"How ya doin', all right? Yeah? Okay, we'll soon fix that." - Lemmy from Motorhead.
That show-opener, and the fact that the Marshall stack behind him was labeled "Murder One," is why Lemmy will always be cooler than you or I. He's also funnier than you or I. And more of an icon than you or I, can outdrink you or I, has slept with more women than you or I, and has a bigger dick than you.
Anyway, that has nothing to with anything, because, as usual, I'm gonna dump more movie reviews on ya, including (but not limited to) a lot of movies that have to do with THE DEVIL, who is a real guy who's interested in eating your tasty soul, so b'lieve that shit, no matter what logic and smart people say.
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Blood on Satan's Claw (C, 1971) aka Satan's Skin, The Devil's Skin. The bones of a "fiend" are unearthed by a plowman in rural 17th century England, and soon the village is beset by diabolical maladies. One girl goes insane when her hands turn into hideous claws, and anyone scratched by them soon sickens and dies. Her boyfriend soon hacks his own hand off in the middle of a nightmare, and the local officials figure out that they're under a plague of witchcraft. The town's teens become promiscuous and start playing sinister games, forming a cult (led by a hottie named Angel Blake) that kills other kids. Some of them develop furry patches on their skin, which have to be cut off. Some demon is apparently trying to rise by putting itself together piece by piece... Effectively atmospheric and relentlessly morbid British horror has been woefully hard to see for years; Elvira's Movie Macabre showed it and finally it's been showing up on Turner Classic Movies, but a stateside DVD release really ought to be some company's top priority, because this is one of the greats, inventive and serious horror with no compromises.
Whole movie here (even watching it online's better'n nothin'):
Burning, The (C, 1981) aka Cropsy. A prank on a mean camp counselor named Cropsy goes wrong, leaving him completely covered with very severe burns. After five years in the hospital and countless failed skin grafts, Cropsy is released, monstrously deformed and crazy with vengeance and hate. After pausing long enough to murder a hooker, he makes a beeline back to the summer camp, determined to take it out on some campers with a pair of gardening shears. He skulks around and waits until the campers go on a canoe trip, and then he steals their canoes, strands them, stalks them, and kills them. There are a few good gore effects by Tom Savini, but the speed of the editing isn't kind to them, keeping you from getting a really good look. At the time this was a rather mediocre slasher, but time has been kind to the genre and it looks better nowdays. The massacre on the raft, where five killings take place in the space of about 30 seconds, is a standout scene in the slasher flick genre.
Raft massacre:
Devils Daughter, The (C, 1973) Made-for-TV horror inspired by Rosemary's Baby. The devil kills an old woman as payment for a deal made long ago, where she promised her daughter to the devil. At her mother's funeral, the unwittingly-sworn-to-Satan daughter, Diane, meets Shelley Winters, supposedly and old friend of her mom's. Shelley insists that Diane move into her house, with mute butler Jonathan Frid and some creepily-friendly neighbor ladies next door. Diane soon finds that she's the "princess of darkness" and is destined to marry Baal, the Demon of Endor. Diane thinks this is nonsense but weird things happen; a friend dies, and a little boy almost wanders into traffic. Then Diane meets a man she wants to marry, and unless you're a dullard of some sort, you can spot the gimmick here. Has plenty of good ol' 70's TV-movie charm, but isn't one of the scarier examples. There's a lotta-star cast, though, including Joseph Cotten, Abe Vigoda, Diane Ladd, Robert Foxworth, and some familiar-faces-you-can't-put-names-to.
Exorcist II: The Heretic (C, 1977) This sequel by John Boorman is notoriously bad and disliked, but once you get over the disappointment on your first viewing (part of the problem is that it's nothing like the first film, which guarantees a letdown), it's actually pretty interesting. I didn't say good. I remember the first time I saw it (on network TV), all I got out of it is that Linda Blair is pretty cute, but watching it now there's a little more to it... albeit ridiculous and full of quasi-mystical spiritual mumbo jumbo. Blair, now 18, seems fully recovered from being possessed by a demon and is mainly still seeing a psychiatrist (Louise Fletcher, aka Nurse Rached) to pacify her mom. Father Lamont, a priest suffering a crisis of faith (Richard Burton, proving that he's a truly terrible actor) comes around investigating the death of Blair's exorcist, Father Merrin. Through the use of a mind-reading machine, Burton and Blair get in synch, and Burton travels to Africa to try to confront Pazuzu, the demon who had possessed Blair. There are lots of good visuals (mostly of locust swarms) and a spooky (and sometimes badass) Ennio Morricone score. Ned Beatty has a small part (Boorman surely owed him something after what he did to him in Deliverance) and at one point James Earl Joes shows up, and he's possibly the only human on the planet who has enough dignity to maintain a career after appearing in that grasshopper costume. Boorman took the film back and tried recutting it to fix it after test audiences hee-hawed it, but it's just not fixable; too much goofy psychoanalytical claptrap and superficial spiritual hogwash cripples it. Max Von Sydow appears in flashbacks that fit about as well as Bruce Lee inserts in a Brucesploitation film. It ends up not making a lot of sense, and Burton's bad acting and everyone's attempts to play this all straight-faced ends up turning an utterly humorless film into an unintentional comedy... but you can tell they were trying, and no movie is truly bad in my book unless it's boring. And this stays pretty captivating. The final confrontation is pretty silly, though, and Burton comes across as a deranged moron who'd probably be spending all his time calling The Psychic Friends Network if the church hadn't given him a mission. And Linda Blair's been in some really bad movies, but I don't think I've ever felt as embarrassed for her as I did watching her spin an imaginary bull-roarer over her head. Very easy to bag on, but worth watching.
