Early 2000s HBO Series...

was the golden age for cable tv. Many actors got their start or recognition from these shows at the time. Besides James Gandolfini becoming a star due to The Sopranos there were many others. Micheal C. Hall's role in Six Feet Under got him the starring lead in Dexter. Timothy Olyphant broke thru from starring in Deadwood which later got him Justified. It also resurrected Ian McShane's career. Rome had a great cast that many found themselves later cast in Game of Thrones. Ray Stevenson was the standout as Titus Pullo imo and Kerry Condon was just nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Banshees of Inshiren. I have often stated here I'm a big fan of Carnivale which imo is Clancy Brown's greatest role easily. Deadwood, Rome and Carnivale were all cut short, not for reasons of viewership ratings but due to the cost of making them. They are all period pieces with Deadwood taking place soon after the Civil War, Rome during ancient times and Carnivale during the Great Depression. CGI was still new and extremely expensive at the time so they actually went the way of building the sets and using props which shows and you just no longer see today. Anyways, I highly recommend to everyone here to invest the time in watching Deadwood, Rome and Carnivale...you won't be disappointed and it's a hell of a lot better than anything HBO has put out in years imo.

Trash Challenge VII: Herschell's Goin' To Heaven



We live in a world subject to constant change. Every second of every minute of every hour, changes take place. These changes are perhaps invisible to us because our level of awareness is limited. Take for example how the things we do and say to the people we meet, all these things affect our lives, influence our destinies... And yet there seems to be some kind of fantastic order to the whole thing. We never know how or when we will meet a person who will become a catalyst, or who will lead us to one. What is a catalyst? Well, in this case, a catalyst is a person who will bring about change. They could be good or bad... but there will be changes. You can meet one almost anywhere in your everyday life. In the supermarket, drug store, anywhere. Even riding down the Florida turnpike. A pretty girl with a problem. Who could resist? Certainly not Herschell... --Brad F. Grinter


Welcome to the 2023 Trash Challlenge!

As always, it'll be one point for every trashy quality below. It doesn't have to be a significant amount of anything. As long as it's there.

Nudity

Gore

Rape

Hardcore Penetration

Incest

Drug Use

Cannibalism

Intentionally Bad Qualities

Video Nasties - Any movie to ever appear on this list.

SOV - Anything shot-on-video from the 80's and 90's, or beyond, if you know of anything.

Beastiality

Necrophilia

Racism - One point for racist characters, or any type of blatant racism expressed.

Retards - Any characters who appears to be mentally handicapped is good for a point.

Garbage Point - One point earned if you genuinely hate the movie and have a difficult time making it through.

FTV (First Time Viewing)

Pleasure Point - One point earned for each orgasm you provide for yourself whilst viewing a trash epic.

And then, there's the Trifectas. Instead of using directors and series, the Trash Challenge trifectas are all about the classic Exploitation sub genres.

Sexploitation, Blaxploitation, Drugsploitation, Hixploitation, Hippiesploitation, Nazisploitation, Bikersploitation, Canuxploitation, Ozploitation, Nunsploitation, Bruceploitation, Fowlsploitation, Rape/Revenge, Lezbo-Vamp, Women In Prison, Jungle Cannibal Epics, Mondo/Shockumentaries, Nudie Cuties/Nudist Camp, Giallos, J-Sploitation/Pink, Hong Kong CAT:III, Throwbacks

3 in a row from any of the above sploitations will count as a trifecta. A movie can only count towards one trifecta.

Single Trifecta - 5 points

Double Trifecta - 7 points

Triple Trifecta - 9 points

Etc.

Films must run no less than 40 minutes to count.

This challenge will be for the month of March.

Good fucking luck!




I https://trashepics.com/post/9/105/
II https://trashepics.com/post/9/186/
III https://trashepics.com/post/9/229/
IV https://trashepics.com/post/9/236/
V https://trashepics.com/post/9/247/
VI https://trashepics.com/post/9/254/

John Wick: Episode IV - A New Hope

These movies have gone a little off the rails, huh? By the time we get around to this one, he's basically unstoppable. You have to turn your brain off to accept that he can get hit by a car a dozen times, fall off high buildings, and get shot and stabbed several times... and still keep going. There is no stopping him, because the box office is good. And the critic reviews are good. And the fan reviews are good too?

As Keanu says as his first of many^{very few} lines in the movie, "Yeah."

