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Consuming Spirits (2012)
Amazing - if you can get through it.
I can't give this a proper review as it's been about 5 years since I've seen it (once), and as far as I know it is unobtainium on home video. The film (best as I can recall) bounces around through a bunch of seemingly unrelated quirky scenes and characters, with perhaps for some, only it's wonderfully bizarre animation to keep you interested. Just about the time you wonder where the hell this mess is all going, and if you should stick with it, things start coming together in amazing ways. It's a rich piece of storytelling. While watching I had the feeling I'd experienced this style before. Afterwards during Q&A, Chris Sullivan gave a shout-out to Joe Frank in the audience - that's when it hit me how much this film is like a Joe Frank radio play.
Anyway, this is "not for everybody" but if you like well crafted stories in the style of of a Joe Frank production, you should give this a shot. IF you can find it.
W (1983)
W is for Wildly Insane!
OK; "W" is pretty awesome. The bad guy commands a 1,000 man army of skinhead biker thugs who occupy a huge prime piece of undeveloped beach real estate, which apparently functions as a hideout somehow. They're all dressed in Mad Max style crazy-guy clothes, and behave like an untouchable bad-ass gang who rule the badlands in a dystopian future. All that sort of clashes with the fact that the rest of the film's universe seems to be set in contemporary Manilla. Well, never mind.
The bad guys' day job is opium smuggling. They divide their downtime between assaulting normal-universe Manilla, and doing calisthenics on their expansive beach estate. Despite them running around all crazy-like in Mad Max couture for the first 3/4 of the film, and regularly having fun with various weapons and pyrotechnics on their "secret" beach compound, the cops can't seem to locate them. Maybe it's because the cops have like 30 employees total, and only one of them is any good at taking on the bad guys. He is the titular agent "W", or, as we find out in the course of the film his full title, and no kidding; "Agent W2"!
Oh yes, do get out your file of IRS jokes for your riffing session.
Well, things do not fill out well for W2 in the first half of the movie. After W2 offs a gang member in self defense, we are treated to the obligatory "your badge and your gun" scene; who could expect anything less? I must say the plot surprised me by going in an unexpected direction during the course of the bad guys messing up W2's honeymoon. I don't want to drop any spoilers, but be prepared to fish out your "short form" jokes from the IRS joke file.
It all comes to a head with W2 leading the cops in an assault (FINALLY!) on the beach "hideout". The skinhead army looks almost impressive in ranks on the beach. They are however, lined up in rows of ten, so it's pretty easy to count that they number around 140; a tad less than 1,000. But again, never mind.
Obviously for this job, some armor is in order. One welding-and-hammering montage later and viola! Agent W2's '75 Camero is now an assault tank! A bit of sheet metal replacing windows is all it takes to fend off the bad guy's (quote) "latest high powered guns", which luckily cannot penetrate the unarmored pieces of the mighty Camero, such as doors, hood, radiator grill, and tires.
The bad guys have a few bad-ass vehicles of their own; my favorite are what seem to be motorcycles crossed with Professor Fate's rocket car from THE GREAT RACE. Yay!
The editing is as choppy as I've seen in other Pinoy films of that era, leaving one wondering if they just never got around to filming certain connecting scenes. Lots of action, and from the look of a few of the sequences, one can easily imagine that one or more stunt person/s may have been seriously injured.
The only thing that could have improved this flick would have been the presence of the great Weng Weng himself. But wait! We do get a least one "prone man firing weapon while sliding on horizontal surface"! Maybe it's a Pilipino thing(?).
Thumbs up from me!
("W Is War" has been released on DVD as "W", and you may have better luck searching for it as such.)
The Lost Skeleton Returns Again (2008)
Skelly's back, and he's cranky!
Oh wait, he was cranky to start with.
I shouldn't have to even mention basic rule of thumb for sequels; they stink, with the occasional exception. I'm happy to report that this is one of those exceptions. Counting myself as a fan of THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA, I give this follow-up my seal of approval - a huge relief as I was braced for the worst, knowing the Sequel Rule and all.