Tell me the music in this trailer isn't the most badass stuff you've ever heard:
Iron Rose, The (C, 1973) aka La Rose de Fer, Rose of Iron. I got interested in this artsy Jean Rollin film after seeing it show up on several "creepiest movie ever" lists, so when it finally came out on DVD I jumped on it. Turns out it's not really all that creepy (it's a little too pretty and pretentious), but it is interesting... which is still a pretty big achievement for a film in which nothing really happens. A girl and a guy meet and decide that a large old cemetery would be a romantic place for a walk. They wander around and make out in an underground crypt as a few strange people (including a clown and a guy dressed as a vampire) wander around. When night falls the boy and girl can't find their way out of the overgrown cemetery, and they wander around all night, finding only more and more graves. They slowly go insane, the growing more desperate and the girl getting a little too comfortable with being among the dead. Even though it's uneventful, the movie is so well made that it holds your attention. It's an incredible-looking cemetery and the cinematography capturing it is top notch. It's believable that someone could get lost - and go crazy - there. So, it's a slight disappointment if you expect something uniquely chilling, but it's a very well-made film with a decent amount of spooky weirdness. Don't look for any kind of adrenalin-fueled thrill ride, though.
Magdalena, Possessed By The Devil (C, 1976) aka Beyond The Darkness, Magdalena Vom Teufel Besessen, Devil's Female. A trashy hooker finds an old man crucified to a city gate. The police investigate the killing and discover the victim had a granddaughter named Magdalena, living at a boarding school in Munich. Magdalena is such a goody-goody that her friends scornfully call her "the vestial virgin" behind her back... but after her grandpa is murdered she starts hearing buzzing fly noises and acting strange. She has convulsions and froths, makes dogs growl, hallucinates, makes furniture fly around, says obscene things, tears Bibles in half, and cock-teases every guy in the general vicinity, usually by shedding all over her clothes and shaking her pelvis around like she's working an invisible hula hoop. If any guy gets anywhere, she screams rape. There's not much in the way of special effects, but they compensate by having lots and lots of nudity (and, since the actress appears to have breast implants, I guess that still counts as special effects). At one point a snake does come out of her mouth, but that's about as close as you get to an effects budget; pea soup costs money, but you can get titties for free! The dubbing is pretty bad and some of the dialogue is awkward ("Did she tear off her straightjacket?" "No, she ripped it open!") but you do get terms like "nunfucker," which is pretty cool and would make a great band name. More unintentionally funny than scary, but all 70's Exorcist rip-offs are trash-movie gold and must be treasured. This is one of the most obscure ones, now available on DVD doubled with Abby. The DVD starts with Japanese subtitles that soon disappear.
Satan's Black Wedding (C, 1975) Very low-budget horror (it looks shot on 8mm) in which a young actor named Mark goes from L.A. to a creepy small town to investigate his sister's supposed suicide. He discovers that she'd been working on a manuscript about a Satanic vampire cult that had been in the area a hundred years previously... but the cult is still operating and her studies had made her part of it A vampire priest who looks a little like Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath has turned his sister into a vampire, and she and her new friends are busily attacking others. Mark and one of his sister's friends investigate, have a love scene, and do a lot of "I think I saw something" stuff until Mark is supposed to marry his vampiric sister so they can bear Satan's child. This movie tries really hard to build a morbid atmosphere, and it succeeds to a certain extent despite its silly-looking Wal-Mart-Halloween-sale fangs and cardboard sets. The vampire attacks are also nice and excessively bloody (it was directed by the guy who did Criminally Insane, and whatever else you can fault him for, he was generous with the red stuff), but the movie is undone by wooden acting, too little story (which really starts falling apart in the second half, becoming nonsensical), unintentional humor, and turgid pacing. Still, it only runs an hour, and may be worth checking out just for the atmosphere.
Trip With The Teacher (C, 1974) aka Deadly Field Trip. A busload of college girls head out on a camping trip with their female teacher, but they have bad luck. Their bus breaks down and they get "help"
from a trio of bikers. One of the bikers is a nice enough guy who hooked up with the other two while giving them some roadside assistance, but the other two are ex-cons, one of whom is a complete psychopath. He's a David Hess type who does a lot of inappropriate snickering and wears bug-eyed sunglasses that - given his big nose and weak chin - really don't do him any favors. The bikers take the girls out in the boonies and hold them hostage The crazy one commits rape, stares sullenly, throws tantrums, and rolls around holding his head when the craziness gets to be too much for him. Meanwhile his brother (who looks like just about anybody in Foghat) chases the runaway good-guy biker across the desert. Then it's back to more terrorizing. Somehow it all stays a lot milder than anything in Last House On The Left, even though our main psycho does put on an impressive, all-stops-pulled-out performance. it's still fairly nasty, though, and qualifies as an obscure sleaze classic.
