Mocata's Den of Horror

Aristide Massaccesi, primarily known by the pseudonym, Joe D'Amato, didn't just slog through the foul waters of horror and exploitation, but also delved into pornography, both of the softcore and hardcore varieties.  It is only fitting then, that this was his approach to the cannibal film boom that was happening in the late '70s. Blu-ray edition with slip-case from Severin Emanuelle e gli ultimi cannibali (1977), aka Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals and Trap Them and Kill Them , mixes up the jungle adventure featuring cannibals with the softcore porn elements of an independent woman reporter named Emanuelle, played by Laura Gemser, who played Emanuelle in a number of films, starting with Black Emanuelle (1976), who does whatever she needs to do to get her story, all the while taking the time to have sex with anybody and everybody she feels inclined to do so with.  While she is undercover in a mental hospital, she encounters a young woman who is violent towards nurses...

The deranged folks at Severin are at it again.  This time we are talking about Joe D'Amato's morbid classic, Buio Omega, more commonly known in English as Beyond the Darkness or the name I first saw it under on VHS many, many years ago: Buried Alive .   If you have not seen this film, it is a nasty one.  I think at least part of the film's intent was to make its audience sick.  It is gruesome and rather unpleasant in many places, featuring fairly lengthy sequences involving the disposal of a body, the embalming and dressing of another body, plus some good old gory violence.  Add in a classic Goblin score and you have yet another reason that Italian cinema was so wonderful. I got my copy directly from Severin in the Necro Bundle, which features the Blu-Ray with a CD of Goblin's score, along with a reproduction of the theatrical poster Aquarius Releasing made for its release as Buried Alive , a t-shirt, an air freshener, and a pin.  It is a rather n...

My two most recent Blu Ray purchases just arrived in the mail a couple days ago:  from Vinegar Syndrome, there is Count Dracula's Great Love, directed by Javier Aguirre and starring the late-great Paul Naschy.  And then, from Severin, the Italian madness known as Burial Ground , from director Andrea Bianchi. Paul Naschy is most remembered for his Hombre Lobo movies, playing the ever-doomed Waldemar Daninsky, but he made so many movies in his life that it is doing the man a disservice to overlook his other roles, such as Alaric de Marnac in one of my personal favorite Naschy movies, Horror Rises from the Tomb, Gotho (aka the Hunchback) of Hunchback of the Morgue (which deserves a good Blu Ray release as well), and, of course, Count Dracula himself from Count Dracula's Great Love . Naschy was heavily influenced by the classics of the golden age of horror and it shows in this movie, from the moody sets and locations to the look of Dracula.  Naschy took thes...

If you are a fan of old exploitation/grindhouse cinema, then you know that many of these movies were retitled, re-edited, and sometimes rescored when released in different territories.   Some were trimmed to eliminate some of the gorier or more disturbing moments and some were re-edited to change the pacing of the story or to incorporate new elements in an attempt to make the films more marketable in a given territory. Zombi Holocaust was one that received some fairly noticeable changes when picked up by Aquarius Releasing in the U.S.A. in the early ‘80s.   The distributor put together a new opening, including the new title, Doctor Butcher M.D. – Medical Deviate, with footage from an uncompleted anthology movie, a new score, and even a new scene.   Zombi Holocaust (as Zombie Holocaust ) has been available on both DVD and Blu-Ray for some time now, but the Doctor Butcher M.D. cut was only available on old VHS copies or film prints. Something Old  ...