I did it again. Ah well.
Canadian cinema must be stopped. Nicolas Cage will literally do anything and The Humanity Bureau (2017) is one of the least compelling uses of him. It’s a dystopian sci-fi thriller about a distant, climate-afflicted future wherein the government removes people who are unable or unwilling to contribute to society. Cool premise. Worth exploring. This movie is not the vehicle to do it.
Five years after Stephen Sommers re-imagined the classic Universal horror flick The Mummy, switching it up to an Indiana Jones style adventure comedy, he returned to his love of 1930s/40s movie monsters. This was Van Helsing (2004). Hugh Jackman is the legendary vampire hunter who is commissioned by the 007-styled Vatican to kill Dracula so that a family of deceased Romanian nobles’s ghosts can get out of Purgatory and go to Heaven. Suspicious villages and haunted castles abound, but moreover, there are werewolves, Igor, vampire brides, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein’s monster and swarms of grotesque bat goblins. The ingredients sound fun. Sommers’ love of the classic iconic monsters, as well as bombastic action setpieces, is present. Sadly, the result is a yucky looking, exhausting mess with a cloyingly cartoony tone and performances either so bland (sorry, Hugh) or so hammy they hurt (sorry, Richard Roxburgh and Kate Beckinsale). It’s a film bloating with onslaughts of early-CG mayhem and zero chemistry or charisma.
It starts off with a lot of the worst instincts from The Mummy and Sleepy Hollow, and it just keeps leaning into all of those terrible instincts and doubling down on them and just adding more and more exhausting, weightless, repetitive stuff. It’s visually oppressive and ugly. The music doesn’t fit. Everyone is miscast and giving a career worst performance. It’s way too long. There are no physics, tension, or jokes that work. I think this was my favorite movie when it came out in 2004.
One of my kinder critiques of this Charles Band-produced Full Moon riff on Invasion of the Body Snatchers is that all of the male leads look like the same guy. Anyways, Seedpeople (1992) isn’t great.
We watched this for the cast, but Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968) (aka The Crimson Cult) was so joylessly filmed, stagey, and boring it soon became an endurance test. Boris Karloff delivers his lines well, but he’s pretty tired. Christopher Lee is doing what he can, but he’s basically rehashing stuff from the better City of the Dead (aka Horror Hotel). Not nearly enough Barbara Steele. Like what gives. You can’t dress her up like that, paint her green, and make her the queen of an insane-o antlers basement S&M cult and give her 3 minutes of screen time and top billing. All in all, chalk this one up to stuffy, old British men having all the wrong impulses (save the antlers guys) and absolutely zero pizzazz in their adorably lurid depictions of demonic cults.
In the spirit of Village of the Damned (it wishes!), it’s another evil kids movie! Moral of this story: don’t get born during an eclipse, because if Saturn is blocked you will be born without a conscience and just kill people for no reason. Even as a low-budget slasher flick, Bloody Birthday (1981) commits a major sin for me.
SPOILER ALERT: Had this movie focused on a survivor or victim of the killer kids, it might have developed a quantum of suspense, and, who knows, might have even been scary and had a bit of emotional heft. Instead the movie chooses three murdering kids as the main focus (two really: glasses boy and doll girl, who, I guess, could act better than blond boy). And that’s really the heart of the problem. We’re following characters that have no specific goals and no motivation beyond being born during an eclipse. They just want to kill people. And they aren’t even particularly interesting about it. They are very bland, annoying, and unlikable as characters. Had this movie been told from the perspective of the doll girl’s mom, it could have been terrifying and gut wrenching. For me the movie completely biffs it even further, because ultimately it doesn’t have the guts to even try to give these kids there comeuppance. I kept thinking, ok this sucks and I hate all these kids and what they’re doing is dumb, evil, and arbitrary, but maybe it’ll pay off Class of 1984-style when they each get cacked, or at least easily overpowered. Alas, no. Missed opportunity to murk some bad kids.
Gargoyles (1972) is an American TV movie that doesn’t seem to understand what a gargoyle is. And I, for one, applaud that audacity. According to this movie, gargoyles are ancient Native creatures that live in caves of the Southwest deserts. It’s broad daylight stylishlessness and tacky rubber suit monsters with robotic voices are a thing to behold.
I feel bad for Wesley Snipes. He looks cool as hell, but Blade II (2002) is easily director Guillermo del Toro’s worst move. I confess my bias here. I absolutely despise the early aughts cyberpunk vampire aesthetic. It all looked goofy and dated at the time, and time has not made it any better. Snipes deserved better.