2.11.2011
I'll Be Your Destroyer, Your World's Great Annoyer
Here's the Naked Raygun song that'll justify me using that cool quote as a title, because it won't really apply to anything else in the post but I still wanted to use it.
And, before I get down to business, I'd like to plug another blog that's been giving me a lot of good reads this week. It's Wrath James White's blog. He writes some truly depraved, extremely graphic horror fiction, and I like that stuff, but I like it even better when it has a point to it, which his does. He also does some really intelligent blog posts (living in the deep south, I'm always happy to find another atheist), so you should check them out.
(He also seems like a cool, funny guy - here's a YouTube interview some guys did with him - and there are more out there you can look up)
Now... movie reviews!
===================================
Amok Train (C, 1991) aka Beyond the Door III, Dark Train, The Train, Death Train, Winds of Evil. As the Italian horror boom was drying up, a few cheap, last-gasp movies trickled out, and this one was one of the last. It was marketed as a sequel to Beyond the Door, possibly because producer Ovidio G. Assonitis was the director of that classic (and I don't care what anyone says, Beyond the Door is a fucking classic). In reality, though, it's completely unrelated, other than having a demonic storyline. Professor Bo Svenson (sporting a Lee Press-on goatee) takes a group of college students to Yugoslavia to watch a religious ritual that's performed only every 100 years. One of the girls, Beverly, has a birthmark shaped like a sacred pagan symbol on her stomach, and all the creepy people they meet seem very, very interested in her. Almost as soon as they arrive, one of them dies in a fire... which only seems significant to the kids because it almost makes them miss their train. Which would have made them lucky, because the train is possessed by the devil! We know this because the train talks to Beverly and tells her its master is Lucifer. To prove it it starts killing off its crew and passengers. The students team up with a tough female thief to try to survive, but ridiculous (but gory) supernatural events keep happening. A guy vomits confetti as his girlfriend tears her own face off. At one point the train goes off its rails and runs through a swamp, just to kill a couple on a boat! The special effects are decent but pretty silly anyway, given the idiocy they're surrounded by; the movie is a marvel of misuse. For instance, Bo Svenson is the only professional actor in the cast, and he's given moronic lines about hot soup ("I must have... HOT SOUP. It is very nice with hot soup. Whould you like some... HOT SOUP? I think you WILL like some... HOT SOUP!") It's utterly brain-dead, but it does keep moving and at least is entertaining stupidity. You can see why Italian horror died off, though...
Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (C, 1973) aka House of Psychotic Women, Los Ojos Azules de la Muneca Rota, The House of Doom. Spanish take on the giallo genre has Paul Naschy as a migrant worker traveling through France, who takes on a job looking after a farm for three sisters. One is in a wheelchair, one has a plastic hand, and the third is a malevolent slut. Naschy has a troubling past in which he choked a girl to death... but is he behind the murders that start soon after he comes to town? Whoever is doing the killings targets blue-eyed girls, because he or she likes to gouge their eyes out and put them in water. It's all accompanied by an inappropriately-peppy music score that'd fit pushing a shopping cart around an A&P more than it does a bloody horror-mystery. Naschy tries to seduce every woman who gets within a hundred yards of him and gets in a knife fight with the guy who previously held his job. The song "Frere Jacques" is also played a lot. The film's pretty good, although the style is way too much the typical Naschy to ever be mistaken for a real giallo. Some of the gore is mild, but a few bits are pretty icky, with the real slaughtering of a pig being the worst of it. The solution to the whole thing manages to be hilarious and revolting, simultaneously.
Dream No Evil (C, 1970) aka Now I Lay Me Down To Die, The Faith Healer. Bizarre, incoherent horror about an unbalanced woman who grew up in an orphanage and is obsessed with searching for her father. She has a job with a traveling revival preacher, which involves her diving off a high ladder onto a mattress. She also has a boyfriend who she hopes to marry. She goes looking for her dad in a retirement home and finds out he died recently and is on a slab at the mortuary waiting to be embalmed, but he suddenly comes back to life and kills the mortician. She takes her father home and dances an embarrassing Irish jig while he plays a squeeze box, then she makes out with the preacher and her father kills him, too. Even though she's starting to think her dad may be some schizophrenic imaginary friend, she hides the body at the garbage dump and her father's murder spree continues. One guy hilariously responds to an axe attack by frantically rolling up the car windows. There are some dull stretches and it's all pretty technically crude (an awkwardly-placed narrator pops up every now and then to clarify the messy narrative), but it does have a weird cumulative effect that makes it worth sticking out. Part of the "Psychotronica" DVD box set. Unique.