The prior film covered a raft of 50's-to-early 60's SF B-movie sub-genres: crashed meteor/Ed-Woodish aliens/rampaging mutant/cat-woman/haunted skull. THE LOST SKELETON RETURNS AGAIN picks up most all of that and rolls it in a cheesy (of course deliberately so) jungle adventure, harking to movies like LOST CONTINENT (1951) or THE LOST WORLD (1960) or THE LOST _(insert noun here)_. A host of time honored jungle movie clichés are subjected to a Blamiring they shall not soon forget.
All of the cast and nearly all of the characters from TLSOC characters show up in TLSRA, which is a bit of a trick as a couple of them were killed off in the last picture. This seeming non sequitur is explained away in the finest tradition of cheesy film making, and it's on with the show.
Like TLSOC, there is a broad range of humor going on with appeal to all ages; from visual gags to genre in-jokes. Thus providing grown-ups with stuff to quote and kids with hijinks to giggle at.
The standard question when it comes to sequels goes something like "does it work if you haven't seen the previous film?" I'm disqualified to answer in this case, but my money is on 'yes'. There's enough continuity and in-jokes to make persnickety fans happy, but not so much that it would put off first timers - as far as I can tell. But as usual, seeing the previous film first is a plus.
Larry Blamire movies tend to result in either a love-or-hate state. Like most cult movies, it seems you're either a fan of TLSOC who never tires of watching it and quote it in your sleep, or you're one of those who doesn't like it. Bottom line, if you didn't care for the first movie, this one isn't going to make you any happier. But the many fans of THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA will get along just fine with THE LOST SKELETON RETURNS AGAIN.
Midnight Movie Massacre (1988)
Disappointing. No, wait... Disgusting.
I'm a huge fan of bad movies, b-movies, and spoofs of the above. Keep that in mind when I say; I found watching this movie to be *painful*. The level of humor is on a child's level, but I wouldn't show this movie to a child who's therapy I had to pay for. Worse; this is literally two bad movies in one...
There is the main story which attempts to be a "spoof" of a horror movie, and the film-within-film which is allegedly a spoof and/or reprise of the 50's classic TV serial "Space Patrol". Both fail miserably. The Space Patrol "homage" IN NO WAY evokes the old TV show, aside from lifting some of the character's names. Ann Robinson and Robert Clarke deserved better than this. I'll say this for it; it actually attempts to spoof of SF genre here and there. The killer robot's weakness was the only gag I laughed at in the entire movie. Still; it completely misses relating to Space Patrol or 50s TV SF.
The wrap-around horror movie "spoof" is so juvenile, the humor so pitiful; it's embarrassing just to watch... and I mean I *actually* felt embarrassed while watching it all by myself. Yeah, THAT embarrassing. Little or no thought to actually spoofing the genre, just a bad horror movie with a bunch of random gags tossed in. (I suspect the reason it was made was they probably couldn't complete the "space-patrol" film, and the rest was essentially padding.)
I was bored throughout. I have a collection of bad b-movies which I love like crazy, but you couldn't pay me to watch this again. Well... OK you *could*, but we're talking three figures at least.
What's Up, Hideous Sun Demon (1989)
This one shows how to do it right.
Just a quick note to say this is horribly underrated on the IMDb User Ratings. I'm sorry, but not only is this funnier than Kung Pow, it's funnier than What's Up Tiger Lily. There, I said it and I'm glad.
I collect comedy dub jobs and so far this is my all time favorite. The writing is outstanding, the voices nicely match the characters, and the dubbing is tight. So many of these dub jobs go horribly wrong in a muck of sloppy dubbing and a numbing stream of toilet/sex/fart/gay 'jokes... lather rinse repeat. See 'Night of the Day of the Dawn of the...', or "Don't Ask Don't Tell" for examples of the genre gone wrong. This one shows how it should be done. (I will say that Oscar Meyer joke is a real groaner, but that's the only one.) Yeah, there's loads of sex jokes but guess what; they're actually *funny*, what with being built around actual good jokes. As opposed to the "any dirty remark is funny" school of comedy dubbing.
