Killer Tongue

Uurrrrggghh!! Where can I possibly start.

The Killer Tongue looked good on the shelf. The cover screams out quotable quotes, like the now obviously sarcastic one from Quentin Tarantino; `Wow!!!'. I should have read between the lines but instead I thought `Wow!!!' It's even got the hilarious one-liner under the title that reads `Go for your gums.' Tack City here we come.

A black, bizarre comedy with a heavy Sci-Fi/Horror element running throughout, The Killer Tongue is an absurd film that you really cannot prepare yourself for. It doesn't really matter what I tell you about it, the good bits, bad bits. it's one of those films that you really have to see for yourself.

The film can lay claim to winning a host of alternative film awards including `Best Actress', `Best Special Effects' and `Best Director', but somehow this is totally meaningless when you're watching a film revolving around a 10-foot, flesh-eating, talking tongue that lives inside the oh-so-cute figure of Candy (Melinda Clarke).

Candy is waiting for her boyfriend to be released from jail. Trying to lay low, she adopts the guise of a Nun whilst living at a petrol station turned nunnery in the middle of the desert. With a very `From Dusk Till Dawn' backdrop, Candy decides that its time to sod-off and wait for her boyfriend elsewhere. which is when an alien being descends from the heavens via spaceship/moon-rock/pod (hard to tell) and lands in her soup! Yep, alien invasion through soup.

So stupid in fact that my brain switched off, Candy then turns into a complete Marilyn Mansonesque figurine that simply has to feed her tongue with human flesh. We're even treated with Candy satisfying her own curiosities with a bit of tongue waggling in the downstairs department. Best bit so far.

Not alone, Candy's' pet poodles also had a good deal of soup that night. As a result we've now got four very camp, "Priscilla" styled drag queens wandering around the house. What follows are scenes involving a lot of tongue wrestling, strangulation and wriggling.

Robert Englund (of Freddy Krueger fame) plays an eccentric, evil jail warden who is partial to a bit of man-on-man. Surprisingly he's great in the role, which makes me wonder what he got into after the Nightmare on Elm Street series of pictures.

A completely off-the-wall, highly unpredictable film, The Killer Tongue is worth watching because you'll probably never see anything quite like it ever again. Bizarre, trashy, sick and twisted it may be, but can it be described as being any good? Hmmmm. Can you polish a turd?

Here's a horror version of PRISCILLA: QUEEN OF THE DESERT (they wish!) starring Melinda/Mindy (RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 3) Clarke as Candy, a desert dweller who pulls off a bank heist with boyfriend Johnny (Jason Durr). He ends up in a South-of-the-border prison run by the sadistic Chief Screw (an overacting Robert Englund in a toupee). She and her beloved pet poodles end up in hiding at a gas station convent until they're transformed by a newly fallen meteor. The dogs turn into obnoxious drag queen "bitches" and Candy develops a VERY long, talking, killing forked tongue she can't control. Thugs looking for the stolen loot and other assorted numbskulls add extra complications.

First off, Clarke is fantastic and makes what there is to make of this movie. You watch her and see someone very funny during the slapstick scenes, very convincing during the horror scenes and VERY sexy in various wigs and disguises, including an eye-popping, skin tight latex bodysuit...and wonder how come this actress isn't a huge star. It's too bad the rest of this cult attempt doesn't live up to her promise.

Blame director/scripter Sciamma, who thinks the outlandish premise alone is enough to sustain laughs...but his vulgar gags, annoying supporting characters and stupid dialogue are no substitute for a real sense of humor. Another nail in the coffin; the film looks cheap, lots of garish colors and sets are strangely muted by muddy photography and the dusty desert locales. Luckily for Sciamma that Clarke is in his film, because she alone keeps you watching.

This was Alberto Sciamma's first film, and it won him a Best Director award at the Fantafestival. I don't know what he was aiming for, but he hit something.

While her boyfriend (Jason Durr) is in the cooler, Candy (Melinda Clarke) hides out in a nunnery. Not your ordinary nunnery, but one that runs a gas station in the New Mexico desert.

After some alien magic, Candy grows a long tongue and her poodles are turned into flamboyant drag queens (one is Jonathan Rhys Meyers). This are certainly getting interesting because this isn't just a long tongue, it's a killer tongue. It craves meat! While Candy is getting used to her new tongue, her boyfriend is being tortured by none other than Robert Englund, who is the Chief Guard at the jail.

The nuns don't go away from the story after Candy leaves. One (Mapi Galán) is wandering the desert and comes on some alien rock that gives her healing powers, and another has been transformed by the transvestites.

The huge tongue - we are talking 6+ feet here - transforms and talks! Candy tries to commit suicide, but the tongue heals her just like the nun in the desert heals her boyfriend.

That nun was doing some special healing to Johnny later on, and they barely escaped with their lives after Candy caught them.

Anyway, Candy finds out that a six foot tongue can do things that Johnny can't.

This is one strange movie. It would have been more interesting if the only nudity wasn't two men's butts.