Mortuary (C, 2006) aka Six Feet Under. The back of the box made this one sound really really good. The back of the box LIED TO ME! A widow and her two kids buy the old Fowler Brothers funeral home with the intention of fixing it up and reopening it. It needs more than a little fixing up, though; the septic system's clogged and left a putrid lake of god-only-knows in the front yard, and veins of slimy black fungus grow all over the place. Basically it's in grimy enough shape that ominous music plays whenever anyone goes anywhere in the house. The town is scuzzy and full of hoodlum kids who all believe the funeral home is haunted by a deformed monster named Bobby Fowler. Some of them get infected by the fungus and puke black gunk. It also infects dead bodies and makes them walk and also puke on people, who then become crazy. And about then the movie loses all coherency, because it doesn't even know what it's supposed to be about anymore, or what it's trying to scare us with: icky fungus, walking dead, crazed townspeople, the legendary Bobby Fowler, or what. Director Tobe Hooper reinforces the idea that his good days as a horror director are long behind him with a bunch of tired chase scenes, menace-free scare scenes, and a great deal of visual info lost to bad lighting. It's not boring and it's got a few interesting moments, but it's so stupid an ineffective as a horror movie that you wonder if they aren't going for comedy instead (especially during the amazingly awful "bungled embalming" scene.
Psycho Lover, The (C, 1970) aka The Loving Touch, The Lovely Touch. This one's pretty hard to sit through. I had to make dozens of attempts over the years before managing to stay awake enough to make it. A rapist in a stocking mask goes around strangling women. A sleazy psychiatrist figures out the maniac is one of his patients, a guy named Marco. Marco doesn't know he's actually committing the rapes and murders, though; he thinks he's just having dreams about them. The psychiatrist, meanwhile, is having an affair with a girl and trying to get his wife to give him a divorce, but she won't. After his girlfriend tells him about seeing The Manchurian Candidate on the late movie, the psychiatrist decides to program Marco into killing his wife for him. He incites nightmares in Marco of girls with painted faces and includes hypnotic suggestions telling him to kill. The only problem is that the wife gets wind of the scheme.... Director Robert Vincent O'Neil directed the exploitation classic Angel, which is not a dull film, and also Blood Mania, which is on the dull side, but this one somehow manages to reach a new level of stultifying. I'm not sure how, since the movie's got a decent enough plot and lots of sleazy assaults going on, yet there's still just some very off-putting lifelessness to the way it plays out that makes it very hard to stay interested in. Maybe the psychiatrist is a little too effective at hypnosis and is putting the audience into a deep sleep. By all rights it should be disturbing, but instead it's video Valium, with an utterly predictable "twist" ending.
Scream Baby Scream (C, 1969) aka Nightmare House. Some hippiefied art students get stalked by their art professor, who likes to kidnap girls to pose for his morbid, grotesque paintings. The problem is, even though he's a surrealist, he likes to paint them from life, so he does radical plastic surgery on his models, turning them into crazy Picasso-esque monstrosities. It's all because he has some weird degenerative disease, the treatments of which left him looking ghoulish (partially because he was crazy enough to fool around with his doctor's wife, which is one of the world's all-time worst ideas). Meanwhile the art students are arguing a lot and having one of the most half-hearted acid trips ever filmed. When one of the girls goes missing, her pissy boyfriend goes looking for her and finds the professor's weird little hell. No budget and artless horror obscurity is mostly tedious, but it does have its moments. The crazy artist would have made a good Batman villain.
Scream Pretty Peggy (C, 1973) One of those 75-minute made-for-TV horror movies that came out in the 70's, this one directed by Gordon Hessler, who was behind some of AIP's Poe films, and with a guest spot for Bette Davis. Not-terribly-pretty but darn spunky Peggy is an art student who takes a part-time job housekeeping for Bette and her son at their big house on the outskirts of town. Peggy soon learns that the previous girl who worked there is now a missing person, and there's someone mysterious living in a room over the garage: her boss's completely insane sister, supposedly. Peggy proves too curious about the crazy sister and her boss's sculptures, and doesn't heed Bette's repeated warnings that she should leave the house. There's some suspense but you'll figure out what's going on way before Peggy does, mainly because this is a mashup of two much-better-known horror classics... but if I told you which two that'd be really giving everything away. Needs a DVD resurrection even though it's not one of the major classics among TV horror, due to its derivativeness.
Whole movie starting here:
For more destroying and annoying, you can follow my Twitter account where I say things that will probably embarrass me in a few years and will ensure I never work in the senate.
And, before I get down to business, I'd like to plug another blog that's been giving me a lot of good reads this week. It's Wrath James White's blog. He writes some truly depraved, extremely graphic horror fiction, and I like that stuff, but I like it even better when it has a point to it, which his does. He also does some really intelligent blog posts (living in the deep south, I'm always happy to find another atheist), so you should check them out.
(He also seems like a cool, funny guy - here's a YouTube interview some guys did with him - and there are more out there you can look up)
Now... movie reviews!
