MICROWAVE MASSACRE

Wikipedia defines dad joke as “a pejorative term used to describe a corny, unfunny, or predictable joke, typically a pun”. I mention this because MICROWAVE MASSACRE, the broad as a barn door 1983 cannibal comedy from director Wayne Berwick, is the cinematic equivalent of the dad joke. There is no subtlety here, no sophistication. As a vehicle for comedy, all its passengers are puns. As a horror film, it barely registers above a dead man’s pulse.

First, a synopsis: All Donald wants is a goddamn baloney and cheese sandwich. Is that too much to ask? Apparently so, as his cantankerous wife, May, refuses to indulge Donald’s easy to please appetite. A lower middle class faux-sophisticate, May is currently obsessed with avant-garde cuisine (or as she calls it, ‘kwee-zeen’), cooking her daily indulgences in an oversized microwave oven. 

As a result, after spending a few hours toiling away at a construction site, Donald has to open his lunch box and discover a large, almost cartoonish sandwich filled with out-of-the-ordinary veggies and a whole crab.

One night, Donald reaches his breaking point. After drinking himself into a stupor, he returns home to find yet another plate of weird food staring up at him from the kitchen table. Donald and May have a fight and Donald ends up beating her to death with an extra large salt shaker. He wakes up the next morning with no recollection of May’s murder. So imagine his surprise when he finds her body stuffed inside the microwave.

He cuts up his dead wife’s body and wraps the pieces in foil, cramming it all into a large meat freezer in the garage. Later that night, Donald is a bit peckish. He grabs what he thinks is an ordinary bit of food from the freezer, but GASP! SHOCK! it turns out to be his dead wife’s hand. To his surprise, the meat tastes really good. He microwaves one of May’s arms and takes it to work. Intrigued by the strange sight of Donald chewing on a three foot long slab of cooked meat, two of his co-workers, Roosevelt and Philip, ask for a nibble. They like it, too. But the meat tastes a little old. Maybe something leaner would work better. Maybe Donald should get his hands on some younger meat…

MICROWAVE MASSACRE begins with a shot of May's severed head before moving on to a pair of large bouncy breasts. Donald’s co-workers, Roosevelt and Philip are, respectively, white and black, though the film flips their expected stereotypical racial personalities. That's why white Roosevelt has to teach black Philip how to snap his fingers to the rhythm of a song. A buff and ruggedly handsome construction worker turns out to be a prissy gay man who revolts in disgusted horror after being touched by a buxom blonde sex goddess. Donald decides to rebel against his neat freak wife by emptying the vacuum bag on the couch before pissing into the fireplace. This, Dear Reader, is the level of humor on display here.

MICROWAVE MASSACRE feels like a spoof or a satire, like some weird diatribe against your average television sitcom. It feels like it was designed to have a laugh track, like it’s obvious and groan worthy puns were designed to point out just how unfunny a lot of these sitcoms were. So unfunny in fact that television studios had to design a bit of manipulative psychological bumfuckery, canned laughter designed to make something seem funnier than it actually is. Or maybe Berwick was just trying to make something kitsch and dumb. I don’t know. I don’t know why this movie exists.

I’m just glad that it does.

Count me among the fans of MICROWAVE MASSACRE. I’m not even sure why I enjoy the movie as much as I do. I don’t find myself laughing at it anymore and truth be told, I never laughed at it much back in the day. There are a few really great sight gags, like the African jungle savage driving a catering truck that reads “let us cater your next pagan ritual”, and more than a few gorgeous women to ogle. The man playing Donald in the film is Jackie Vernon, the voice actor for Frosty the Snowman. I have to admit that it’s wonderfully strange to listen to him delivering lines like “I’m so hungry I could eat a whore”. I just close my eyes and imagine a cartoon Snowman strangling and dismembering women.

I am well aware that I’m in the minority when it comes to MICROWAVE MASSACRE. This is not a well regarded or well reviewed masterpiece of comedic horror. I just can’t bring myself to give much of a shit about that as I have a blast every time I watch it. I normally have a hard time enjoying comedy-horror films, especially when they’re this hyperbolic and obvious, but there’s something about MICROWAVE MASSACRE that fits me like an old glove.

PORNO HOLOCAUST

Aristide Massaccesi was a fine cinematographer. Joe D’Amato was not a very good director. The two made countless movies together. Sometimes, though rarely, something great would come of it. The lurid early 70s giallo DEATH SMILES ON A MURDERER comes to mind. The early adventures of Emanuelle stand out too, as does D’Amato’s BEYOND THE DARKNESS, a grotesque remake of Mino Guerrini’s 1966 giallo THE THIRD EYE. After going solo for a bit, during which time D’Amato made the Video Nasty entry ANTROPOPHAGUS, the two would reunite for a long, long string of monotonous, largely terrible, titles. D’Amato was trapped in the gravity of the burgeoning adult market and unfortunately Massaccesi was dragged in with him. D’Amato, workmanlike and ultimately forgettable, would thrive in his new home. The skill and creativity Massaccesi showed in his promising early career would wither and die.

