Change Your Image
hswasserman
Reviews
Haunting Fear (1990)
Great sleazy fun
I think I first learned of this film from having seen stills of a bloody and insane Brinke Stevens, so I pretty much knew what to expect and I was not disappointed. The film was directed by Fred Olen Ray, who apparently has directed many cheesy horror films. The cast is mostly not great, with the exceptions of Brinke Stevens and Delia Sheppard. .
It is the tale (inspired by Poe!) of a woman who is afraid of being buried alive. Brinke plays the woman. Her husband (played by non-actor John Henry Richardson) owes money to a loan shark and is eager to get what money he can out of his wife. Meanwhile he is cheating on his wife with the super sexy Delia Sheppard. Sheppard has some great nude scenes in this movie. All of this is observed by Jan Michael Vincent from his car. He works for the loan shark.
Well Brinke Stevens is nothing much in this film until she goes crazy. In order to cause her to have a heart attack Terry (her husband) and his bleached blonde girlfriend (Sheppard) fool Victoria into thinking she's been buried alive. In actuality they have just put her in a wooden crate in the basement and put some dirt on top of it.
While Terry schtups Lisa (in a wonderfully explicit love scene), Vicky awakens in the box, screams, and promptly goes mad. It's a great moment for Brinke Stevens. She giggles her ass off and and smashes her way out of the coffin. She emerges wild-eyed, bloody, and completely insane. And everything she does for the rest of the movie is enormous fun.
She kills Terry and Lisa, she stabs Jan Michael Vincent several times, and he shoots her several times. Vincent appears to survive, and getting shot doesn't seem to phase Vicky in the least. It seems that she has gained the supernatural powers of Jason or Freddy. In the end she disappears. All she leaves is her bloody knife.
So, to sum up, a very cheesy film and a pretty slipshod production. And a lot less gory than it could have been. For instance why does Stevens kill Sheppard off camera? I would have liked to have seen that, as well as her dead body. We saw plenty of it when she was alive, so why deny us it when she's dead? I guess the production ran out of money.
But the nude scenes of Delia Sheppard and Brinke's semi-comical and over the top performance as the bloody, knife-wielding maniac more than make up for the film's shortcomings. If Fred Olen Ray's other movies are like this, I imagine they're a lot of fun as well. Surely Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers is worth seeing.
Buio Omega (1979)
A gory and depraved masterwork
As anyone can tell you, this is Joe D'Amato's best film, which isn't saying much as his other films (aside from Death Smiles on a Murderer) are God awful. Death Smiles on a Murderer is certainly awful but it's so relentlessly strange it can't be ignored.
The Goblins provide the soundtrack and a fine soundtrack it is. They of course are known mostly for their work with Dario Argento. What the hell made them think this was a film that they should lend their talents to is a real head scratcher. But who knows what goes through the minds of rock musicians? In any case the movie would not be half of what it is without the haunting and contemplative soundtrack the Goblins provided.
Beyond the Darkness tells the story of a handsome young man (Frank) whose girlfriend passes away. The young man is played abysmally by non-actor Kieran Canter. The dead girlfriend (Anna) is played by the skinny but attractive Cinzia Monreale, who was in The Beyond. Frank lives with a weird looking lady named Iris. I don't know how they came to be together. Is she the housekeeper? They appear to have a kind of sexual relationship. In the interests of not offending anyone I won't go into further details.
After the girl dies Frank visits her in the funeral home and injects her with embalming fluid while a curious man sneaks a peek at them. Who is he, a private detective of some sort? Possibly the decals on his station wagon might mean something to an Italian but they meant nothing to me. The dead girl's parents and sister show up but the dad is too broken up to hang around. He just gives the pastor a check and asks him to take care of things.
But it's Frank who takes care of things. He digs up the girl's body and puts her in his van. On the way home he gets a flat and a hitchhiker sneaks into the van while he's changing the tire. She's not great. She has this outrageous British accent and lookswise she's nothing to write home about but not to worry she has some weed that will put you in orbit. Frank doesn't want any so she smokes the joint by herself and it's such powerful stuff she immediately falls asleep right there in the passenger seat in the van.
While she catches forty winks in the van Frank gets to work on Anna. He takes her clothes off and we are treated to some full frontal nudity of Cinzia Monreale. Then there is some very gruesome footage of him slicing her open and pulling her guts out one by one and dropping each giblet very noisily into a damn bucket. At one point he pulls out her heart and sucks on it like it's a fresh piece of fruit. You surely have not seen an intestinal parade comparable to this since City of the Living Dead. He also puts some tubes up her nose and uses a pumplike mechanism to suck out all her blood. Why all these grotesque procedures are included in the film is anyone's guess. I think in place of frights D'Amato figured he'd just give us a lot of very disgusting and gory scenes. And who knows maybe these are reasonably accurate depictions of how to care for a dead body.
The hitchhiker wakes up, stumbles out of the van and finds Frank with his dead girlfriend. What is his response? He chases her down, grabs her and using some awful instrument tears off her fingernails as she screams. Why do that? To punish her for her interference and well because he is clearly not all there mentally.
Iris helps Frank get Anna dressed and installed in the bedroom. She even puts a little polish on her nails. The curious fellow from the funeral home stops by with a business associate or friend of Frank's. His friend asks if the baboon is ready. Frank says no, he's been busy with other things! The private eye or whoever he is snoops around, snags some jewelry from the death van, then goes back to his car.
The next order of business is dismembering the body of the hitchhiker. Remember how I said she was nothing to write home about? How wrong I was. Iris takes off the hitchhiker's clothes and lo and behold we see a body that belongs in the pages of Playboy magazine. As Iris undresses her she makes sure to jostle the hell out of her so that her beautiful breasts flop all over the place. Try to watch it and not get turned on, you will fall. D'Amato's background in porn shows here, he really has a knack for photographing naked women. But you will most likely lose your woody quickly as what follows is a dismemberment scene for the ages. Iris cuts her to pieces. D'Amato really pulls out all the stops in his gore scenes in this movie and does a damn good job with them as well. The decapitation is particularly well done.
Meanwhile Anna lies in bed dead but very beautiful. I don't know that she ever looked so well. There isn't a lot for the actress to do in a scene like that but Monreale makes the most of it but some credit must go to the director. What a sick film and yet he puts so much feeling into these scenes you the viewer will begin to doubt your own sanity. As Anna lies nearby Iris slips her hand down Frank's pants and jerks him off. It is clear all the grisly goings on are a turn on for him or in any case Anna is just as appealing to him dead as she was when alive. Iris is as always glad to be a helpmeet, whether it's shoving her breast in his mouth, dismembering corpses, cooking their meals, or masturbating him while he gazes longingly at his girlfriend's corpse. My God in what other film does one see such things? Truly only D'Amato could do it.