===================================
Amok Train (C, 1991) aka Beyond the Door III, Dark Train, The Train, Death Train, Winds of Evil. As the Italian horror boom was drying up, a few cheap, last-gasp movies trickled out, and this one was one of the last. It was marketed as a sequel to Beyond the Door, possibly because producer Ovidio G. Assonitis was the director of that classic (and I don't care what anyone says, Beyond the Door is a fucking classic). In reality, though, it's completely unrelated, other than having a demonic storyline. Professor Bo Svenson (sporting a Lee Press-on goatee) takes a group of college students to Yugoslavia to watch a religious ritual that's performed only every 100 years. One of the girls, Beverly, has a birthmark shaped like a sacred pagan symbol on her stomach, and all the creepy people they meet seem very, very interested in her. Almost as soon as they arrive, one of them dies in a fire... which only seems significant to the kids because it almost makes them miss their train. Which would have made them lucky, because the train is possessed by the devil! We know this because the train talks to Beverly and tells her its master is Lucifer. To prove it it starts killing off its crew and passengers. The students team up with a tough female thief to try to survive, but ridiculous (but gory) supernatural events keep happening. A guy vomits confetti as his girlfriend tears her own face off. At one point the train goes off its rails and runs through a swamp, just to kill a couple on a boat! The special effects are decent but pretty silly anyway, given the idiocy they're surrounded by; the movie is a marvel of misuse. For instance, Bo Svenson is the only professional actor in the cast, and he's given moronic lines about hot soup ("I must have... HOT SOUP. It is very nice with hot soup. Whould you like some... HOT SOUP? I think you WILL like some... HOT SOUP!") It's utterly brain-dead, but it does keep moving and at least is entertaining stupidity. You can see why Italian horror died off, though...
Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (C, 1973) aka House of Psychotic Women, Los Ojos Azules de la Muneca Rota, The House of Doom. Spanish take on the giallo genre has Paul Naschy as a migrant worker traveling through France, who takes on a job looking after a farm for three sisters. One is in a wheelchair, one has a plastic hand, and the third is a malevolent slut. Naschy has a troubling past in which he choked a girl to death... but is he behind the murders that start soon after he comes to town? Whoever is doing the killings targets blue-eyed girls, because he or she likes to gouge their eyes out and put them in water. It's all accompanied by an inappropriately-peppy music score that'd fit pushing a shopping cart around an A&P more than it does a bloody horror-mystery. Naschy tries to seduce every woman who gets within a hundred yards of him and gets in a knife fight with the guy who previously held his job. The song "Frere Jacques" is also played a lot. The film's pretty good, although the style is way too much the typical Naschy to ever be mistaken for a real giallo. Some of the gore is mild, but a few bits are pretty icky, with the real slaughtering of a pig being the worst of it. The solution to the whole thing manages to be hilarious and revolting, simultaneously.
Dream No Evil (C, 1970) aka Now I Lay Me Down To Die, The Faith Healer. Bizarre, incoherent horror about an unbalanced woman who grew up in an orphanage and is obsessed with searching for her father. She has a job with a traveling revival preacher, which involves her diving off a high ladder onto a mattress. She also has a boyfriend who she hopes to marry. She goes looking for her dad in a retirement home and finds out he died recently and is on a slab at the mortuary waiting to be embalmed, but he suddenly comes back to life and kills the mortician. She takes her father home and dances an embarrassing Irish jig while he plays a squeeze box, then she makes out with the preacher and her father kills him, too. Even though she's starting to think her dad may be some schizophrenic imaginary friend, she hides the body at the garbage dump and her father's murder spree continues. One guy hilariously responds to an axe attack by frantically rolling up the car windows. There are some dull stretches and it's all pretty technically crude (an awkwardly-placed narrator pops up every now and then to clarify the messy narrative), but it does have a weird cumulative effect that makes it worth sticking out. Part of the "Psychotronica" DVD box set. Unique.
Mortuary (C, 2006) aka Six Feet Under. The back of the box made this one sound really really good. The back of the box LIED TO ME! A widow and her two kids buy the old Fowler Brothers funeral home with the intention of fixing it up and reopening it. It needs more than a little fixing up, though; the septic system's clogged and left a putrid lake of god-only-knows in the front yard, and veins of slimy black fungus grow all over the place. Basically it's in grimy enough shape that ominous music plays whenever anyone goes anywhere in the house. The town is scuzzy and full of hoodlum kids who all believe the funeral home is haunted by a deformed monster named Bobby Fowler. Some of them get infected by the fungus and puke black gunk. It also infects dead bodies and makes them walk and also puke on people, who then become crazy. And about then the movie loses all coherency, because it doesn't even know what it's supposed to be about anymore, or what it's trying to scare us with: icky fungus, walking dead, crazed townspeople, the legendary Bobby Fowler, or what. Director Tobe Hooper reinforces the idea that his good days as a horror director are long behind him with a bunch of tired chase scenes, menace-free scare scenes, and a great deal of visual info lost to bad lighting. It's not boring and it's got a few interesting moments, but it's so stupid an ineffective as a horror movie that you wonder if they aren't going for comedy instead (especially during the amazingly awful "bungled embalming" scene.
Psycho Lover, The (C, 1970) aka The Loving Touch, The Lovely Touch. This one's pretty hard to sit through. I had to make dozens of attempts over the years before managing to stay awake enough to make it. A rapist in a stocking mask goes around strangling women. A sleazy psychiatrist figures out the maniac is one of his patients, a guy named Marco. Marco doesn't know he's actually committing the rapes and murders, though; he thinks he's just having dreams about them. The psychiatrist, meanwhile, is having an affair with a girl and trying to get his wife to give him a divorce, but she won't. After his girlfriend tells him about seeing The Manchurian Candidate on the late movie, the psychiatrist decides to program Marco into killing his wife for him. He incites nightmares in Marco of girls with painted faces and includes hypnotic suggestions telling him to kill. The only problem is that the wife gets wind of the scheme.... Director Robert Vincent O'Neil directed the exploitation classic Angel, which is not a dull film, and also Blood Mania, which is on the dull side, but this one somehow manages to reach a new level of stultifying. I'm not sure how, since the movie's got a decent enough plot and lots of sleazy assaults going on, yet there's still just some very off-putting lifelessness to the way it plays out that makes it very hard to stay interested in. Maybe the psychiatrist is a little too effective at hypnosis and is putting the audience into a deep sleep. By all rights it should be disturbing, but instead it's video Valium, with an utterly predictable "twist" ending.