A consummate horror fan, Paul Naschy is the writer-actor-director behind a lot of Spanish incarnations of classic Universal and Hammer monsters. The craziest thing about Night of the Werewolf (aka El Retorno del Hombre Lobo, aka The Return of the Wolfman) (1981) is that early 80s Spain could mostly still stand-in for almost any previous time period. Count Waldemar Daninsky, a Luciano Pavarotti-lookin’ werewolf man (Naschy), is executed along with history’s infamous Elizabeth Bathory in 15th century Hungary. Fastforward to present day, and the wolf’s tomb is disturbed…and so is Bathory’s by stroke of coincidence. Both awake. Bathory creates a new coven of hot witches, while the wolfman tries to stop her. It’s silly and the werewolf makeup and transformations are not great (a step up from Hammer’s 1961 The Curse of the Werewolf and several steps down from Universal’s 1941 The Wolf Man). I dig the concept of ancient enemies waking up in modern times and immediately going back to their old habits, but the film is kinda flabby. The vampire stuff is handled with a bit more flair. There’s also zombies too. This movie is part of Paul Naschy’s expanded Waldemar Daninsky cinemtic universe. Apparently there are 12 feature films starring Naschy as the tragic werewolf count.
We love our badass ladies, but Cherry 3000 (1987), a low-budget misogynistic dystopian sci-fi flick about a guy (David Andrews) who desperately needs a sex doll, ain’t something I could or would recommend to anybody. The MVP of this movie is the set dressing. Everything else is pretty meh to bad. Melanie Griffith stars as tracker hired to escort the guy into evil Tim Thomerson’s Mad Max Land to recover the love of his life!*
*The love of his life is an old model of a sex robot because his model malfunctioned in a tragic dishwashing accident.
Also features Ben Johnson, Brion James, Robert Z’Dar, Harry Carey Jr., and Laurence Fishburne.
Bruce Davison is a wormy little twerp who trains rats to do his vengeful bidding in Willard (1971). It’s fairly forgettable, and I was mad Willard seems completely ungrateful to his rat army. This lackluster movie garnered a sequel and a remake starring Crispin Glover.
I saw this movie when it first came out. Recently, I revisited After Last Season (2009) with a steadfast troop of bad movie watchin’ boys. This one stumped the room. It’s maddeningly confusing and just awful to look at. The sound, the locations, and the editing are all jarring; seemingly engineered to manifest an unyielding sense of dread and nausea. I say “seemingly”, because that effect is almost assuredly accidental. After Last Season is perhaps even more inscrutable than a Neil Breen film.
My best guess reharding the point of this movie is I think it was reverse engineered by a super logical guy who wanted to figure out what it would take to get him to rationally believe a claim that, on its face, appeared irrational. In the story, a woman is having dreams that seem to match real events. There’s a killer on the loose, you see. But one of her colleagues has acquired a piece of equipment that allows you to peer inside someone’s unconscious. He observes her visions and starts to believe maybe she can predict what the killer will do. But then he wakes up because that was all a dream, and apparently he was the main character all along. But then the woman shows up again and they go through the whole rigamarole again and it seems the same. So because he first dreamed he was seeing her dreams using technology, he now has some intellectual (however, coincidence-based) leeway to believe her. Maybe?? I don’t know. Then there’s a ghost that shows up to save them or something. The group hated the experience of watching it, but the hours of theories and laughs had afterward tell me this one’s special and should be watched and dissected. For the right people, anyway. Obviously, this won’t be for everyone.
This is also my second viewing of Shakma (1990), and I think I got on its wavelength way more this time. It’s a bad and dumb creature feature that does drag on way too long, but it has a novel setup (med school students LARPing in a facility at night) and perhaps the only movie ever made about a rage-filled baboon murdering people. The baboon attacks are generally pretty effective. Good baboon performance. Decent puppet work.
Man, Ken Russell is a real sicko. Kathleen Turner is woman with a double life in the neon-drenched erotic thriller, Crimes of Passion (1984). And it kind of feels like two movies clanging into each other. Is it good? I know it wasn’t for me. I think the themes of deeply internalized misogyny (encapsulated best in Anthoney Perkins’ deranged and horny homeless preacher character) and the tantalizing lure of flirting with the taboo when feeling sexually unsatisfied at home are all definitely worth examining. That said, this is not the movie to do it. It’s all just too weird, overwrought, and nonsensical to be much more than glamorized Hollywood smut. Kathleen Turner’s character feels like a cartoon character. I strangely wanted to understand Annie Potts’ shrewish, sexless housewife more. Like a lot of Ken Russell movies, even the ones I don’t particularly care for, I can’t fully write it off.