Next in a scene you would expect to see in a porno Frank goes for a jog, runs into a female jogger who twists her ankle and of course they go back to his place. While administering first aid doctor and patient get turned on, you know, as one does. Who wouldn't get turned on while some stranger is putting a bandage on you? As the two of them make love he pulls the blanket away from the bed next to them so he can gaze on Anna as he screws the other girl. Such perversion and yet so convincingly depicted. I swear to you I have no experience in such things but this really seems like how something like this would go down if it happened in real life. The artistry shown by D'Amato here is undeniable. Unfortunately for the girl she happens to glance over at the neighboring bed and sees Anna lying there. She screams and Frank responds by burying his teeth in her neck, biting out a huge chunk of flesh, and eating it. Blood pours out of the wound and the girl dies. How in the hell can a human being inflict so much damage on another with a simple bite? Human teeth are surely not capable of inflicting damage of that sort. A wolf could do something like that but not a person. In any case this is surely the most memorable scene or indeed the centerpiece of the whole film. Whoever saw such a thing?
It is never clear how Iris feels throughout all this. She is ready to marry Frank even after he makes it clear to her that he will never leave Anna.
Eventually in the last ten minutes of the movie Anna's twin sister shows up, just to say goodbye apparently. But her appearance puts violent and incomprehensible things in motion. Frank has gone to a bar and picked up yet another girl. Why? To make love to her, to kill her, to have someone to screw while his eyes are glued on Anna? As soon as the sister shows up Frank throws the girl out right in the middle of her bath.
Iris tries to frighten the sister by turning the lights out and speaking in a creepy voice from the next room. Then she rushes in with a knife raised looking very much like Norman Bates when he stabbed Janet Leigh. Frank suddenly appears and he and Iris are abruptly engaged in a gory death struggle. Why is Iris doing this? I thought she was cool with the situation. Frank rips her face off or maybe takes a bite out of her cheek and stabs her. She stabs him in the dick and tears one of his eyes out. D'Amato never misses an opportunity to deliver the gore groceries.
Finally the mystery man from the funeral home shows up. He goes in the house, finds dead Iris, and goes down in the basement. There he finds Frank bloody and dying standing near the incinerator. Frank stumbles towards him arms outstretched but succumbs to his wounds. The man sees Anna lying on a table, puts her in his station wagon and drives her back to the funeral home. Well what do you think happens once they put her inside a coffin and are about the nail it shut? She jumps out of the coffin screaming. It wasn't Anna, it was her sister! What a great ending!
Man there is not a wasted moment in the picture. The whole thing is really well done from start to finish and I don't mean that sarcastically. Truly you have to wonder why D'Amato only got his act together for this film, which let's face is a masterpiece, but all of his other films were dreck. But maybe he made some other good ones. I don't know of any though. Absurd is terrible and surely The Grim Reaper is best avoided as well.
Polite Society (2023)
A bunch of nonsense
Obviously if you are not familiar with Indian culture some of this film will be confusing to you but for the most part you will know what's going on. It is the story of two families who interact in strange ways as the daughter of one of the families is getting ready to marry the son of the other. Familiar territory, right? Not so much.
At first you think this is a kind of coming of age story. It is all seen thru the younger daughter's eyes, who feels very alienated and anxious about things. She doesn't want her sister to get married, she doesn't trust her sister's fiance or his family, she wants her sister to follow her dreams of being an artist. And at first you sympathize with the younger daughter, who is played by the very attractive and charismatic Priya Kansara. Ria is fortunate to have two very faithful friends who will follow her anywhere and do anything for her, and the three girls kind of embody the spirit of the film for better or for worse. But then you begin to see Ria is not being reasonable here. Whereas you can understand her initial feelings, she totally flies off the handle and engages in harebrained and borderline psychotic schemes that are disruptive and hurtful to everyone involved. Okay then this will be a learning experience for her. She will emerge a more mature individual.
Nope. It turns out all her fears were justified. The fiance and his mother are very diabolical characters. She was right to be worried and what a mess things would have been if she and her friends had not engaged in all that mischief and mayhem. So this is not a realistic film. It's just a bunch of nonsense. I guess if you are young and maybe high all this would be a lot of fun for you. But for anyone hoping for a film which addresses the issues raised in the film in a remotely serious manner you will be disappointed. Nothing wrong with comedy and hijinx but this is just too much for the likes of me.
Freeway (1996)
What a let down
I had high hopes for this movie. Like a lot of folks nowadays I read about a film before I see it, so I knew it was kind of a modern retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. So I guess I should have realized this would not be a realistic movie or one to be taken seriously. But I saw Reese and Kiefer in the cast, two really good and interesting actors, and the way the film begins it looks like we are going to get a slice of life style picture or even a nail biting thriller.
I saw the two of them in that car and I got Hitcher vibes, I thought the whole film would be him and her in that car but nope. For me the film got lost as soon as she shot him. She shot him like 12 times, how did he survive that? And no one wanted to see that twisted face he is left with.
What makes all this so disappointing is Reese (at like age nineteen or twenty) is simply amazing to behold. You are ready to follow her anywhere. And what does she do? Goes to jail and immediately beats the shirt out of the toughest gal there. Why is she even arrested in the first place? You would think it would be obvious to any investigating officer that the guy took her hostage. Then what is their plan for her at the end? I mean she obviously broke tons of laws but because she was getting chased around by a murderer is all forgiven?
Things aren't helped along one bit by the perplexing presence of Brooke Shields. What the heck is she doing in this picture? I'm sorry, the moment I saw Brooke I knew no one in this movie was taking the story seriously and this was just a bunch of nonsense. And does anything more epitomize that than the closing moment of the movie, where Reese grins at the camera and asks if anyone has a cigarette?
No one wanted to see this coke-fueled vanity project. You see Reese and Kiefer in the cast you expect to see a thriller and not whatever this is supposed to be. I don't know who this was made for.
La lupa mannara (1976)
If you like Eurohorror, you'll like this
I had seen this title on Tubi and dismissed it as not worth seeing. I had seen stills of an actress covered in wolf fur and thought please no. But you know how things go, eventually one has nothing else on earth to watch.
It turns out Werewolf Woman is quintessential Eurohorror. There is just something about it where it just ticks all the boxes which make Eurohorror what it is. There's a crazy over the top soundtrack, inept lensing, loads of nudity, and well a little blood. One gets spoiled watching horror films. You never feel like there is enough blood.
Annika Borel stars as the werewolf woman or rather the mentally unstable descendant of a werewolf woman who thinks she is one too. But she isn't. By gad what she does is bite people in the throat sort of vampire style only she rips open a hole in the person's throat deep enough to kill them. Now I could understand a werewolf doing that, but how is an ordinary homo sapien, even a crazy one, going to do that with ordinary human teeth? Anyway Annika Borel, whose name is not familiar to me, looks familiar enough. She's an attractive lady and looks pretty good naked but at no point is she really photographed in an especially glamorous way so she's not really too sexy. She looks a little bit like Sondra Locke.