I just love this one, I wish there were more like it.
Barn of the Blood Llama (1997)
Still thinking about starting that llama ranch?
Imagine, if you will, a bright planet far away, civilized by a people who are intelligent, orderly, and serene. A people, as Dr. Morbius might have described them, who have enjoyed a million years of shining sanity. OK, now jump in your hyper-space ship and zap to the other side of the universe, to the bizarro opposite of that planet. To a dark, confused, murky cesspool of a planet; where nothing makes sense, all is chaos, nothing is linear. Congratulations! You've arrived at the planet where BARN OF THE BLOOD LLAMA was produced! I think it's called "Texas".
There are different kinds of bad movies. There's Ed Wood bad, there's Troma bad, and there's Gigli bad, in descending order. Then there's BARN OF THE BLOOD LLAMA, which sends all those other categories of bad films crying home to mama. It may be that BOTBL is some bizarre cousin of the Troma genus, I suppose. But it's the kind of cousin Troma is too embarrassed to let in the house; they simply pretend they're not at home.
I'm very fond of this movie, did I mention that? As fond as I can be, anyway, of a film that manages to dive into llama sodomizing in the first five minutes. Dang! This movie kicks Troma's rear! No wonder they won't let it in. Where does it go from here? Down, down, down like a rock lobster.
Oh, and what music! Imagine the sweet sound of a country duet of banjos, light and happy... Now imagine those banjos out of tune and strung up in a tree, banging randomly in the wind, with no trace of melody or meter. Now you have the haunting love theme of BOTBL. Try humming that, I challenge you.
You most likely won't be able to follow the plot of BOTBL, as your brain will simply refuse to store any of the outrage it has seen in the minutes preceding whatever point you are watching now. Let me see if I can clue you into what you are in store for... You know that dazed and whacked out feeling you get, after having fallen asleep sitting up in front of the TV? You wake up, struggle to focus your oxygen-starved brain on what's in front of you and go; "What the heck is this? Is this the same movie I was watching when I fell asleep? Where am I and what is my name?" That's pretty much how you will feel at the beginning and end of BOTBL, and all the points in between.
In short, this movie rocks in a most twisted way. Kevin West is some sort of genius I think, on par at least with the likes of auteur Coleman Francis. I like to think that somewhere, old CF is smiling down, or perhaps up, as the case may be, upon a showing of BARN OF THE BLOOD LLAMA and thinking; "That kid's ripping me off! Replaced the Cessnas with llamas is all he did! Miserable little jerk!"
But, I suppose, it's not for everyone. If you're the kind of person who's all nit-picky about their movies, about such things as continuity, coherency, lighting, editing, sound recording, sound mixing, music, cinematography, direction, acting, story, plot, special effects, and such-like little prissy details; well, if you think those things are important in some way, you may not think this flick is so hot. To each his own...
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)
Beware of TV version spoiler narration!
If you happen to catch Buckaroo Banzai on TV/cable, and hear narration during the opening titles, mute the sound. Read the text crawl instead, and turn the sound back on when it's done.
The tacked on, needless narration contains spoilers for elements of the story that are revealed more appropriately by the film as it unfolds. If that weren't enough, this idiotic narration continues over the film's original expository text crawl, as if it were normal to hear narration while reading different text!
Once more we are treated to the "improvement" of a great film by dumbing it down for the masses. Not as bad as what was done to "Brazil" for TV, since you can repair the damage to Buckaroo Banzai simply by turning down the sound for a minute. It's just another indication of what some Hollywood folks think about the intelligence of the general public. Aren't there enough brain dead, cookie cutter crap movies made? I guess not. Is it necessary to spoil films that credit the viewer with the brains to follow them? Apparently so. I'm so thankful that they did this "fix" for cheap. Otherwise, you can bet they would have loaded it up with extra flashbacks to previous scenes, and all the other sleazy TV-Brazil tricks to make it a more "accessible" movie (i.e., tailored for morons).
Is my contempt showing? Then my work here is done...