Scream Baby Scream (C, 1969) aka Nightmare House. Some hippiefied art students get stalked by their art professor, who likes to kidnap girls to pose for his morbid, grotesque paintings. The problem is, even though he's a surrealist, he likes to paint them from life, so he does radical plastic surgery on his models, turning them into crazy Picasso-esque monstrosities. It's all because he has some weird degenerative disease, the treatments of which left him looking ghoulish (partially because he was crazy enough to fool around with his doctor's wife, which is one of the world's all-time worst ideas). Meanwhile the art students are arguing a lot and having one of the most half-hearted acid trips ever filmed. When one of the girls goes missing, her pissy boyfriend goes looking for her and finds the professor's weird little hell. No budget and artless horror obscurity is mostly tedious, but it does have its moments. The crazy artist would have made a good Batman villain.
Scream Pretty Peggy (C, 1973) One of those 75-minute made-for-TV horror movies that came out in the 70's, this one directed by Gordon Hessler, who was behind some of AIP's Poe films, and with a guest spot for Bette Davis. Not-terribly-pretty but darn spunky Peggy is an art student who takes a part-time job housekeeping for Bette and her son at their big house on the outskirts of town. Peggy soon learns that the previous girl who worked there is now a missing person, and there's someone mysterious living in a room over the garage: her boss's completely insane sister, supposedly. Peggy proves too curious about the crazy sister and her boss's sculptures, and doesn't heed Bette's repeated warnings that she should leave the house. There's some suspense but you'll figure out what's going on way before Peggy does, mainly because this is a mashup of two much-better-known horror classics... but if I told you which two that'd be really giving everything away. Needs a DVD resurrection even though it's not one of the major classics among TV horror, due to its derivativeness.
Whole movie starting here:
For more destroying and annoying, you can follow my Twitter account where I say things that will probably embarrass me in a few years and will ensure I never work in the senate.
2.04.2011
Not past the expiration date
More movie reviews, all for films of recent vintage, so you weird people who don't like older movies, yee-ha.
==============
American, The (C, 2010) George Clooney is a burnt-out operative for some secret agency, and he's sent to an Italian village to construct a custom-spec rifle, which will be used in an assassination. He's a lonely guy who's haunted by the results of some of his previous actions, and is seeking some kind of redemption. His life is all business; he tries not to make friends, and his relationships are all business transactions with whores. But as he puts the weapon and its supressor (handled realistically) together, he is befriended by a local priest, and a prostitute likes him and starts seeing him off the books. Their romance leads him even further toward wanting to give up the life he's been leading... but in his business he may not be allowed to quit. Great-looking film that takes its time and aims to be much more than just an espionage/action film; it's short on action but Clooney maintains the intensity through his acting, and there's always a sense that something could start going off at any time. The film reminds me a bit of The Conversation. Rewarding.
Death Race 2 (C, 2010) aka Death Race: Frankenstein Lives. Dumbed-down straight-to-video prequel to an already-pretty-dumb movie explains how the motorized mayhem got its start. A comparatively-honorable bank robber (he tries to avoid anyone getting hurt) is sentenced to a maximum security prison which -- being a private-sector enterprise and geared toward making a profit -- uses convicts to fight to the death for the cameras in a reality show run by an evil bitch. Seeking higher ratings at the cost of all else, she comes up with the death race, pitting drivers of armed cars against each other. There's not as much auto-action as the first film and it's not even close to being as well done, and the cast isn't nearly as good (except for Danny Trejo, who's always a welcome presence even if they only use him as part of a pit crew), and the filmmakers don't know what's cool -- the sound effects are especially bad, with farty-sounding cars and weak gunfire. But I like the concept enough that even a half-assed handling of it is pretty entertaining, so if you like the first you'll find this worth watching, if inferior. This seems more aimed at pleasing dumb teens, but it's fun if you don't expect too much. Good enough where I'd show up for a third, anyway.
Can't be legal, but the whole thing's online starting here. Someday people are gonna learn that you can't have everything for free, but until that time comes... knock yerself out, I guess.