So this crazy lady kills people right and left mostly due to a kind of psycho sexual illness she suffers from. She was raped as a child and now any exposure to sexual things drives her over the edge and then she must kill. This part of the film works really well.
There's a detective who tries his best to crack the case. His voice seems quite familiar. I am likely mistaken but he sounds a lot like the narrator in Dario Argento's Inferno, you know, when the line is delivered about finding a clue under the soles of your shoes. He sounds like that guy.
I don't know if it was a lousy print or if the camera man did not know what he was doing but a lot of the shots seemed blurred. The last thing I will mention is there is a whole lot of nonsensical medical technobabble delivered by the doctors. It really has to be heard to be disbelieved.
Anyway definitely worth seeing if you are a fan of Eurohorror. It is very much that and like I said it ticks all the boxes.
Martin (1977)
Very interesting film
This is another of those introspective type films where there is a quiet young man who is deeply troubled and a lot of the film addresses his delusions and alienation. Here one Martin thinks he is a vampire, altho as he often says there is no magic involved and many people have the wrong idea about vampires. He is clearly suffering from psychological problems but oddly these problems appear to be very much helped along by his cousin, a strange Van Helsing type character by the name of Tateh Cuda. Cuda keeps calling him nosferatu. So Cuda is crazy too.
Now some of us who have researched this film know it was originally much longer, so any questions viewers might have about certain aspects of the film could possibly be resolved if the full cut of the film ever became available. For instance what are we to make of all the black and white sequences? Are they simply delusions or are they flashbacks? And most importantly who is the young woman who keeps calling Martin's name throughout the film? Some may find that annoying but as for me I fell in love with this woman without ever knowing who she was. An old girlfriend? His sister? Obviously if he keeps hearing her voice over and over she must be very important, and yet we never learn why.
Of course the best sequence in the film is the one where Martin accidentally walks in on the woman cheating on her husband. Then there is kind of a cat and mouse game he plays with them which is directed with true flair.
Amplas himself was an excellent choice for the role of Martin. He is very handsome and is able to convey a kind of gentleness and mentally unbalanced introspection very well. I love how he seems to plead with his victims to cooperate with him.
Of course immense praise must be lavished on the sequences where Martin talks to the radio DJ. You can tell the guy at the radio station doesn't care two figs about him and just enjoys having some weirdo on the radio that attracts listeners. If only he could have realized this was someone who was a danger to the public. Even after he's dead the DJ and listeners are like what happened to the count, we want the count. Almost a kind of bystander syndrome happening there.
In the end Cuda kills him for something he didn't do and buries him and for all we know gets away with it. Cuda clearly is to blame for some of this but it doesn't seem like there will be consequences for him. Who knows? The story in a way goes on after the credits roll but only in our own imaginations.
Estigma (1980)
Slow burn thriller with no real pay off
This is the tale of a young man with the telepathic ability to kill people he hates. He also appears to have incestuous feelings towards his mother.
Now ordinarily I enjoy an introspective type film like this where the main character is somewhat deranged. Sebastian (the young man) reminds me a little of the guy from Joe D'Amato's magnum opus (only good film) Beyond the Darkness. He even looks a little like him. But the trouble is the film is a slow burn, you get the feeling something is very wrong with Sebastian. Like I said he seems to have abnormal feelings towards his mother but that situation never comes to anything. I'm not saying I wanted the two of them to jump into bed together, but there needed to be some kind of climactic resolution to that and ultimately It seems to come to nothing at all.
Instead he kind of has a relationship with his late brother's girlfriend, a lovely but hopelessly naive woman. She lives with a much older woman which is a strange choice for a roommate or friend. Her friend is a sort of medium and she immediately realizes that Sebastian is trouble. What ends up happening with her? Unless I missed it nothing.
It seems Sebastian ends up killing the naive woman (Angie) but before this happens we're treated to a very boring flashback of a different family which seems to feature a murderous young man who in some way is responsible for Sebastian's murderous psychic abilities. In the end it seems Sebastian has died but what the hell he died of is super unclear.
This is very different from the director's better known and more enjoyable Vampyres. Whereas Vampyres had no plot to speak of and was not interesting at all it was still more fun than Stigma. I think Larraz has some skill. He is very good at atmosphere. Stigma is a very atmospheric film. I think it could have been a much better film if the writing had been a bit better and events in the film were a little less vague. Mind you it seemed like some footage is missing in spots, at least in the version one can see on Tubi.
Lastly who can see Stigma without saying for heaven's sake Mr Larraz, it's stigmata not stigma. A stigma is when people shame you for something. The thing you're referring to, where people bleed for mystical reasons, is stigmata. Mind you possibly someone other than Larraz is to blame for the malapropism. After all it appears to be a Spanish film so maybe the people who handled the English dubbing screwed up.
One more thing: The first girl, Martha I think her name was, is a great beauty. I was sorry she met an early demise and was not in the film more.
El jorobado de la Morgue (1973)
Not too good
It's a great title anyway, the perfect marriage of classic cinema tropes and more modern and more gruesome sensibilities. The movie itself is mostly a terrible mess.
Naschy plays Gotho the stupid hunchback who loves a girl with tuberculosis. A mad scientist schemes to create some hideous new life form while fooling Gotho into helping him find victims to help construct and feed the monster.
I saw the version which is currently available on Tubi. It is about an hour and twenty minutes or so long and is likely missing some footage but it's a fairly pristine print. More than I can say for most of the Naschy films I've seen around lately which have all been in simply ghastly condition. But whereas the film looks good and appears to contain genuine footage of castle ruins the sound is not good. The dubbing is abominable but bad dubbing is not unamusing sometimes. One often hears the whirring of some machine, possibly a very noisy camera, I don't know. The music in the film is both cheesy and impressive. I can't imagine where they got it from. The dialogue must be heard to be believed. I thought Star Trek was full of ridiculous techno babble but it's nothing compared to what you get here. I never heard such pseudo scientific mumbo jumbo in all my life. Possibly there is a version of the film in the original Spanish with English subtitles. If so it would probably be superior to what I saw.
By the time we get near the end where over and again you hear the monster yelling from behind a closed door surely even the most tolerant of trashy film fans will have had enough. I had not heard such ululations since the 1976 King Kong remake.
There are worse ways to spend an hour and twenty minutes but if you don't see this film you'll be doing yourself a favor.
Torture Dungeon (1969)
Shakespeare without Shakespeare
This is my second Milligan experience, the first being The Body Beneath, which is a fine vampire epic. This one, as my title suggests, is like a Shakespeare play if all the words of the Bard were replaced by something less good.