Suzume (2022) is a lavishly animated magical adventure about a girl chasing an interdimensional cat that is opening portals to release monsters. Luckily, the girl is aided by a guy who got turned into a chair. When it’s leaning a bit too heavily into Miyazaki territory, that’s when it falters. Because that’s when we can see how it’s not a Miyazaki film. There are enough emotional turns and dazzling setpieces to keep it interesting, but it’s not one I could remember much of the following day.
Whether you found the infamous “Manos” the Hands of Fate (1966) through Quentin Tarantino or Mystery Science Theatre 3000, it’s one for the books. It’s a bad nightmare of a Z-grade movie, and yet it is so perfectly amateurish and odd that there’s something almost captivating about it. Oddest thing about it? I could actually see the bones of the story working in the hands of another filmmaker, but then maybe the flaws are what make it function in the unique cultural light in which it currently exists.
Frank Tashlin was a Looney Tunes director who turned to live-action. He worked with Jerry Lewis a fair amount, but I don’t care for Jerry Lewis much. Tony Randall, however, I think is an underrated comic genius, and he stars with in Tashlin’s Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957). Jayne Mansfield also stars as an irritating Marilyn Monroe-esque ditz in this zany, surreal comedy about an ad exec. The jokes are very cartoony, giving the film a sheen of wacky surrealism. In many ways, pretty ahead of its time. Randall has a fourth-wall-breaking acting style that sometimes feels like he’s always reassuring the audience that he understands he is in a movie (kinda like later Cary Grant a bit, but sillier).
René Clément’s Purple Noon (1960) is a sexy French flick about Tom Ripley, a deceptive character created by American novelist Patricia Highsmith. Tom Ripley (Alain Delon) is an elusive foreigner who befriends Phillippe Greenleaf (Maurice Ronet) in Italy. He starts to become interested in pretending to be Greenleaf. He even entangles himself with his fiancée (Marie Laforêt). Murder and deceit follow. Alain Delon plays Ripley shirtless, tan, and blue-eyed. And that’s the biggest thing going for this movie. I like the locations, but I like to feel a little closer to the characters, understand their motivations, and know where I am in the story.
You wanna see something punk af? Go watch Gakuryū Ishii’s Burst City (1982). Hard to pinpoint a plot really. It’s more of a vibe. A world. An ethos. Truly, I have never seen a movie like this. The filming is frantic and aggressive. Cars and guitars. It’s unique and special, and I don’t mind not really understanding it.
Finally saw Jordan Peele’s divisive Nope (2022). I put this below Get Out, but above Us. That’s who I am. I liked the look of it and a lot of the clever themes and breezy vibe. It’s not scary, but it has disturbing enough things in it to classify it as horror.
SPOILER: I loved the design and the concept of the alien. I love that it seemingly has no intentions. It is merely an organism with predictable behavioral patterns that need to be learned, but can never be controlled. The theme is reiterated nicely with the horse trainers and with the sitcom chimp. The weirder turns are ultimately what won me over.
Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda team up to stick it to their sex pest boss (Dabney Coleman) at their patriarchal office. It’s Nine to Five (1980), guys! It’s breezy and fun, and Dolly Parton sings the theme song.
Larry Cohen and William Lustig return to the grimy world of undead, unkillable police officers, and Maniac Cop 2 (1990) is an upgrade on Maniac Cop. It’s got more Maniac Cop (Robert Z’Dar) action, more crazy kills, and a wild twist halfway through where Maniac Cop inexplicably teams up with a prostitute killer who lives in the sewer. The duo form a bond not wholly dissimilar from that of E.T. and Elliott. These movies know what they are, so they do get graded on a curve.
Ti West’s prequel to X (which I have not seen), is a darkly funny melodrama and character study about a misunderstood girl with a problem. Mia Goth plays Pearl (2022), a lanky, naive hayseed with dreams of getting off the farm and being a star. Goth’s performance is iconic, and absolutely sells the zany horror while also keeping her a complete and compelling character. The retro film style and saturated color add an extra oomph of surreal whimsy rendering the brutality that much more of a blindside.
