MUCHAS GRACIAS SENOR LOBO
By Thorsten Benzel
Hardcover (Limited); 392 pages; color; 2012
Paul Naschy (Jacinto Molina) had a deep affection for acting, filmmaking and movies in general; particularly of the fantasy-horror variety. His passion for his craft has shone through some 40 years worth of pictures, many of which belong to the horror genre. He was largely responsible for introducing horror cinema to the Spanish film industry in the late 1960s as well as his films being unleashed on the international market to both theaters and television; opening up his screen persona to a cult of fans that maintain their allegiance to the famed Spanish monster man to this day.
This exceptional tome lovingly compiled by Thorsten Benzel isn't a critical analysis, or document of the making of those movies (some of that is contained within, but not to a great extent), but a vast menagerie of posters, lobby cards and other promotional materials for Naschy's movies from around the world. Totally in color on high quality, glossy paper, this near 400 page book contains complete text in both German and English.
Some films do get more written about them than others, but the emphasis here is on the array of promotional materials including the history behind certain countries methods in selling the product. The author also details his perseverance in acquiring and locating certain materials, notating just how difficult finding surviving memorabilia can be for some films as well as the territories that distributed them.
The book mostly covers the advertising campaigns of the actor-writer-directors phantasmagorical productions, which may, or may not disappoint some expecting a complete collection. This is addressed by the author himself. However, there are a scant few others outside the horror realm included in a chapter at the back of the book.
Stunning in its lavish number of accumulated promotional materials, MUCHAS GRACIAS SENOR LOBO is a must have for Naschy fans. It also makes a nice addition to any horror fans coffee table ensemble and will easily catch the attention of curiosity seekers with its exceptional plethora of pictures and rare photos that have likely never been seen by prying eyes in decades. A touching Introduction by Sergio Molina (Naschy's son) completes the package.
You can find information about the book at its official page HERE
Additional information about the book is found at Creepy Images HERE
DiabolikDVD also sells this Limited Hardcover Edition HERE
Copies are also available on ebay HERE
WRONG TURN 5 2012 aka WRONG TURN 5: BLOODLINES
Doug Bradley (Maynard Odets), Camilla Arfwedson (Angela Carter), Simon Ginty (Billy), Roxanne McKee (Lita), Paul Luebke (Gus), Oliver Hoare (Julian), Amy Lennox (Cruz), Radaslov Parvanov (One Eye), George Karlukovski (Saw Tooth), Borislav Iliev (Three Finger)
Directed by Declan O'Brien
The Short Version: This unbelievably stupid slasher movie is apparently set in some alternate universe where a towns population inexplicably vanishes, nobody owns a PC and hillbilly cannibals can easily break into power companies knowing exactly where to go to destroy the electrical grids. These are just some of this films numerous logic and script malfunctions. Alternating between juvenility and mean-spiritedness, the excessive sex and gore will appease some and others will wish they'd spent their money on something else. The main cast is made up of European actors who do a fabulous job with American accents. Doug Bradley does his best Jigsaw impression in this Bulgaria(?!) shot shit flick.
A group of college students head for Fairlake, West Virginia. Fairlake also hosts the annual Halloween Mountain Man Music festival, now in its tenth year. The visiting collegians run afoul of Maynard, the patriarch of a group of mutant cannibalistic hillbillies. The police arrive and arrest Maynard and the visiting students. Meanwhile, the inbred, flesh-eating retards show their resourcefulness by knocking out both the electricity and a cell tower on their way to break their dad out of jail.
The WRONG TURN franchise is proving to be a bastion for cinematic negligence that shows because your movie has a '5' in its title, the need to deliver a cohesive, or, dare I say GOOD movie, is not a priority. Declan O'Brien, who has been the demented driver behind the wheel of the last two WRONG TURNs, again aims for the gore crowd with his third stab at this series that has cannibalized what made the first film such a tense, and welcome throwback to rough n' rowdy 80s horror.
WRONG TURN was a nice surprise that was more or less dumped into theaters with little to no fanfare by 20th Century Fox. It did reasonably well for a film that seemed to be an embarrassment to its distributor. After being a hit on video, sequels came a' knockin'. The first sequel showed signs of ineptitude that would only mutate further with part 3. Part 4 I didn't see, but was supposed to be a prequel. Now with part 5 (which pretends parts 1 through 3 do not exist), they don't even shoot the damn thing in West Virginia. It's Bulgaria! And the cast are all Europeans doing American accents? Speaking of location, it turns out part three was also shot in Bulgaria and part four in Canada. So much for local flavor.