It is a fine piece of work if you understand what you're getting into. The costumes are excellent. Susan Cassidy, who plays the female lead, Heather, is a comely lass. When she isn't nude it looks like her clothes are about to fall off. Then there's the eminent Richard Mason who plays Ivan the Hunchback. He's hysterical. Steer clear of Albert the half-wit. His eating habits will make you lose your lunch. And we must not forget Margaret the One-Eyed Hag, played by Maggie Rogers. Possibly the actress really was one-eyed. Considering the budget and talent involved it could not be makeup--it looks too real. So I really wonder what the story could be with her.
The rest of the cast is not remarkable, nor is the story. Just a lot of murders so that one or two of the people could gain power. For all the violence there's not much gore. I did enjoy the beheading at the beginning. It may not have been a masterstroke but it happens so quickly you don't have a chance to see how fake it probably looked. And like I said there's plenty of nudity. I was pleased to see some gay stuff. I would not have thought a film from that time would have it.
It's a good time overall. Like I think I said about The Body Beneath the length of the film is just right. An hour and twenty minutes is the right length for it. If it were any longer you'd probably kill yourself. For the length it is you can be forgiving of its shortcomings. Some may disagree but I think there's something very special about the films of Andy Milligan.
La casa della paura (1974)
Quite a hallucination
Generally speaking I have very little tolerance for films which make no sense, but this movie is an exception. I was sober when I saw it but I can tell you I really did feel like I was under the influence of something as I was watching it. The director probably was.
I simply could not follow what was going on. Everything seemed very dreamlike, the dialogue was nonsensical, you could not tell what sort of people any of the characters were or why they acted the way they did. It is very much a film of its time and is best enjoyed as a weird acid trip. A lot of the time I was watching with my hand on my head and my mouth open. And what a soundtrack. I'm surprised more has not been written about this movie. It's not good but it's certainly weird and psychedelic, definitely an example of style over substance. Again good luck understanding what the hell is even happening. But it is a fun ride.
Wednesday (2022)
Just had me scratching my head
As far as i understand it most people are crazy about this show. I had my doubts when I first heard about it. I figured the whole Addams Family thing had long since played itself out, who would tune in for a show about just one of the characters? But Jenna is a big star or a beautiful girl anyway and people said she was really good as Wednesday.
I don't know, folks. The whole emotionless persona is far from new by now. The whole time I'm watching the show my thought is, she is basically a Vulcan. Or maybe she's Seven of Nine. I'm not too familiar with Young Sheldon but she kind of acts like him as well. For me it just is not interesting watching a character who acts like this. Sure if this was Star Trek I might feel differently. As it was the whole production was pretty off-putting.
I'm six episodes in, maybe things get better in the last two episodes, but really it's all damn uninvolving. The only bright spot is Emma Myers. She is as cute as a button and very charismatic, and I would love to see what else she's done. But as for the show, a lot of one note grim humor that falls flat and gets tiresome, some terrible special effects, ultimately when you have a main character like this it's really hard to feel a connection to them or care what happens. Sure Jenna is gorgeous but possibly her acting chops are overrated or she has been given an impossible task. Horror comedies can be great if they do it right. Here it doesn't work. The comedy is forced and not funny and then you mix it with some pretty low rent and cheesy horror elements and the whole thing ends up being a lousy experience.
Pure (2019)
A fine show
This was excellent. It's too bad there was not a second season but sometimes brevity is the sole of wit. Possibly were there more they would have had to depart from the novel on which it is based and the quality would have dipped.
What we have here is the tale of a Scottish girl with OCD who goes to London. She is obsessed with sexual thoughts. Sure, you hear that you think that is terrific but it is not, for her. Altho very troubled otherwise she lives a damn charmed life and in this perhaps one can say the show is not all that realistic. All right, she has a friend living in London with whom she can stay. But look how easily she makes friends. Why she even is able to find a job of sorts with little difficulty, altho she isn't able to keep it.
The cast is fantastic. Every person in the show is interesting, beautiful and charismatic. Everything about the show is good, with the exception perhaps of it not being all that realistic. I think most folks who venture to a new city where they barely know anyone would not have as easy a time of it as she does. Of course her OCD causes some difficulties for her but otherwise she barely breaks a nail.
Definitely a fine show. Some viewers may recognize Niamh Algar from Raised By Wolves. What a beautiful lady she is.
Il cinico, l'infame, il violento (1977)
Great title for a movie anyway
It appears that Umberto Lenzi has made loads of films in every genre you can think of and you likely have seen at least one of his cannibal, zombie, giallo, or crime films. Please don't tell me any of them are masterpieces. That is a word movie fans love to throw around but as foolish as I have been in continuing to watch Lenzi's films there has yet to be a single one which can even be described as good.
Here we see a former policeman who possibly now is a writer of crime fiction played by the very handsome bleached blonde Maurizio Merli. Does the fact that he is no longer a cop stop him from chasing bad guys around? You know the answer to that. The cast is rounded out by two other familiar faces, which is to say Tomas Milian and John Saxon. You have likely seen Milian in other European westerns and crime movies and of course Saxon was in Tenebrae and the eminent Cannibal Apocalypse.
Saxon and Milian play two bigwigs in the underworld. Milian plays the Chinaman. Why is he called the Chinaman? Well after you've figured that out maybe you then can let me know why he goes around with a bandage on his head for the whole film. As far as I know there is no explanation for either thing. Later on in the film Saxon ends up in jail. Now possibly I dozed off but as far as I know there is no explanation for that either.
If you're just looking to kill some time you can do worse than this film but otherwise good luck knowing what the hell is going on. Tanzi receives a kind of greeting card at the beginning of the film which lets him know he will be killed and his uncle (who looks a lot like my dad) is roughed up and robbed by a couple of hoodlums so that is enough to get the ball rolling for him. Again Saxon and Milian are a couple of gangsters who either are working together or who mean to wipe the other one out. You may interpret that Tanzi has decided to eliminate them both by turning them against each other, that might be it. Tanzi runs into some dame at some point. You must forgive me for referring to her that way. Of course the characters in the film use even less respectful terms for women. Is she a love interest, does Tanzi screw her? I don't know. At the drop of a hat Tanzi gives her her walking papers.
Narratively speaking this film fails completely. It is just a lot of guys running around hitting and shooting each other, driving around in their cars, and wrecking their cars. Loot is stolen, women are treated poorly.
I really need to stop watching Umberto Lenzi movies. If a person is bad at something you would think they'd stop doing it, no one would want anything to do with him. But somehow Lenzi never made a good movie in his whole life and has made countless movies anyway.
Miami Blues (1990)
Quirky yes, good no
This is described as a black comedy but nothing funny happens here. I guess it's funny if you think a guy with false teeth is funny or maybe seeing a crook go around pretending to be a cop and robbing people is amusing to you. Myself I was just sitting there waiting for something interesting to happen, I was hoping for there to be characters that I could care about.