It is a fun movie to watch, even at that god forsaken runtime. It's the same old story as every other movie, what with the high councils, the ultimatums, the heavy bounties, and a massive body count. It doesn't matter so long as you have that last part. John Wick kills a lot of people.

The fight choreography is great. That's what we're all watching for anyway, and there's this cool top-down single-take fight scene that seems like it's being played in a video game. Pretty cool. Blind Asian Man and Black Guy with a dog are decent characters, Clancy Brown barely does anything, and Skarsgard is an asshole. Ian McShane is in a fair amount, but Lance Reddick has a very minimal role.

To all you boppers out there, there was a huge Warriors reference. "Nowhere to run to baby, yeah! Nowhere to hide!"

Since it makes money, they want to spin this off however they can. I'm not sure I care to see spin-offs, because it's going to become retarded like Fast & Furious at the rate it's going, so this entry would be a perfect place to stop watching and leave on a high note.

#Review

Spiral: From the Book of Saw (Part IX) 2021

In 2017, the series came full circle with a sequel that was also a prequel. It didn't have a number on it because things gets more laughable the higher the number goes, and this series was already getting exhausted at that point. As that one "ends", Jigsaw killer John Kramer is still dead, but only after having masterminded 8 over-complicated torture sprees upon the diagnosis of his cancer. If he had spent as much time seeking treatments, he probably wouldn't have needed to be such an asshole, but then you wouldn't have all this fine art, huh?

But fuck him. This movie finally moves beyond him and goes with another copycat. One with no connection to him other than his amazing engineering skills and sadistic tendencies. Chris Rock is a detective who gets caught up in this mess, which also involves his father Sam Jackson. As the story plays out, this "spin-off" veers more and more into familiar territory as the movie turns into more and more of the same-old same-old we Saw before. And of course, there has to be twist endings, right?


What I really hate about these movies is their "To Be Continued" vibes. They feel like episodes of some pretentious crime drama show, only with graphic torture to appeal to "horror fans". These films exemplify the term "Torture Porn" because they're more endurance tests than quality narrative and execution. The writing process revolves completely around torture methods, and there's never any optimism. Just about everyone tortured is tortured fatally, with no real desire for redemption in these characters, but rather the justification that they'll die horrible deaths. Glorified snuff shorts of sorts, and that's not exactly horror. It's not exactly fun. It's not exactly clever. And it's not exactly good. I find this whole series to be a rather low point for mainstream horror, and I don't pariticularly care for it.


SPOILERS

And of course, the cops had to shoot the black man at the end. I think this movie has a bit of a political agenda to it, which is probably why Chris Rock and Sam Jackson's liberal ass wanted to get involved. If all the sequels before had b-grade actors at most, then suddenly these more rich celebs get involved? And the timing after Floyd? 🤔

END SPOILERS


Of course they set it up for a sequel. All these endings are like that, implying that this dreadful series will go on forever. Some things need to end. Especially this review.

#Review

Trump Presidency rating

As you know I was hoping for a win for the Trumpster , I'll use this post as a record to see if in 4 years time, he has kept to his main promises.

1. Build a beautiful 55' high wall and make the mexicans pay for it
2. Drain the swamp, eg Senators limited to 2 terms
3. Increase median Wages above inflation
4. Decrease unemployment rate
5. Decrease government debt currently $19.818 trillion
6. Deport 2 Million people in the first hour of his Precidency
7. Impose 45% tariff on chinese goods
8. Ban muslims from entering the USA
9. Lock Clinton up
10. Personally become one of the 100 richest americans for the first time

Anthropophagus 1980

AKA "Antropofago", AKA "The Grim Reaper", AKA "Man Beast", AKA "The Savage Island", AKA "The Zombie's Rage".

---

Starring George Eastman as the ugly cannibal. What more do you need?

The story is pretty simple. A bunch of hapless victims find themselves on an abandoned island in Greece and go exploring. Little do they know a maniac cannibal lives on the island, having been stranded there himself and forced to do some bad things to survive.

That's really about it. It's a cool eerie setting filled with fancy haunted mansions, seaside cliffs, stone ruins, and cavernous crypts. The film is mostly set during the daytime, which is pretty unique.

Being Italian, there's an inherent video nasty charm to its gratuity. It's all about that slow foreboding mood, and when big George shows up in his hideous visage, you know you're in for a good time with some mindless old school gore.