Probably the only good thing I can say about WRONG TURN 5 is that HELLRAISER fans will delight in Doug Bradley appearing in this mess; yet it becomes immediately apparent from the first five minutes that he's little more than a redneck Pinhead (minus the pins and black leather) who's seemingly a great admirer of Jigsaw from the SAW series. He spends most of the running time in a jail cell casually spouting off lines like, "You won't live that long", "You're dead", and "One more dead body to add to the pile."
The movie actually starts off with a sweeping aerial shot (although this may be lifted from the first movie), but quickly falls apart right after that. The group of young kids are supposed to be attending this Halloween "Mountain Man Music Festival", yet it's the most anemically attended gathering I've ever seen. Thirty minutes into the film and it looks like the whole town has suddenly become deserted. There's some concert going on just outside of town, but aside from a couple of kids, there's nobody in sight save for the main cast.
Angela Carter, the town sheriff, runs her office like it's Mayberry, NC; and this includes a town drunk who can come and go as he pleases. After she arrests the main villain, his three sons go looking for him. Since it's Halloween, they fit in fine with the couple of "crowd" scenes we get although the actors playing the deformed crazies look like they're wearing masks anyways.
Somehow or other, these three inbred savages (one of them being series mainstay, Three Fingers, here looking like a STAR TREK alien and laughing constantly) manage to break into the local power company (where the hell is the guard station?!) and shut off the electricity as well as bring down a cell tower (supposedly there's just the one tower for miles and everybody has the same cell provider); not that anybody is seen trying to use them, anyways. Apparently no one owns a PC to communicate with the outside world, either.
Why doesn't anybody in town hear all the screaming, killing in the streets, or buildings blowing up?! This movie has the laziest, lousiest script of recent memory. The filmmakers compensate for the rampant stupidity by overloading their movie with a glut of creative, if exaggerated practical gore effects, and three softcore porn sex scenes that are there just for the hell of it. Throwing body parts and boobs at the screen is a nice diversion, but it doesn't make a good movie.
The death scenes, as spectacularly nasty as they are, tend to be a bit on the cartoonish side when they're not operating on a cut rate SAW-like level. Would a woman actually remain alive long enough to munch on her intestines after Three Fingers pulls them out and feeds them to her?! The cannibals often go to an awful lot of trouble to kill the cast, too. Where the hell did they find the Combine Harvesting Thresher? They seem to have pulled it out of their ass. These are the most resourceful backwoods cannibal retards I've ever seen.
Judging by the extras on the DVD, it seems everybody had a ball making this thing, yet it doesn't translate that way to the finished product. The gore is extreme, often unnecessarily mean spirited at times. The film has this whole childish, immature aura about it, which makes some of the violence more uncomfortable than it probably would have been otherwise.
Sadly, it appears likely this crummy series is going to continue with no end to the frat boy mentality the franchise quickly sank to. Aside from one or two moments of competency, you're possibly making a WRONG choice by picking WRONG TURN 5 as a purchase, or even a rental for that
matter. A better choice would be to revisit the first movie, or even the
decent, if goofy first sequel.
This review is representative of the Fox DVD.
copyright 2013. All text is the property of coolasscinema.com and should not be reproduced in whole, or in part, without permission from the author. All images, unless otherwise noted, are the property of their respective copyright owners.
Paul Naschy (Jacinto Molina) had a deep affection for acting, filmmaking and movies in general; particularly of the fantasy-horror variety. His passion for his craft has shone through some 40 years worth of pictures, many of which belong to the horror genre. He was largely responsible for introducing horror cinema to the Spanish film industry in the late 1960s as well as his films being unleashed on the international market to both theaters and television; opening up his screen persona to a cult of fans that maintain their allegiance to the famed Spanish monster man to this day.
The book mostly covers the advertising campaigns of the actor-writer-directors phantasmagorical productions, which may, or may not disappoint some expecting a complete collection. This is addressed by the author himself. However, there are a scant few others outside the horror realm included in a chapter at the back of the book.