As it is, we have Alec Baldwin, who's certainly a handsome fella. We have Jennifer Jason Leigh who's cute as a button. And there's Fred Ward as the incompetent policeman with the false teeth. Throughout the film Alec keeps flashing this crazy smile. It ought to be clear to Susie that there is something very wrong with him but I guess she is won over by his handsomeness or the fact that he pays attention to her. There's certainly nothing lovable about Junior. As for Susie she's a complete ditz. Good-natured enough, well meaning. But she does not behave like a human being. In the end when she walks in on dead Junior it's like he's a couch cushion. She has zero reaction to his death and we are expected to believe she was in love with him.
I guess this is what passes for quirky or black humor but I was not entertained. The bottom line is a movie needs to have sympathetic characters in it. People you can understand and like. These are just cute people acting goofy and that is not entertainment. Thank you Jennifer for taking your clothes off but otherwise a big no thanks to everything else that happens in this movie.
Sorido eopsi (2020)
Plays with our sympathies
This is a very interesting film. A girl is kidnapped by a couple of low level guys that work for a criminal organization and aside from the obvious fact that they should not have kidnapped her otherwise they seem to be stand up guys.
The girl certainly is a stand up person. Right away she befriends and looks out for the mute guy's sister and she tries to make the best of things. She cleans up the hovel and is on friendly terms with the kidnapper. Again, aside from having kidnapped her he is portrayed as a fairly sympathetic character who does not want any harm to come to her.
His partner ends up dying in an almost comical way. He collapses against a wall and expires in a seated position. It's kind of sad to see him that way, particularly as he is the mute guy's good friend and had looked after him for many years.
When a cop finally comes to investigate, because the mute guy is portrayed as a sympathetic character I could not help rooting for him and being glad when he appears to kill her.
In the end he does the right thing, saves her from the child traffickers, and brings her back to the school. It's a telling moment, altho no one should be surprised, when she fights with him to let go of her hand and she rushes into the arms of her teacher. It's interesting that we never see her parents. We are given the impression they don't care about her but I don't know if that's the case. It is an interesting choice to not show the guy getting arrested or shot. He just sort of wanders off. We don't need to see him arrested because it's clear this is the end of the road for him. The girl is back with her parents, people see that he was the kidnapper, and the cops are waiting for him back at his house.
Anyway a brilliant film in how it plays with your sympathies. Obviously kidnapping is wrong. The guys surely knew working for a criminal organization was wrong. They don't deserve our sympathies. They get what they deserve. But at the same time they are sympathetic and we see their humanity. So the end result is it is very interesting.
Bat sin fan dim: Yan yuk cha siu bau (1993)
I wonder who the real cannibals are
I imagine no one watches this film with an interest in learning the actual details of the murder case the film is based on. Whoever comes here does so because they love gory and depraved films and they who do so will not be disappointed.
The character of Wong is not easily forgotten. Those great big glasses he wears and his odd facial expressions do make an impression. As I said this is a very gory and depraved film but it is also pretty damn cheesy. Of course I don't know how police behaved in that part of the world and in that time. I realize the scenes with the cops are mostly intended for comic relief, but still you have to wonder if cops did behave that way. Who in the world ever heard of a police captain who is constantly surrounded by prostitutes? What a mindboggling sight that is.
Who will say that the actions of Wong are not abominable, hateful, and stomach churning? And yet at the same time, the impression one gets of the criminal justice system there is that they are basically a bunch of criminals themselves. Or at least they operate in a manner completely alien to police as we know them. Again who is to say there is any attempt at realism here? The whole thing is likely a kind of funhouse impression of how things really are.
Indeed by film's end possibly some viewers won't even be horrified by the bloody actions of Wong. Altho the film takes its basis from actual events the viewer is unlikely to be familiar with those events. They are watching the film because they love crazy and extreme splatter films.
Still, when you see both the depraved actions of the murderer and the police, you wonder is the filmmaker saying something here? Is the film a kind of indictment of police incompetence and corruption as much as it's a depiction of a vile murderer? I was more horrified by the cops than I was by Wong. Altho no one will say cops are perfect, you can't help expecting them to behave with more heroism and righteousness than you see here. So that is why I use the quotation from Cannibal Holocaust.
Vampyres (1974)
Lots of blood and sex
I first saw this years ago in the late 90's when I first discovered Eurohorror. It's anyone's guess where I found a copy. I was pleased to watch it again today on Tubi.
It has a great cast but you can learn the actors' names elsewhere. Suffice it to say there is a beautiful rarely clothed brunette vampire (Fran) and an even more beautiful blond vampire (Miriam). There are no male vampires. Here the men are the victims, altho a woman is victimized as well. It just makes a nice change to see the women as the aggressors and the men the victims. There is a 40ish man who is sort of Fran's boyfriend. All the people who encounter Fran and Miriam die except for him. If I'm not mistaken he starts out the film checking into a hotel and the manager says he recognizes him from somewhere. This seemed intriguing but nothing came of it. I figured he was a secret Van Helsing or a vampire himself but nope.
There are a young couple who make the strange decision to camp out only steps from the castle-like home of Fran and Miriam. The man is delightful, very handsome and charming. His wife or girlfriend is a bit of a busybody but has a great figure and I was confident we would see her unclothed eventually. I was not disappointed.
There are a couple of other guys who have run-ins with Fran and Miriam but they aren't all that interesting--just blood bags.
What is a bit puzzling, whereas it seems Fran and Miriam need to sleep during the day, they are able to walk around outside in the sunlight. So that is a departure from what is traditionally the case. Also neither vampire babe has fangs but that is fine. Altho sometimes fangs look okay, most of the time people look really goofy with them.
Anyway we never really find out how things turn out at the end of the film. Fran and Miriam kill just about everybody. Only the first gentleman survives and presumably he will just get on with his life and does not intend to kill them. He never even figures out that they're vampires. We never even figure out how they became vampires. At the very beginning of the film the two of them are gunned down and then the next thing you know they're vampires. At the end of the film they just rush away to their sleeping place and that's the last we see of them.
There's this cheesy coda where a real estate agent arrives with a married couple looking to buy the place. Don't see why they put that in the movie.
I think the only place where the film comes up short is narratively speaking. It would have been good to have had more of a story and to have more information. As it was it was just here are two vampires basically killing everybody and that's fine. It works for me that they would basically be invulnerable and the humans would be helpless to stop them. I like it when the vampires win. It's just the movie might have benefited from there being a bit more to the story.
Il profumo della signora in nero (1974)
Good luck!
This is a giallo starring Mimsy Farmer, who horror fans will know from Four Flies on Grey Velvet and The Black Cat. Well, take my advice and stick to The Black Cat. Four Flies is certainly a lesser Argento and as for this, well, it didn't ring my bell, but as you will see from other reviews here, a lot of folks loved it.
The thing with any film nowadays, unless you want to go in blind, there are abundant resources on the internet which will give you some idea what to expect. And I should have heeded the warnings. This is indeed a strange film or to be more precise a film which is impossible to understand.