Drag Me To Hell (C, 2009) After disgracing himself with Spiderman 3, Sam Raimi comes slinking back to the horror genre... but still doesn't quite get it right because he can't let go of his love of the Three Stooges. Essentially taking Stephen King's Thinner and changing a few things, the story involves a Reese Witherspoony bank official whose ambition leads her to treat a repulsive old gypsy woman with less compassion than she might've in a foreclosure deal, and she ends up cursed. The curse dictates that after three days of supernatural torments she'll be dragged down to hell by a lamia, which here - for some reason - is a goat-demon instead of a snake-woman. Our not-terribly-likeable heroine (the movie tries but she still comes across as a shallow nothing) and her boyfriend (who cloned David Schwimmer? And why?) try everything to get rid of the curse or turn it around, but there's not much luck. Raimi was aiming for that PG-where-all-that-teen-money-is sweet spot and that's why this Goosebumps-type story doesn't have a whole lot of violence, but he still throws in as much gross-out as possible in the form of corpses vomiting worms or embalming fluid, out of control bloody noses, or I'd've-happily-lived-without-that close-ups of diseased old ladies coughing up wads of phlegm or taking out their dirty false teeth. Total look-at-my-chewed-up-food stuff. There are a couple of creepy bits (the shadow of the goat-thing) but mostly he goes for the teen-pleasing jump scares; try doing a shot every time that old lady's face is suddenly thrust into the camera and you'll get a symptom known as "Drag Me To Hell elbow," just before your liver falls out your ass. It's not completely terrible for a "comedic horror film, but that's a genre and a concept I despise, so I'm an admittedly harder sell than most. It too often plays like a cartoon (some of the stuff that happens is very slapstick) so it's unsteady on the fence, but it's not boring. But if you didn't guess that "surprise plot twist" at the end, you're pretty gormless.
Expendables, The (C, 2010) Experiment in action movie supremacy brings together most of the genre's headliners and gives them plenty to do. It's simple, but so's a hammer, and what works better for its intended purpose than a hammer? Sylvester Stallone (who has no trouble making you forget how damn old he is, but paid for it in injuries) leads a commando team (consisting of Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, and a couple of UFC guys who aren't bad actors) which - more out of a sense of nobility in trying to save a girl than for money - take on a mission against a South American dictator who's teamed with an American drug lord (Eric Roberts). Roberts has Steve Austin as a sidekick just to add even more beef to the stew. There is a plot, but really only enough to chain together the action scenes, which are always frequent and, eventually, constant. It's totally a BDAM (Big Dumb Action Movie) but it's better than I expected, because it does include some characterization and motivations, rather than just completely coasting the way it could have afforded to, and it's also not played for laughs, which would've screwed it up; there's humor, but it comes from the interplay of the team rather than from the business of shooting and blowing stuff up. Mickey Rourke's also on hand as a former member of the team turned tattoo artist, and there are cameos for Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger just for completeness's sake.
Orphan (C, 2009) Kinda like a Bad Seed twist on The Stepfather. A family with some troubles (the wife became an alcoholic after a miscarriage, the husband has a history of infidelity) decides it would help matters if they adopted another kid. They find Esther, a nine-year-old girl from Russia, who's very smart and artistically-talented, and she seems a little bit odd because of her advanced maturity and the old-fashioned clothes she likes to wear. but she's actually a whole lot odder than that -- she's capable of murder, and an expert manipulator. Soon she's controlling her new little sister Max (who's a deaf-mute; the kid who plays her, Aryanna Engineer, is one hell of an actress for 8 year old, especially in a silent role), waking her new brother up in the middle of the night to inform him that if he ever tells on her she'll "cut off his little hairless prick before he even knows what it's for," pushing mean girls at school off the sliding board, setting her parents against each other, and - oh yeah, hammer-murdering a nun (the brilliant CCH Pounder). The mother soon figures out something's wrong with the new addition to their family, and Esther does not like being figured out, and does some pretty extreme things in response. But being a murderer isn't even Esther's biggest secret. Surprisingly good little horror movie boasts some impressive acting and takes the hard route to its scares -- using plot instead of gore or jump effects.
Town, The (C, 2010) Ben Affleck co-wrote, directed, and stars in this top-notch crime film based on the Charlestown section of Boston, where armed robbery is a profession handed down from generation to generation. Affleck is part of a crew that knocks over banks, armored cars, and even Fenway Park. During one bank robbery they take a female manager hostage and they're worried that she may have picked up information that could implicate them, so to find out how much she knows, Affleck starts a relationship with her. The relationship turns real, though, and since one of his partners has been becoming more violent (which isn't Affleck's scene), Affleck decides he wants out of the life. Some higher ups have too much use for Affleck's skills, though, and they threaten to hurt his new girlfriend if he doesn't do their bidding. But the feds are after her, too, so Affleck has to find a way out of the situation, for her and himself. Very nicely-done, action-packed crime drama. Usually I don't push Blu-Ray because I think it's an overhyped format, but in this case you should probably go for Blu-Ray, since it includes an extended cut of the movie that's about an hour longer.
Now that you've read all of that, go read my Twitter feed and learn about exploding midget tits.
==============
American, The (C, 2010) George Clooney is a burnt-out operative for some secret agency, and he's sent to an Italian village to construct a custom-spec rifle, which will be used in an assassination. He's a lonely guy who's haunted by the results of some of his previous actions, and is seeking some kind of redemption. His life is all business; he tries not to make friends, and his relationships are all business transactions with whores. But as he puts the weapon and its supressor (handled realistically) together, he is befriended by a local priest, and a prostitute likes him and starts seeing him off the books. Their romance leads him even further toward wanting to give up the life he's been leading... but in his business he may not be allowed to quit. Great-looking film that takes its time and aims to be much more than just an espionage/action film; it's short on action but Clooney maintains the intensity through his acting, and there's always a sense that something could start going off at any time. The film reminds me a bit of The Conversation. Rewarding.