I had seen several of Jean Painlevé’s early documentary shorts before, and they are hypnotic and wondrous. The Sounds of Science (2002) combines several of his aquatic shorts and sets them to an original score by Yo La Tengo. As spellbinding as these documentaries are, I can’t get over how mind-blowing these must have been when they were first released.
Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid (2023) is a three hour descent into deep anxiety horror. After Hereditary and Midsommar, Aster appears to be getting comfortable becoming increasingly surreal and surprisingly funny. Joaquin Phoenix is Beau, and the film is the subjective prison of his own perceptions. It is one wild, weird, and very tough sell, but I enjoyed it and it might be one of the funnier movies I’ve seen in recent years. Co-starring Nathan Lane, Parker Posey, Pattie Lupone, Amy Ryan, Richard Kind, Stephen McKinley, and Armen Nahapetian.
I’ve been revisiting David Lynch films. I always liked him, even when I didn’t fully understand him. Mulholland Drive (2001) is a surreal neo-noir and satire on Hollywood. It’s like if Under the Silver Lake had dialed up the dream logic to eleven. Why bother explaining the intricate mental mysteries of the plot, when I could just tell you to see it for yourself?
I like Wim Wenders, even though his films can be very long and very slow. The American Friend (1977) is the second Tom Ripley movie on this list, and we liked it a good deal more than Purple Noon. Bruno Ganz plays a terminally German man who gets roped into being a hitman. Dennis Hopper is Tom Ripley, a weird outsider who seemingly befriends him. Like all Wenders films, this one looks absolutely great and is a whole vibe.
David Lynch again. Also Dennis Hopper again. Blue Velvet (1986) is another neo-noir that, like Twin Peaks, explores the seedy underbelly of Anytown, USA. Just because a place seems quaint doesn’t mean it ain’t full of insects beneath the surface. Kyle MacLachlan plays a guy returning to his hometown and decides to start sleuthing while romantically pursuing the police chief’s daughter (Laura Dern). Dennis Hopper is the unpredictably depraved, amyl nitrite-huffing maniac, Frank Booth. He is genuinely a scary character. Nightclub singer, Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), is his tormented prey. This sweet little town is a nasty if you poke through the cracks. Unlike the other Lynch movies on this list, it’s a fairly linear story that won’t break your brain, so if you’ve never seen one of his films, this might be a good place to start. Also features Dean Stockwell, Brad Dourif, Jack Nance, Priscilla Pointer, and Frances Bay.
More Lynch! I didn’t like Lost Highway (1997) when I saw it in college. Didn’t get it. Upon rewatching it now, I think it might be my favorite David Lynch movie. It’s another dark neo-noir thriller that delves into identity, insecurity, memory, and the depths our minds will go to protect us from ourselves. Or something. It’s all so dreamy and weird. Legitimately hilarious at turns. Utterly terrifying at others. Totally enigmatic for the whole ride. It’s dream logic, baby! But that doesn’t mean it can’t be unraveled. Frequent musical collaborator, Angelo Badalamenti, is doing more great work. Starring Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty, Robert Loggia, Natasha Gregson, and Robert Blake.
Lee Chang-dong adapts Haruki Murakami in Burning (2018), a Korean neo-noir (five neo-noirs in a row? We get it! Watch other things) about a Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in), a shy guy who winds up in a strange love triangle with an old childhood friend (Jeon Jong-seo) and mysterious guy name Ben (Steven Yeun). Burning is a slowburn, but it does burn. I won’t be giving more away, but it is a brilliant movie.
Now this is why we watch movies. Switchblade Sisters (1975), aka The Jezebels, Playgirl Gang, Maggie’s Stiletto Sisters, and The Warriors II: Las Navajeras, directed by Jack Hill, was everything I wanted it to be and more. It’s kind of an exploitation flick about gang and bad girls behaving badly, but the performances (Robbie Lee, Joanne Nail, Monica Gail, Don Stark, Marlene Clark, Asher Brauner, Kate Murtagh) are all delivering and the plot is solid. It may be a bit of a ham sandwich, but it’s held together with nails. The whole time while watching it, I kept thinking that the script seemed almost too good for how amateurish the production seemed the be. What could account for such a tightly plotted exploitation movie about bad girls? Turns out, it was ripped from Shakespeare’s Othello. Kind of like how 1979’s The Warriors was based on the Xenophon’s ancient Greek play Anabasis. It just goes to show, if you want to tell a timeless story, look to the past. Like a lot of things, it won’t be for everybody, but if the nasty politics of a violent girl gang intrigue you, check this one out.
This Won't Be For Everyone 