It is the tale of a young woman named Sylvia, who seems quite ordinary at first, holds down some sciencey job I couldn't quite figure out, has a boyfriend, and is friends with another woman in her building. But she is troubled by memories of her childhood. Her father was rarely at home, he was a seaman of sorts. Her mother cheated on him and young Sylvia witnessed this. It seems like he attempted to sexually assault her but she slashed his face with a knife. Some time after that she killed her mother.
Meanwhile in the present her boyfriend and a college professor take her to see a medium. The medium is able to see into her past and speaks of how her father drowned. It is shortly after this that Sylvia's sanity starts to unravel, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of what we see in Repulsion. She is visited by her younger self. Her friend in the building dies, but oddly this event turns out to have zero bearing on the rest of the film so I don't know why it happens. The younger Sylvia gives her the skin of a cat and she takes it to a taxidermist to be stuffed. I have no idea why. Oddly the man who tried to sexually assault her when she was a child works at the taxidermist.
Sylvia returns to her childhood home and the man barges in and tries to sexually assault her again. She smashes his head in with a brick which is very conveniently close to hand. He seems to die. She returns with her boyfriend to find the man gone.
Then she murders a kindly old gentleman who lives in her building, she murders her boyfriend, and then arranges the three dead bodies around the table in a sort of gruesome recreation of the Mad Hatter's tea party in Alice in Wonderland. After this she goes out onto the roof and her younger self grabs her and she falls to her death.
Okay, I figured this was it. This is just a story about a woman who slowly goes mad, but no. The next thing we know her friends are alive again and they along with a huge group of other strange people cut her open, pull all her guts out and eat them. They're a bunch of crazy cannibals, some sort of occultists I suppose. How it is that they came back from the dead and why they do this are not explained. Possibly she didn't kill them and that was just more of her delusions.
Anyway, an ending from left field to be sure. Hard to understand how the filmmaker thought anyone would enjoy a film like this. I imagine it did zero business but who knows? This was 1974 and the cannibal craze had not come yet to cinemas, so I can imagine viewers must have been amazed.
My verdict: Please spare yourself. Whereas the film does seem to have its fans, as for myself I really was left cold.
La morte ha sorriso all'assassino (1973)
It's like a movie made by space aliens
Having spent the last couple of weeks screening gialli, I don't think I was unreasonable to have thought Death Smiles on a Murderer was a giallo. From the title you would have thought so. I was sure I had heard the title before. But I can tell you my friends it is not a giallo. It is really unlike any film I have ever seen. It barely seems to be a film at all.
It was directed by Joe D'Amato who of course has never been well thought of as far as I know. He did make Beyond the Darkness, which is a very sick film but unlike Death Smiles on a Murderer it is not incomprehensible. I quite enjoyed Beyond the Darkness. As demented as it was there was a certain dark poetry to it. After all it had that very fine Goblin soundtrack. The soundtrack of Death Smiles on a Murderer is appalling. I'm not saying the music itself is bad, it just does not match what is happening on the screen.
The film stars Ewa Aulin, a comely enough lass to be sure. You may have seen her in Death Laid an Egg, a film even more incomprehensible than this one. I had been led to understand Death Laid an Egg was a giallo but I don't know. It is an incomprehensible chicken movie. Death Smiles on a Murderer also stars the bug-eyed and very seedy Klaus Kinski. As another reviewer mentioned there is a scene of Kinski with all these veins bulging out of his forehead which will make even the strongest viewer nauseous. Who else is in the cast? No one I am familiar with.
The dubbing in the film is abominable. There will be those among you who will say the bad dubbing enhances the viewing experience and whereas this is sometimes the case with certain films, here possibly the original Italian with English subtitles might have helped. Possibly not. The film is so strange in its execution you have to wonder what the hell D'Amato was thinking, what the crew thought, and what the actors must have thought. D'Amato must have either had no idea what he was doing or was trying to be arty or both. Aulin spends most of the movie with a big grin on her face like all the direction Joe gave her was, "Just smile, honey."
For the first half of the film the brother of Greta seems to haunt the maid, who eventually quits. Only while she is leaving town an unknown person shoots her face off. It's anyone's guess who, we never find out. Greta goes to bed both with the man of the house and his wife. The wife finds out about Greta and her husband and walls her up in the basement like one sees in Edgar Allen Poe. Where the wife picked up such skill, and how she is able to do it so quickly are mysteries. It doesn't mean a thing to Greta. Greta somehow escapes without knocking the wall down.
Because apparently Greta is undead. I don't know. It seems not only is Klaus Kinski some kind of mad scientist who has discovered the secret to bringing back the dead, so has her brother. Possibly he's a mad scientist too.
So what does undead Greta do? She bumps off just about everyone in the movie. It's unclear why. I get why she kills the woman who walled her up, but what did the others do?
In the end the detective expresses his total befuddlement as to what could have happened and I'm sure anyone who has watched this film feels the same way he does. My friends please do yourselves a favor and avoid this film. If you have already seen it I pity you.
La comtesse noire (1973)
An acquired taste
Here is another one of those films I would have never known about if it weren't for that book Immoral Tales by Tohill and Tombs. Mind you I'm sure I saw it years ago on VHS sitting on the shelf of some video store under the title Erotikill. I tell you that book drove me to take seriously some films which in reality were total crap.
And boy is Female Vampire crap. Is Lina Romay a beautiful woman? Sure but the director, Jess Franco makes such sordid films he can even make Lina kind of gross. Well in this classic film the vampire does not suck blood. She has sex with men and women and once they reach orgasm she sucks out their life essence as it were. Mind you as anyone can tell you there are several versions of the film, and in one she just sucks blood. Perhaps you have seen the very arresting still from the film where Romay's face is smeared with blood.
There are a few good things about the film. I would not count the nudity and sex as assets here. Again it's so sordid and overdone it put me off. What I do like is the beautiful Daniel White theme which plays over and over again in the film. For days after you see the film that music will serenade you. Another good thing is the presence of Jack Taylor, an American actor who apparently appeared in numerous European films. Possibly he made American films but I didn't see any. Well altho the dubbing in this movie is positively ghastly the voice used for Jack is excellent. Why didn't they use Taylor's own voice? Again he's American. Instead they used some guy with a very charismatic Spanish accent. The very best part in the movie is the scene where the detective speaks with the medical examiner. The conversation goes something like this: "There was something surprising at the autopsy." "Wasn't he dead?" I know, it doesn't sound like much but with the bad dubbing the joke is hilarious.
One other good thing is the hood ornament on Lina Romay's car. It's a bat, and the wings flap as she drives thru the wind.
