecily has paid her due for running away, she is returned to her old job of bringing tea to the rich folks and screwing them. We at least get a happy ending, where our heroine is whisked away on horseback by some nice guy. I think they made this movie just to show all the torture crap, which was pretty strong in context with the rest of the film.

NEKROMANTIK
Like the title suggests, it's a movie about doing the deed with corpses. However, this is actually a well done low-budgeter made in Germany by director Jorg Butgereit (who's done several other weird movies). Basically, a guy who cleans up after accidents and stuff takes a body home and makes out with it. All the special effects are fairly shoddy, except for the gross decaying corpse, which looks unnervingly real. In one scene, the main character sucks the eyeball out of its socket and licks it. They used a real cow's eye for that part! AAAH! Anyway, the only part that really caught me off guard was the very end. The guy offs himself while getting himself off, so to speak, and a couple different body fluids are shown. NEKROMANTIK 2 was even sicker in my opinion, and had one of the most realistic decapitations ever filmed. In Germany, the cops broke up the premiere screening and siezed the movie.

HARDCORE: THE FILMS OF RICHARD KERN
Kern is not only a great photographer, but also a brilliant underground filmmaker as it turns out. This 2-volume collection of his short films is nothing short of incredible. Armed with a bunch of actors willing to do absolutely anything, Kern goes all-out in his portrayals of the lives of some filthy people. A few of the films have actual plots and dialogue, while others are just full of rapidly-edited scenes of bondage and death. The reason I liked these tapes so much is you never knew what you'd see happen next. One minute you're watching a girl cut her clothes off with a giant knife, and the next a guy is tearing his own windpipe out. Lydia Lunch is one of the actresses you see frequently, and she's wonderful. In one of the lengthier segments called FINGERED, she plays a phone sex operator who ends up going on a murderous road trip with her boyfriend (who cuts someone's throat just for looking at Lydia). I could go on forever about these movies, but I won't this time. Make sure to see YOU KILLED ME FIRST if you get your hands on these videos. It's about a punk rock chick who shoots her evil, middle-class family.

ENTRAILS OF THE VIRGIN
Gotta love a Japanese movie with no English subtitles. It's a rip-off of EVIL DEAD, but with a lot of sex and nudity. Three photographers and a couple of their models go to a house in the woods. Of course, there's some kind of demon lurking about. He's just an actor covered in mud, though. All the men are horny as all get out, and romp around quite a bit with the models. One by one, the demon kills the men and possesses the women. One of the girls kisses a severed head and masturbates with a severed arm! Yikes! The killings are lame, and everything was shot at night, so it's not too technically astounding. However, it has some twisted stuff in it...mostly due to the perverse and excessive sex (in which the private parts and buttcracks are fogged out). In the end, one girl is left remaining. She carries the child of the demon, so you know what that means: SON OF ENTRAILS OF THE VIRGIN!

LOVE LETTERS OF A PORTUGUESE NUN
This one was actually made by famed sleazoid director Jess Franco. It's an Italian movie, dubbed in English, with Dutch (I think) subtitles! It's a weird one, no doubt about it. An innocent 16-year-old girl is sent to a convent after a priest catches her talking to a boy. Right off the bat, one of the nuns strips her down and wraps thorns around her waist & chest. As it turns out, all the nuns worship the devil (or as the subtitles call him, "Saatanen") and have orgies every night. They take off all their clothes except their white hoods, and bend over for the prince of darkness. The guy who's supposed to be satan is dressed in one of those dumb-ass devil suits like the one Jon Lovitz used to wear on SNL. Anyway, the girl escapes and tries to tell the governor about the evil secret of the nuns. No one believes her, there is a trial, and she gets stretched on the rack until she confesses to being a witch. Then, just before she's to be burned at the stake, the truth is revealed. Bravo, Franco!

SHAME OF THE JUNGLE
A poorly animated 70's American cartoon based on the Tarzan story, this one appears to have been made by people who were doing lots of drugs. I've read that Bill Murray, Christopher Guest, and Brian Doyle-Murray were among the voices used (in addition to Johnny Weissmuller Jr., who gets credit). The Tarzan character ("Shame") is an idiot, and Jane is a whining bitch. There's an army of little animated penises that make up most of the movie, when we're not being treated to comic gore and nudity. Thankfully it was only like an hour long. The only funny characters are killed quickly, and you're left with boring crap.

SCHIZOPHRENIAC: THE WHORE MANGLER
A nifty shot-on-video American production about a crazy fellow who kills people, women in particular, because his red-headed ventriliquist dummy "Rubberneck" tells him to. What really makes the movie is the actor's performance who plays the killer. He's nuts, plain and simple. He spews filthy dialogue, has sex with dead women, destroys a hooker's head with a baseball bat, kills three people in a porno theater, runs around wearing only a blonde wig, pisses himself, and eats his own sperm (like in DOOM GENERATION). The sickest part, though, is when he cuts a woman's nipple off and eats it like it's a pepperoni slice. Even though it's crudely shot and the effects are cheap, it still manages to be highly shocking. Again, the main actor is a riot. Imagine a pro wrestler as a psycho pervert killer who talks to a doll, and you've got him.

BONDAGE FANTASIA
Some Japanese filmmakers took the basic idea from Disney's FANTASIA and made their own live-action sleazefest. A lot of the stuff in the movie has to be seen to be believed, and the fact that it's all set to orchestra music just makes it weirder. There's no plot, just scene after scene of bondage and torture and overall kinkiness. It's highly perverse material. Some of the highlights were: two naked women in a small metal cage being thrown off a building, a guy eating a steak while using his wife's back as a plate, and a woman being electrocuted until she pees. The final image is something I'll never forget, though. A young woman, who's been watching the movie in a projection booth the whole time, has fallen asleep by the end. The film itself snakes out of the projector and wraps around her unconscious body. Cool.

GONZO FIGHT
Here's a short battle between Mitsu Bitchi and Monica Puller. Click here to see it.