Director: Astron-6
Year released: 2011
THE CHARGE: Being the best movie ever directed by something that sounds like George Jetson's robot dog.
THE EVIDENCE: Is there anything more frightening than the holidays? As if putting on a brave face and dealing with your relatives wasn't troublesome enough, numerous film makers have ensured that we need to spend every Halloween, Christmas, New Year's, birthday, Mother's Day and Earth Day looking over our shoulders to make sure that a masked maniac isn't trying to offer us season's greetings with a butcher knife between the shoulder blades. Canadian film crew "Astron-6" has taken their turn on the holiday exploitation bandwagon with Father's Day and it's safe to say that I'll never view that particular day the same way again.
Director: Rainer Erler
Year released: 1979
THE CHARGE: Having no heart, but trying to make up for it with a liver and a couple of nice kidneys.
THE EVIDENCE: I've watched a lot of movies that the general viewing public would consider "bad". But I'm usually able to sit through even the worst of the worst just from the sheer awe that comes with the realization that this movie exists because numerous people dedicated a fair chunk of their lives, and invested a fair chunk of their money, to make it happen. I respect that kind of dedication, however misguided it may be. That being said, Spare Parts sorely tested the boundaries of both my respect and my patience.
Director: Robert O'Neill
Year released: 1970
THE CHARGE: I can think of at least two things wrong with that title.
THE EVIDENCE: Blood Mania. You might think this would be a slasher film filled with all manner of gratuitous violence and gory special effects. Or maybe you'd think it's a lesser known movie from the collection of a notorious b-movie auteur like Herschell Gordon Lewis or Roger Corman. Or maybe you'd think it sounds like a ditzy Troma horror-comedy chock full of gross-out gags. Whatever you're thinking, you're wrong.
Director: Osvaldo Civirani (as Richard Kean)
Year released: 1971
THE CHARGE: Identity theft, because seven faces is at least a couple too many.
THE EVIDENCE: Ah, the early 70s. A politically incorrect time when men were openly lecherous, secretaries wore miniskirts, and sideburns weren't ironic. A time when every home, office and daycare center had a wet bar. A time when the Surgeon General said "Smoke 'em if you got 'em." A time when a movie as utterly crazy as The Devil with Seven Faces could pass itself off as a serious crime caper.
Director: Giulio de Santi
Year released: 2013
THE CHARGE: Price gouging, eye gouging, brain gouging... pretty much gouging every gougable thing there is to gouge.
THE EVIDENCE: You see that tag line above, just below the web site's banner? "Films on trial for crimes against humanity, decency, and general good taste." I made that up with the intention of being tongue-in-cheek. I love movies and even the low budget affairs I typically review here are rarely ever that bad. But then I witnessed Hotel Inferno, a movie not content to merely wallow in bad taste. It decapitates bad taste, pulls out its innards, vomits on them and gleefully rolls around in the putrid mixture while unleashing a torrent of profanities that would make even the most dedicated vulgarian blush.