I just don't know what to say about Female Vampire. For a couple of months it was my favorite movie. I watched it every day. I guess I lost my head. It is basically a porno and Romay has zero acting skills. I'm sorry a whole movie with some actress rolling around in bed nude gets boring for even the most sexually voracious of viewers. But the wonderful soundtrack wins you over. The theme is played so much it kind of hypnotizes you. And again Jack Taylor saves the film,
In terms of weirdness you have to hand it to Luis Barboo who plays Irina's manservant. Something very odd is going on with this dude's face. Barboo was in the giallo The Case of the Scorpion's Tail. He looked mostly normal in the giallo but here it looks like they put some kind of lotion on his face. Why is his face so shiny? He looks ridiculous.
In any case the films of Jess Franco are really an acquired taste. You would do well to avoid them. Mind you I did find a few of them interesting. But in terms of the tug of war between interesting ideas and low production values, the low production values definitely win when it comes to Franco. If you are accustomed to junk you may enjoy him. It helps if Tohill and Tombs have seduced you into believing crap films are masterpieces. It happened to me, it can happen to you.
La morte vivante (1982)
A tug of war between interesting ideas and low production values
I wonder if I am the only errant knight who has been seduced by the excellent book Immoral Tales into taking some very bad movies seriously. It is as I say an excellent book on Eurohorror where one may learn of the existence of certain weird auteurs like Jean Rollin or Jess Franco who appear to have some very interesting ideas but they execute these ideas so ineptly and with such a low budget you wonder who is more crazy the filmmaker or you for watching the film.
La Morte Vivante is an excellent title for a film. In French it sounds very impressive. In English it's a growling Rob Zombie song. Anyway, there is a great deal of sentimentality and pathos here. We learn of a childhood friendship between two girls who swore an oath together in blood. Some years pass and they are adults. One of the girls has died. We know that because of the arrival of three crooks.
These crooks have been given the job of getting rid of a barrel of toxic waste. They arrive in a van and rather than dumping the toxic waste in some lake, which one crook admits would kill all the fish, they take it down into the Valmont family crypt. Okay sure because that is the obvious choice for something like that. Upon leaving the barrel two of the crooks decide to break into the coffins of two dead Valmonts in order to steal their jewels. Mrs Valmont and her daughter are revealed, quite dead of course but interestingly neither of them appears to have decomposed at all. Well what do you think happens--some sort of earth tremor or minor earthquake. I wonder are tremors of this kind common in France or was it just something Rollin had happen because he couldn't think of any other way to propel the narrative forward? Anyway one crook takes a nasty fall due to the tremor and the barrel of waste falls over and spills its contents on the ground.
The toxic waste causes Catherine Valmont to rise from the dead. Oddly her mother is not awakened. And what does an awakened corpse do immediately upon rising? She gouges out the eyes of the crook. The makeup effect of the eye gouging is abominable, as fake looking as they come. But as we come to see, this is a very gory film. We are talking Lucio Fulci level gore here. The other crook who lay unconscious in a pool of spilled toxic waste awakens only to scream in pain--the chemicals have burned his face. Again we see more of this film's primitive special effects. The terrible makeup which shows his mutilated face and eye needs to be seen to be believed.
There are scenes of a real estate agent getting together with her boyfriend at the Valmont villa. She disrobes quick as a flash. You won't believe it. One minute she's clothed, the next she's totally nude. Who's complaining, amirite? But you know, as one often sees in horror films, in the midst of their lovemaking they hear a noise. Who is it? It's Catherine. The boyfriend goes to check and he meets the same fate as the graverobbers. It is something else to see him stumble back into the room where the real estate broker is. He has sustained a brutal Fulciesque wound and what is his girlfriend's response? She keeps saying, "Is that you?" like she doesn't recognize him. Very odd. Well she starts screaming and Catherine doesn't want any part of that so she brutally murders her as well with those very long fingernails of hers. We are then shown a somewhat good scene of the nude lady stumbling out the front door and collapsing on the stairs. That must have hurt a bit but the actress seems to manage okay.
Meanwhile Catherine's childhood friend Helene is looking at a photo of herself and Catherine and decides to call her. I don't know, maybe she was calling Mrs Valmont. Possibly she thought the mother was still alive because when Catherine knocks the phone off the hook like a cat, Helene says, "Mrs Valmont?" Helene hears a tune from the music box Catherine has and recognizes it and thinks this must mean Catherine is alive.
We then learn of the existence of Barbara, a very annoying woman and her boyfriend who appear to be tourists. The woman is a busybody with a voice that is like nails on a chalkboard. Her boyfriend Greg is nice enough and tries in vain to be a voice of reason. But Barbara cannot be persuaded and she insists on poking her nose into things better left alone.
Meanwhile Helene arrives at the chateau and is reunited with Catherine. What has happened she wonders. How can Catherine be alive again? Was she ever even dead? Well she quickly finds that her friend did indeed die as Catherine shows, like a vampire, she must have blood to survive. Because of their childhood vow and Helene's love for her, she becomes a sort of Renfield-like character at that point and helps Catherine by luring victims to the house.
Whereas Catherine begins mute, seemingly mindless or amnesiac, as the film progresses she becomes more or less herself mentally and regains the power of speech. She is a reluctant revenant but her friend pressures her to go on.
Barbara asks around town and confirms that the mysterious lady in white is indeed Catherine Valmont and she continues to ignore Greg's wise words to leave the situation alone. Eventually this leads to Helene immolating her. Or that is to say she holds out a torch in her direction and the next thing we know Barbara is running out of the house engulfed in flames. This is strange. For the whole film we get nothing but primitive special effects but Rollin was able to get the money and talent together to realistically show a person running around on fire. Go figure. I guess that is easily done. Helene puts an axe in Greg's head and he cashes in his chips as well.
Lastly, with no victims left and Catherine having refused to cooperate with any more killing and yet still hungry for blood, what else is there for it but for her to consume Helene? Helene willingly sacrifices herself and the film ends with that and Catherine howling Learlike over the death of her friend and her depraved part in it.
Well as I very aptly put it in the title, the film, like all of Rollin's films is a tug of war between interesting ideas and low production values. As people say there is an undeniable poetry to Rollin's films, something melancholy, haunting, and of course decadent. But it seemed his reach exceeded his grasp. Whatever greatness Rollin would have attained is always undermined by a low budget, an amateurish cast and the pandering exploitation staples of nudity and gore. Nevertheless for some, myself included, the journey is well worth taking. Rollin's arty horror films are quite interesting and for folks who enjoy seeing blood drenched, sexy films he always delivers. The most striking thing about La Morte Vivante is how we see here a beautiful woman engaged in very depraved things. Typically glamorous and beautiful women did not shall we say get their hands dirty in this manner and it's refreshing to see that tradition exploded in this way.
Last thought: Is Francoise Blanchard wearing a wig in this film? Possibly she just dyed her hair, and what big '80's hair it is, which also suggests that it's a wig. In any case, I can't resist saying it, the carpet does not match the drapes. In any case let us salute uninhibited actresses like Francoise who are glad to take their clothes off and do all the depraved things she does in this film. We very much appreciate it.
