Cain's Cut-Throats (Kent Osborne, 1970)

Also known as Cain's Way, Cain's Cut-Throats is a raw, violent, complicated, slightly sleazy grindhouse western that's not entirely successful but has an unusual plot, moments of wildness and excitement, and a likable performance from John Carradine as an unordained preacher/bounty hunter.

The movie begins shortly after the Civil War with a gang of stupid, violent ex-Confederate soldiers, led by the one-eyed Amison (Robert Dix), who can't get over their loss and want to resume the war, engaging in robbery and murder to fund their travels in the meantime. This initial stretch of the movie is rough-going, with a couple actors in the gang giving such insanely hammy performances that I wanted to reach inside my television set and smack them.

After making an incredible score from the ambush, robbery, and murder of a caravan of Union soldiers transporting a large sum of money to the North, the gang of thieves ride their horses to the nearby home of their old commander, the ridiculously named Justice Cain (Scott Brady). Their plan is to use the loot to fund Civil War Part 2, with Cain as their general.

Cain is not pleased to see his former unit. He's a changed man, living a quiet life in the country with his son from a previous marriage and his current wife, a light-skinned black woman passing as white who used to be a slave on his father's plantation. When he politely refuses the gang's offer, they get salty with him. He gets saltier back and unwisely calls gang member Billy Joe (Darwin Joston of Assault on Precinct 13 and Eraserhead fame) a bastard. Billy Joe is a psycho mama's boy who absolutely loses his shit whenever anyone calls him a bastard. When Cain's wife runs outside to see what the commotion is about and a few of the men recognize her as a black woman, Billy Joe initiates an all-out attack on the Cain family from the entire gang. They rape and murder Cain's wife (though not as graphic as most grindhouse rape scenes, the filmmakers still linger on it way too long), murder his son, set the home on fire, and think they've murdered him. Unfortunately for these Confederates, Cain shall rise again, and the movie gets a lot more fun.

The aforementioned preacher/bounty hunter Preacher Simms (Carradine) is passing by in a wagon when he sees smoke billowing from the Cain property. He checks it out, gives Cain's wife and son a Christian burial, and nurses Cain back to health. When he finds out Cain is looking for a few of the same outlaws Simms has been trailing, that these outlaws are armed and dangerous and number six, that Cain used to be their commanding officer and knows how they think, and that he's not interested in the bounty, just revenge, Simms lets Cain join him on the hunt, with a warning not to mutilate their heads. Simms only has to bring the heads in to collect the bounty as long as the faces are recognizable, and he's got a barrel full of salt brine strapped to his wagon to carry these decapitated outlaw heads. This is much wilder shit than you normally see in your average 1970 western.

The rest of the movie is a rowdy and entertaining chase of the Confederate gang, with Simms and Cain joined by a streetwise prostitute with a heart of gold named Rita (Adair Jameson). The movie develops a relatively nuanced argument against revenge that is a bit unexpected in a violent western, especially considering the movie's sexism and confused explorations of race.

Director Osborne is not much of a visual stylist, but Cain's Cut-Throats does have a visceral rawness and propulsive pace that serve the material well. It's also one of those rare b-movies that's better in the second half, with a hammy, unpleasant first third gradually giving way to excitement and eccentricity. I can't enthusiastically recommend it, but it's a fascinating oddity.  

Cannibal Apocalypse (Antonio Margheriti, 1980)

Cannibal Apocalypse aka Cannibal Massacre aka Cannibals in the Streets aka The Cannibals Are in the Streets aka Virus aka Invasion of the Fleshhunters aka Savage Apocalypse aka Savage Slaughterers aka The Slaughterers aka Cannibals in the City aka Apocalypse Domani is a much more enjoyable 1980 Italian cannibal movie than the notorious Cannibal Holocaust. This is a delightfully nutzoid gorefest full of character actors, oddball one-liners, interesting locations, weird happenings, and kinetic b-movie energy. I dig it.

Directed by b-movie legend Antonio Margheriti under his American-sounding pseudonym Anthony M. Dawson (two examples of titles from the Dawson/Margheritiverse, released in 1973: Seven Dead in the Cat's Eye and Mr. Hercules Against Karate), Cannibal Apocalypse begins with an action sequence taking place during the Vietnam War. American soldiers, led by Norman Hopper (John Saxon), are in the middle of a brutal jungle firefight against the Viet Cong. The Americans finally gain the upper hand after enduring much gunfire and a booby-trapped exploding dog, and they begin to rescue two American POWs, Charles "Charlie" Bukowski (Giovanni Lombardo Ridice) (an homage to the author or a coincidence?) and Tom Thompson (Tony King). Unfortunately, Charlie and Tom are feasting on the body of a dead woman, cannibal-style.

Hopper wakes up in a nervous panic, leaving us wondering if this sequence was a nightmare, a memory, or some combination of the two. He shrugs off the comfort of his wife Jane (Elizabeth Turner), the host of a local TV talk show about music, and goes downstairs to take his anxiety medication. The next day, Jane consults with a psychiatrist who treated Hopper after his return from Vietnam, Dr. Phil Mendez (Ramiro Oliveros), who is more concerned with hitting on Jane than worrying about Hopper. Meanwhile, the teenage girl next door, Mary (Cinzia De Carolis), hits on Hopper, and Hopper acts on his overwhelming urge to bite her. Instead of scaring Mary off, the bite excites her.

Coincidentally, Charlie and Tom are also being treated by Dr. Mendez, and Charlie has just been released from the hospital. He asks Hopper to meet him for a drink, but when Hopper blows him off, Charlie decides to go to a movie instead. I won't spoil what comes next, but it involves movie theater sex (during a war movie?!), cannibalism, conflicts with a middle-aged biker gang, J&B whiskey, a berserk shootout/standoff in a flea market (fantastically bonkers scene), annoying aunts, a manhunt, a sewer chase, a severed tongue, and a contagious virus. The cops roll up in force at the flea market, and it's very fitting that the police chief is a sour-tempered racist with utter contempt for the public who is extremely quick to use tear gas. Some things never change, though I hope they will soon.

Most of the film's final third was shot on a studio lot in Rome, but the rest of the movie was filmed in Atlanta and the surrounding area, though the filmmakers don't include any dialogue explaining where the action takes place. Though Atlanta has been a popular filming location for recent Hollywood movies and TV shows thanks to legislation providing major tax breaks, most of that output is indoor studio work. The city itself is still an underused location, and Margheriti makes strikingly visual use of it as a backdrop to the action.

I also need to highlight the incredible score by the incredibly named Alexander Blonksteiner. His second-to-last score (with Fulci's House by the Cemetery his last), Cannibal Apocalypse goes hard, with some funktastic chicka-chicka guitar scratching, powerful yet graceful drum patterns, strings, synths, organs, free-jazz sax, the occasional disco beat, and prog-rock flourishes. It kicks everything up a notch and prevents the sewer chase from getting dull, the only time the movie threatens to drag a little. Nice work, Blonksteiner.

Cannibal Apocalypse aka many other titles is exactly the kind of weirdo b-movie horror action I spend a chunk of my precious lifetime seeking. And what's wrong with that? Apparently, plenty. The film was heavily censored in US prints and was banned in the UK at the height of the "video nasty" crackdown. Even though we live in mindbogglingly irrational times, this kind of movie censorship has mostly fallen by the wayside, and the film can currently be enjoyed in its full glory (and full gory) (I apologize for this terrible pun) on Blu-Ray.

Defund the police.