#Review

Cannibal Apocalypse 1980

Video nasties were any aspiring horror fan's wet dream in the early 2000s. That's when I first saw this and several other notorious splatter flicks. Like many others from its era, this one is nothing original. It tries to combine the infectious concepts of a zombie movie with the idea of cannibalism, yet it ends up nothing like either one of these subgenres. What we get instead is some kind of crazed Vietnam vet contagion scenario that's made watchable because it has the great John Saxon, as well as Italian horror staple Giovanni Lombardo Radice.

Back in the war, Saxon saved Giovanni and another POW, but not after they had to resort to cannibalism to stay alive. Cut to the present where Saxon is living in a nice neighborhood with a slight case of PTSD, and his old friend Giovanni comes back to visit. However, Giovanni still has that urge to eat human flesh, and it gets him and everyone else into some trouble with the authorities and a shitty biker gang for good measure.

In typical Italian sleaze fashion, there's also a subplot about a teen girl neighbor who seduces John Saxon for some shock value later on in the movie. Then another doctor guy is trying to get with Saxon's wife, trying to act all platonic until he casually blurts out that she should have married him instead of Saxon, to no reaction from the wife at all. I guess these type of suggestive comments are to be thought nothing of in Italy, but I definitely found it stupid.

The cops are inept and nothing works out for anybody in this movie. It's hardly an apocalypse though, but given enough time, some form of higher scale outbreak could occur. Of all the various alternate titles that this movie has, "Cannibals in the City" is the most appropriate, though it isn't nearly as cool as the more misleading Cannibal Apocalypse.

#Review

Some Site Updates...

I've been rummaging through a lot of files. Breaking this, fixing that, etc. Here are a few notable changes:


HUDs have been restored. They're still pointless, but at least they look cool. You'll see them back in the drop-down menu.

The camera/snapshot system has been redesigned. Hopefully it will be more convenient and more app-like, particularly on mobile devices. Tested on windows/chrome and android/chrome, still buggy on iPhones (typical).
https://trashepics.com/cam/
https://trashepics.com/snap/

A soundboard has been added with some wonderfully awful noises you can use to annoy the hell out of people.
https://trashepics.com/app/soundboard/

And blackjack games now allow the use of multiple decks.

Movies worth a lot of Trash Points

What are some movies that would get me a lot of points in the trash challenge?

Typically, Troma movies are a great place to start. Anything by Lloyd Kaufman is bound to be obscene, but what else is filled with taboos? John Waters movies like Pink Flamingos are quite insane for the hell of it, too.

I was watching Freeway II: Confessions of a Trick-Baby, and that movie is loaded with inappropriate subject matter. Gotta love a movie that has no qualms normalizing shock value.

What movies in this or any previous trash challenge scored you a lot of points?

The films of Bethel Buckalew



Sure am glad I bought so many Something Weird Video dvds back in the 2000's cuz those things are either very hard to find or ridiculously priced. Love those double features. SWV put several director's filmographies on dvd over the years, including Herschell Gordon Lewis, Doris Wishman, and plenty lesser-known people. One director I discovered through Something Weird was one Bethel Buckalew, who actually may or may not have existed. I've read rumors of several exploitaiton directors getting together back in the 70's and making these movies, which none of them wanted to take credit for. So, they blamed them on poor 'ol Buckalew.

Was watching one of them the other day for the first time in a while, called Tobacco Roody. This movie is no different than all the others Buckalew directed. Heavily inspired by The Beverly Hillbillies above all. Really corny, childish hick humor mixed with one softcore fuck scene after the other.

Tobacco Roody is about this backwoods family whose drunken patriarch, Mose, has a hardon for his hot, adopted daughter, Tootie, who only really wants to go off and play with her sisters in the creek. Although they always run her off. Partially cuz they want to be left alone to eat each other's pussies, but they also genuinely hate her and don't consider her family. One day, they cover Tootie in mud and send her on her way, but after tattling on them to Mose, he comforts her the best way he knows how: By introducing her to his penis. He then slides it in Tootie and breaks her in, which in all fairness, does get her mind off the rejection. Meanwhile, Mose's wife is off fucking the sheriff, and I believe the daughters get involved in an orgy with some drunks. A pretty light-hearted, cartoonish tone to it all. No actual screen credits as they were all painted on rocks and the side of the barn, and pretty sure not only this one, but all these movies were filmed in Los Angeles, robbing them of any level of authenticity.

Tobacco Roody was released on a double feature dvd along with a film called Southern Comforts. Something Weird Video also released several other Buckalew double features such as The Pigkeeper's Daughter & Sassy Sue as well as Midnight Plowboy & Country Cuzzins.

Entertaining stuff, and a very overlooked part of exploitation history.