The Body Beneath (1970)
At least it's short
Well it took a couple of tries but I finally mustered the courage to sit through this unusual film. It is the only film I have seen from low budget auteur Andy Milligan. Of course I have heard of The Rats Are Coming, the Werewolves are here and what a great title for a film that is but I have not seen it. As for this monstrosity it's okay. Lead vampire Reverend Ford is ably played by Gavin Reed. He is well spoken and suitably aristocratic. One must also mention, if not give high marks to, the three green ladies who say, "Hello." They are all vampires, more or less, but for some reason only these three are green. Well possibly there are different kinds of vampires and they are a different kind than the rest. Then there is Spool the hunchback. One kind of knows what to expect from him. One character tries to get him to help her by showing him some kindness and he does try to help her even though it doesn't work out. And that is one of the few things I liked about this charming piece of dreck. Basically the bad guys (if you want to call them that) win. I think a lot of folks who watch vampire films are rooting for the vampires. It is always a terrible shame when the bland hero and heroine triumph so this makes a nice change. It seems the reverend and his clan are successful. It seems like the reverend wanted Susan and Paul to just lie there dead and be found by the police but it looks as though both become vampires and they decide to occupy the house now that everyone else has gone. Anyway not a great film but enjoyable enough. As I said in my title at least it's short. If a film is not so good at least one can say you did not waste 120 minutes on it. If I am not mistaken this one is about an hour and twenty minutes, which seems like the right length for it.
Inferno (1980)
Supernatural Baloney
As for the great Dario Argento, his best films are Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Deep Red, and Tenebrae. My first exposure to him was Suspiria (the recent remake of which you would be wise to avoid), and Inferno is sort of the sequel to it. Suspiria does not make a lot of sense but the mountains of style, weirdness, and absolutely demented soundtrack make it worthwhile. In any case the first murder scene in Suspiria is so magnificent it's worth seeing the film for that alone. Now one thing Suspiria and Inferno have in common is senseless deaths. Who is killing all these people and why? Well as both films are supernatural (as opposed to being giallos) this gives Argento license to have people dying for no good reason and at the hands of who can say whom. I would say the reason most of the people die is because they displeased the witches in some way but as they are evil possibly the three mothers just kill for the fun of it. There are some familiar faces in Inferno. You have Gabriele Lavia in a minor role. He played a much more significant role in Deep Red. Also there is Alida Valli who was in Suspira (and also The Third Man!). Daria Nicolodi is here again. She was also in Deep Red. She apparently writes some of Dario's films. What the hell did she write here? A bunch of unintelligible nonsense if you ask me. As a fan of Argento I am glad to sit thru even his lesser films which this certainly is. What this film basically is is one scene after another of people walking thru different rooms in weird buildings. I guess people will say it's dreamlike. Myself I will say when it comes to deciding between Argento's supernatural films and his giallos, you are well advised to stick to his giallos. And let me not leave you before uttering one last complaint. Leigh McCloskey has to be the least impressive protagonist since Stephen Lack's Lackluster performance in Scanners. Leigh's whiny voice will stay with you long after the credits have rolled. Anyway, if you are an Argento fan you will enjoy this. It's very stylish and there are lots of strange and brutal death scenes. But I'm sorry, it just does not make any sense at all and that eliminates it for me. You tell me why there is a shot of some random woman hanging herself or a cat eating a mouse--I certainly don't know.
Rabid (1977)
Good early Cronenberg
I first saw this film in the 1980s with a good friend who was a big horror fan. We both loved Cronenberg and Dario Argento and saw loads of very cheesy and strange horror films together. Rabid certainly was a memorable one and after many years I watched it again tonight. I love Cronenberg's early films. I think his best are Rabid, The Brood, Videodrome, Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, and Crash. The rest one does not need to bother with. Of course The Fly is one of his best but I find that one far too upsetting and disgusting. That is not a film anyone would want to see more than once. As for Rabid, the only shortcomings I can readily think of are its cheesy soundtrack and its undeveloped ideas. I have read Cronenberg made several cuts to the film to reduce its running time and that he regretted doing so. Certainly for a science fiction / horror film it lacks the sort of science fiction related details you would expect to see. We begin with a bunch of mad scientists in some plastic surgery facility who are utilizing experimental methods but after some introductory information at the outset the science behind the whole thing is barely mentioned again. After all it is what they did to Marilyn at the outset which is the cause of all the trouble. Are we to believe no one at the facility realizes this? The majority of the people there end up dying but it would have been nice if at least one doctor there had said, "Hey we caused this problem. We had better study it and try to figure out a way to make things right." But nope, eventually towards the end they say on a news program that the rabies-related outbreak came from that facility but no one from the facility seems to have any idea about it or is even consulted. Murray just sort of stumbles around clueless throughout the film and he is supposedly a doctor at the clinic! The fact that they are able to come up with a vaccine for it seems very abrupt and comes from left field. Again you would have thought the doctors at the clinic would have had some ideas about that. In any case, Marilyn is a very welcome presence. I enjoyed her work in Insatiable, in particular the scene where she makes love on a pool table. One does not customarily see so much nudity in a Cronenberg film and nudity is in my opinion a fine thing. I imagine they figured she's a porn star so let's have her nude as often as possible and that's what they did. She does well with the role. Her lack of acting skills works well, as the character is kind of without affect and oblivious to what she is doing. Her line, "I don't want it to be you," is especially well delivered. Lastly the parade of garbage trucks is very memorable. A bunch of garbage trucks filled with corpses makes for a very apocalyptic image.
Where Eagles Dare (1968)
What the hell man
Really a head scratcher as to why this one is so well regarded. It's basically an arcade game of how many Germans can we shoot and blow up. A bored and certainly inebriated Richard Burton stars, and also Clint Eastwood, Michael Hordern, Anton Diffring, and Ingrid Pitt. You will recognize Hordern, an English actor who has been in a lot of films. Of course Ingrid Pitt, who is only seen briefly here, was in The Vampire Lovers. You perhaps saw Diffring in Mark of the Devil 2. It's Eastwood who makes the film worth seeing. In 1968 he was a handsome and charismatic presence. Anyway the movie holds a viewer's attention but why anyone thinks it's a classic or why it did so well at the box office is a mystery to me. A handful of folks go up against basically the entire German army and gun them all down as easy as pie. They say of all Eastwood's films in this one he kills the most people. He is in the line of fire (no pun intended) for almost the entire film and altho he hits everyone he shoots at somehow all the bullets miss him. What can you say about Burton? Not much. He is convincing enough as the brains of the operation with that voice of his but he is not an exciting film presence. As I said if you enjoy seeing Nazis shot and blown up this is the film for you. But really it's all a load of nonsense.