Silly terror picture with a myriad of weird and unimaginative scenes . This horror story is set in New Mexico when something falls from space onto Earth , it involves two delinquents , she is Candy (a beautiful Mandy Clarke) and he is Johnny (Jason Durr) , they flee with the loot from a hold-up , but the latter is trapped and does prison time . Later on , Rita hiding out with four pastel colored poodles in a desert gas station cared by a group of nuns . Everything trembles and an asteroid crashes onto Earth . As a meteorite crashes near the station transforming the young girl into an alien being with a gigantic voracious tongue and the puddles have become people (now very famous Jonathan Rhys Meyers , among others) , in fact into four Drag Queens . The whole thing grows even weirder as her fiancé getaways from jail and also encounters the meteorite , and Rita (Mapi Galán) , a mute novice who is become into a sexy drum majorette , but the guards are after him . While , Johnny being chased by the jail officials led by a nasty Prison Director (Robert Englund who along with Doug Bradley as Wig are two terror myths) , and even the chief warden has its own portable toilet . After that , the Drag Queens/poodles dance in front of the wardens and the prisoners, then the wardens shoot the dancers ; meantime an old nun (Mabel Karr who married the great Spanish actor Fernando Rey) is tied down in their car . The whole bunch eventually comes into conflict and the events go wrong .

This is a hilarious horror parody , surrealist , extreme spoof and gross-out but also with some brief moments being bold and fun . This is a slightly funny film , including entertaining events , giggles , profanities , and amusement but also very embarrassing as well as absurd . The main starring results to be the ¨killer tongue¨ , it delivers the goods , adding some acceptable FX , as when the tongue slaps Candy when she tries to cut it with an electric knife ; furthermore , the tongue writes on her forehead and makes many other fantastic things . The film moves in fits and starts most of which would be desirable , with more traps the viewer resists any kind, and some moments of enjoyment and others quite a few ridiculous . The flick is realized in ¨Troma¨ and ¨Frank Henenlotter¨ style , plenty of quirk roles , amazing transformations , abundant make-up and strange situations . The characters are all odd , grotesque and weird and the film races on at incredible speed . Dirty humor turns out to be sometimes cheesy and gross-out with numerous naughty and picaresque situations such as sex jokes , bad taste and adult scenes . However , it also contains uneven comedy , piggy humor , abound sexual scenes , profanity and grossed issues . A few of the scenes are amusing , they are elicit chuckles but no very enjoyable laughters . It is nicely starred by Melinda Clarke , she is gorgeous playing as a possessed thief who wears an eye-popping transparent dress ; Melinda starred known terror movies as Mortal Zombie and Spawn . The picture contains loads of fun as well as gore here and there and a passel of cameo appearances or brief interventions such as Jonathan Rhys Meyers , Doug Bradley , Stephen Marcus and Spanish actors such as Alicia Borrachero , Jose Truchado , Alicia Garrigues and Mabel Karr .

Colorful and brilliant cinematography by Denis Crossan , a good cameraman who has photographed several successes such as The Hole , I Know What You Did Last Summer , Pink Panther , Agent Cody Banks and World Without End . It was shot in Almeria (Spain), where in the 60s and 70s was filmed many Spaghetti/Paella Westerns . The motion picture well financed by the great Spanish producer Andres Vicente Gomez was regularly directed by Alberto Sciamma . He was born in 1961 , Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain . He is a writer and filmmaker especially known for 2002 Anazapta , 2003 Las Mansiones de Jericó and this 1996 La Lengua Asesina ; his last one results to be ¨De Alaska a Fangoria¨ (segment "Descongélate") whose band Fangoria and leader Alaska composed the musical score for ¨The Killer Tongue¨.

"The Shawshank Redemption" is a wonderful, thoughtful, touching and intelligent masterpiece regarding crime, punishment, and the limitations of the human soul. I guess what I mean is, "The Shawshank Redemption" is a better film than "Killer Tongue". When did I come to this realization? Well, maybe it was around the time in "Killer Tongue" when the hateful prison warden (Robert Englund) gets into an outhouse plastered with pornography only to have an inmate dropped right on top of him from a crane. I think it was right about then that I realized that "Killer Tongue" was not going to be the cinematic masterpiece I had hoped for.

Don't get me wrong, the "hilarious" outhouse shenanigans are not the film's only misstep. Take, for instance, the movie's "hilarious" gag of having poodles magically transformed into loathsome and annoying humans. Before I saw this movie I had a generally positive image of Poodle-Men, but "Killer Tongue" has changed that- I will never vote for a Poodle-Man now! No, no, no! > > My only thoughts that could collect reasonably while this frightful mess unspooled before my unbelieving eyes was that the film-makers had attempted to >. Their movie is near unwatchable- jokes and gore are merely suggested instead of shown thanks to the poor editing, the acting is horrible, the sets are supposed to look off the wall but are pretty bland, parts that are supposed to be outrageous are trite (Sex Starved Nuns? Oh, there's an original blasphemy!), and the whole thing reeks of the incompetence only A-Pix productions can put forth. Parts of it are funny, but still, you can actually smell how bad this movie is. It's mephitic stench reeks from the television screen. Horror icons Doug Bradley (Pinhead) and Englund (Freddy Kreuger) give the worst performances of their careers, and Mindy Clarke was a favorite of mine from "Return of the Living Dead part 3", but is painfully bad in this.

Unless you're a connoisseur of killer tongue movies- and, rest assured, this is the "Citizen Kane" of killer tongue movies- stay very, very far away from this movie. Rent "Death Mask" or "The Wizard of Gore", just run away from "Killer Tongue".