ABDUCTED

Another phony "true story". This time a female jogger strays off the beaten track in the Canadian backwoods and is kidnapped by a crazy mountain hermit and kept prisoner until rescued by her father.
    That's it. That's the whole movie. Believe me, I have left nothing to the imagination. Some attractive location photography is the only redeeming feature of this tedious travelogue.
    Surprisingly, an entirely spurious sequel (Abducted 2: The Reunion) — in which Haggerty reprises his role as the 'Captain Caveman' of the Canadian wilderness — emerged in 1994.

Dir. Boon Collins; Star. Dan Haggerty, Roberta Weiss; With Lawrence King-Phillips; Steven Miller, William Nunn

UK Vid. RCA, QRT 90 min (unrated) Beta & VHS; Parkfield Entertainment, QRT 90 min (BBFC:18), VHS only
 
 
 
 

ABSURD aka Antropophagous II (It.), Rosso Sangue (It.); Filmirage, Italy, 1981; 96 min

 
Despite being a poorly made derivative shambles, Aristide Massaccesi’s Anthropophagous was a minor success when released on the US grindhouse circuit asThe Grim Reaper. In this equally woeful follow-up, touted as a sequel in some territories, Luigi Montefiore reprises his role as a misshapen monster whose body tissues regenerate with subsequent destruction of his brain cells. One gets the impression that Massaccesi suffers from a similar malady.
    The hackneyed script, such as it is, serves merely as a vehicle for half a dozen scenes of graphic — if rather unimaginative — gore.

Dir. Joe D’Amato (Aristide Massaccesi); Prod. Aristide Massaccesi & Donatella Donati; Scr. John Cart; Star. George Eastman (Luigi Montefiore); With Annie Bell, Katja Berger, Charles Borromel, Ian Danby, Anja Kochansky, Edmond Perdom, Ted Rusoff

UK Vid. Medusa Communications Ltd (CBS Fox), QRT 90 min (unrated), Beta & VHS
 
 
 
 

ANTHROPOPHAGOUS THE BEAST

There’s gore galore in this tedious tale of a shipwrecked man (co-writer Luigi Montefiore) who eats his wife and child in order to survive life on a deserted island in the Aegean thus becoming the “anthropophagous beast” of the British title. Tisa Farrow (star of Lucio Fulci’s Zombie Flesheaters (1979) and sister of Rosemary’s Baby (1968)’s Mia Farrow) eventually takes a pickaxe to the monster putting him — and us — out of our misery, but only after a number of ponderously handled splatter scenes.
    Followed in 1981 by Absurd.

Dir. Joe D’Amato (Aristide Massaccesi); Prod. Oscar Santiello; Scr. Aristide Massaccesi & Luigi Monefiore; Star. George Eastman (Luigi Montefiore), Tisa Farrow; With Mark Bodin, Margaret Donelly, Zora Kerova, Bob Larson, Rubina Rey, Vanessa Steiger

UK Vid.  Video Film Promotions, QRT 90 min (unrated), VHS
 
 
 

AXE   aka The Axe (US), The Axe Murders (US), Lisa (US), The California Axe Massacre (GB); Frederick Productions, USA, 1977; 68 min

 
This tardy Last House on the Left revisit features three cardboard thugs torturing and murdering a man and then terrorising a cashier at a small-town general store before making a lonely farmhouse their hideout in avoiding the police dragnet. The farmhouse is inhabited by a withdrawn and suicidal young girl called Lisa (Leslie Lee) and her invalid grandfather, who soon become the group’s next victims. Two of the thugs take turns in raping Lee, and while the old man is powerless to fight back, she uses skills learned slaughtering poultry and livestock to cut the throat of one and hack the other to pieces. The third member of the gang, having previously made his exit in shame and self-disgust, returns to be shot down by the police.
    The surprisingly noirish photography is unable to disguise the pedestrian plotting and one-dimensional characterization in this pointless display of uninspired amateurism.

Dir. Frederick Friedel; Prod. JG Patterson Jnr.; Scr. Frederick Friedel; Star. Leslie Lee; With Jack Cannon, Frederick Friedel, Ray Green, Douglas Powers
 

UK Vid. Video Network, QRT 65 min (unrated), Beta & VHS