Of course, I’m talking about a single person here. I’m sure many, if not most, of you are aware of that. Joe D’Amato was just one of the many names Massaccesi used throughout his career. It just so happens to be the one he used the most. But I’m not being flippant here. D’Amato (I'll just stick with that name) was a damn fine cinematographer who increased the quality of many of the productions he played a part in. He was damn good at his job and even in the later films of his career, the really terrible stuff, there are moments that are well framed and expertly filmed. But I imagine there was far more money in making a half dozen cheap and quick sex flicks in a year than there was in making only a few more respectable films every four or five.

The quality of D’Amato’s adult career is perhaps best exemplified by a quintet of films he directed in 1980. Those films are HARD SENSATION, EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD, ORGASMO NERO, SESSO NERO, and the subject of today’s review, PORNO HOLOCAUST. There’s a lot of things connecting these films together. For example, they were all written by actor George Eastman. They were all (mostly) filmed on the same island, utilizing many of the same sets and geographical backdrops. The casts are virtually the same across all films, with only a few unique appearances from actresses like Nieves Navarro and Laura Gemser. At least three of these films, PORNO HOLOCAUST, SESSO NERO and HARD SENSATION, were filmed concurrently.

Of the five movies mentioned above, only PORNO HOLOCAUST has attained any kind of cult following, probably because of its ridiculous name and asinine set up. The absurd plot of PORNO HOLOCAUST concerns a scientific expedition to an unnamed island, an endeavor made in an attempt to study the effects of a decades old nuclear bomb test on the island’s animal life. The expedition team is comprised of a sexy nuclear physicist, a nymphomaniac biologist, a nosy reporter, a sailor with a wart riddled ball sack, and a few other people who do fuck all but sit around and/or screw on camera. After an hour and some odd minutes of lazily acted sex scenes (two of which just so happen to take place on the same log, the least romantic and comfortable setting ever for a prolonged bout of fucking), the film gets down to business. Turns out that there was a family on the island during the bomb testing and the sole surviving, now horribly mutated, son is roaming the island, killing off everyone he comes across. His method for dispatching women? Rape, the perfect way to give them a lethal dose of radioactive semen. I’m not even joking.

All of the negative criticisms I could give about PORNO HOLOCAUST can be attributed to the other four films as well. It’s horribly dull, terribly acted, and padded with unnecessary exposition. The sex is lazy, often uncomfortable, and without variety. D’Amato clearly has his sexual preferences and you can tell exactly what they are by the way he stages virtually every sex scene in the exact same way. One gets the impression that D’Amato was a boring lay, the kind of guy who liked his sex one way and one way only. All five films are sexist, which should come as no surprise, with varying degrees of racism, PORNO HOLOCAUST being the most explicit.

For example, the monster of this film is a black man, albeit one with radioactive sperm, who goes out of his way to rape and kill white women. The only non-white woman in the cast is simply taken prisoner, if only so she can be rescued by our white hero later in the film. It’s the subtle kind of racism you would expect from an Italian film of this sort. It ain’t GOODBYE UNCLE TOM, but it still leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth.

The whole damn thing does actually. It’s yet another sex film with boring sex. It’s yet another horror movie incapable of producing effective horror moments. There’s some unintentional humor to be found in the film, that’s for sure. The monster rapist takes a woman prisoner and ties her hands together so she can’t run away. Again, no joke. The grand finale sex scene is capped off by Mark Shannon ejaculating all over Lucia Ramirez’s back. Shannon then leans down and licks her ass crack. Kinda comes out of nowhere, really. Eagle eyed viewers will notice production assistants popping up in the background a few times as the film goes on. So yeah, it’s a damn mess and did I mention that it runs for just under two hours? That's a lethal dose of radioactive shit for sure. 

PORNO HOLOCAUST was never meant to be a good film. It certainly was never meant to be a serious film. It was meant to be cheap exploitation that could be sold quickly and easily to overseas sleaze merchants. But it’s not erotic or sexy. It difficult to masturbate when you’re trying to not fall asleep as you’re doing it. And it doesn’t operate well as a horror film either as it’s simply incompetent at creating mood, atmosphere or shocks. That’s the thing that really ties these five D’Amato films together. They feel like five different flavors of the same failure. They’re all boring. None of the films are erotic in any way. They fail as porn and they fail as entertainment. Just stay away.

ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST

Italian genre film in the late 70s and early 80s was little more than a fad machine. A film would be released, make some money, and imitators would follow suit. Some fads took a bit longer to burn out than others. By the time 1980 rolled around, the cannibal film was on its last legs, quickly losing ground to that other giant of exploitation anthropophagy, the zombie flick. But there was still some gas left in the tank. CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST was released to both acclaim and disgust. It was then, as it is now, the paragon of Gut-Munching Natives vs Civilized White Folk films. It made an impact, reignited (even if only for a brief time) interest in the cannibal film and, as expected, gave birth to a few copycats.

The other film making waves around the same time was Fulci's ZOMBI, a far less salacious, yet every bit as repugnant, shocker that was finding great success outside of Italy. And that brings us to this film, ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST, one of the greatest regurgitators ever produced by money hungry hack Italians. Now, when I say “greatest”, I am not referring to its quality. No, I'm referring to the scope of its regurgitation. It has a set-up (and a score) ripped right from EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS, with a beautiful woman discovering that her place of employment, a hospital, is playing host to a cannibalistic weirdo who treats the morgue as his own personal buffet. When the cannibal is caught, he leaps from a window (pay attention to when the dummy hits the pavement; it's one of the best chuckles the film has to offer), muttering the word “Keto” as he dies. Our heroine, Lori, notices a strange marking on the man's body, a symbol belonging to a long lost cannibal tribe.

Heading off to the island of Keto, Lori is joined by Peter, an anthropologist played by Ian McCulloch. That is the first of many ZOMBI references (aka rip-offs) to come. It's temping to think McCulloch is still playing the character of Peter from Fulci's film. They act the same, talk the same, look the same. Just think of ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST as the second chapter in the epic tale of Peter the Schlub. You might get more enjoyment out of it that way.

When we arrive at Keto, the cannibal film references begin in earnest. There's a smattering of SAVAGE TERROR here, some spike trap shenanigans lifted from JUNGLE HOLOCAUST, and later, a full nude body painting scene torn from MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD. All the various cliches and tropes are trotted out and displayed, though thankfully the film contains not a whiff of animal cruelty. In short order, a couple of redshirts are chewed up, Peter's assistant George has his eyeballs gouged out, a reporter named Susan goes missing, and Lori is kidnapped by the cannibals. That just leaves us with Peter and his guide, Molotto (played by yet another actor from ZOMBI, the fantastically named Dakar).

Oh and there are zombies wandering around now, the byproduct of a mad scientist trying to unlock the secrets of eternal life via brain transplantation. While Peter finds himself in the clutches of the crazy Dr. Obrero, Lori is crowned Queen of the Cannibals. These two bizarre strands of bullshit collide when Lori leads her army of flesh eaters to Obereo's laboratories (which are just reused sets from ZOMBI). Will our heroes make it out alive? Do we even care?

So yeah, this movie is garbage. It isn't without its charms though. The gore effects are pretty great, featuring some nifty disembowelment and a sloppy brain transplant. There are some genuinely hilarious, if unintentionally so, moments, like how Peter responds to every death with an annoyed order of “bury him and get moving”. In hindsight, the funniest thing about the movie is the beginning. How exactly did a member of a far off cannibal tribe get a job working at a New York morgue? Who checked his references? I would love to see that man's resume.

In the States, ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST was renamed to DR. BUTCHER, M.D. (MEDICAL DEVIATE), a much more interesting and catchy title. It's also much more appropriate. There isn't much of a zombie holocaust in ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST. There's maybe a dozen of the suckers walking around and they never even get to kill anyone. All the bloody work is left to the cannibals and Dr. Obrero. That's more than a little disappointing as the film could have really used a more satisfyingly absurd conclusion. I mean, we have two damn groups of flesh eaters running around, but we never even get a real final confrontation. One group runs in, manhandles the other for a minute or two, and that's about it.

And that's the biggest problem with ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST. It never gets as absurd as you think it's going to get. It's all a big cop out. They should have just stuck to one rip-off at a time. Putting zombies and cannibals in one film makes no sense, commercially or otherwise. It's like going to a restaurant and ordering the ham steak with a side of Canadian bacon. You're just getting more damn ham. And sure, the film manages a few decent bits as it chugs along (for example, it's always nice to see Alexandra Delli Colli in a movie where she isn't being toe fucked or raped, and the murder scenes really do pack a queasy punch), but it really is just the proverbial Boulevard of Broken Dreams, moments of joy that lead to long stretches of regret and emptiness. There really isn't anything much to see here, folks. Move along, move along.