Death Race 2 (C, 2010) aka Death Race: Frankenstein Lives. Dumbed-down straight-to-video prequel to an already-pretty-dumb movie explains how the motorized mayhem got its start. A comparatively-honorable bank robber (he tries to avoid anyone getting hurt) is sentenced to a maximum security prison which -- being a private-sector enterprise and geared toward making a profit -- uses convicts to fight to the death for the cameras in a reality show run by an evil bitch. Seeking higher ratings at the cost of all else, she comes up with the death race, pitting drivers of armed cars against each other. There's not as much auto-action as the first film and it's not even close to being as well done, and the cast isn't nearly as good (except for Danny Trejo, who's always a welcome presence even if they only use him as part of a pit crew), and the filmmakers don't know what's cool -- the sound effects are especially bad, with farty-sounding cars and weak gunfire. But I like the concept enough that even a half-assed handling of it is pretty entertaining, so if you like the first you'll find this worth watching, if inferior. This seems more aimed at pleasing dumb teens, but it's fun if you don't expect too much. Good enough where I'd show up for a third, anyway.
Can't be legal, but the whole thing's online starting here. Someday people are gonna learn that you can't have everything for free, but until that time comes... knock yerself out, I guess.
Drag Me To Hell (C, 2009) After disgracing himself with Spiderman 3, Sam Raimi comes slinking back to the horror genre... but still doesn't quite get it right because he can't let go of his love of the Three Stooges. Essentially taking Stephen King's Thinner and changing a few things, the story involves a Reese Witherspoony bank official whose ambition leads her to treat a repulsive old gypsy woman with less compassion than she might've in a foreclosure deal, and she ends up cursed. The curse dictates that after three days of supernatural torments she'll be dragged down to hell by a lamia, which here - for some reason - is a goat-demon instead of a snake-woman. Our not-terribly-likeable heroine (the movie tries but she still comes across as a shallow nothing) and her boyfriend (who cloned David Schwimmer? And why?) try everything to get rid of the curse or turn it around, but there's not much luck. Raimi was aiming for that PG-where-all-that-teen-money-is sweet spot and that's why this Goosebumps-type story doesn't have a whole lot of violence, but he still throws in as much gross-out as possible in the form of corpses vomiting worms or embalming fluid, out of control bloody noses, or I'd've-happily-lived-without-that close-ups of diseased old ladies coughing up wads of phlegm or taking out their dirty false teeth. Total look-at-my-chewed-up-food stuff. There are a couple of creepy bits (the shadow of the goat-thing) but mostly he goes for the teen-pleasing jump scares; try doing a shot every time that old lady's face is suddenly thrust into the camera and you'll get a symptom known as "Drag Me To Hell elbow," just before your liver falls out your ass. It's not completely terrible for a "comedic horror film, but that's a genre and a concept I despise, so I'm an admittedly harder sell than most. It too often plays like a cartoon (some of the stuff that happens is very slapstick) so it's unsteady on the fence, but it's not boring. But if you didn't guess that "surprise plot twist" at the end, you're pretty gormless.
Expendables, The (C, 2010) Experiment in action movie supremacy brings together most of the genre's headliners and gives them plenty to do. It's simple, but so's a hammer, and what works better for its intended purpose than a hammer? Sylvester Stallone (who has no trouble making you forget how damn old he is, but paid for it in injuries) leads a commando team (consisting of Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, and a couple of UFC guys who aren't bad actors) which - more out of a sense of nobility in trying to save a girl than for money - take on a mission against a South American dictator who's teamed with an American drug lord (Eric Roberts). Roberts has Steve Austin as a sidekick just to add even more beef to the stew. There is a plot, but really only enough to chain together the action scenes, which are always frequent and, eventually, constant. It's totally a BDAM (Big Dumb Action Movie) but it's better than I expected, because it does include some characterization and motivations, rather than just completely coasting the way it could have afforded to, and it's also not played for laughs, which would've screwed it up; there's humor, but it comes from the interplay of the team rather than from the business of shooting and blowing stuff up. Mickey Rourke's also on hand as a former member of the team turned tattoo artist, and there are cameos for Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger just for completeness's sake.
Orphan (C, 2009) Kinda like a Bad Seed twist on The Stepfather. A family with some troubles (the wife became an alcoholic after a miscarriage, the husband has a history of infidelity) decides it would help matters if they adopted another kid. They find Esther, a nine-year-old girl from Russia, who's very smart and artistically-talented, and she seems a little bit odd because of her advanced maturity and the old-fashioned clothes she likes to wear. but she's actually a whole lot odder than that -- she's capable of murder, and an expert manipulator. Soon she's controlling her new little sister Max (who's a deaf-mute; the kid who plays her, Aryanna Engineer, is one hell of an actress for 8 year old, especially in a silent role), waking her new brother up in the middle of the night to inform him that if he ever tells on her she'll "cut off his little hairless prick before he even knows what it's for," pushing mean girls at school off the sliding board, setting her parents against each other, and - oh yeah, hammer-murdering a nun (the brilliant CCH Pounder). The mother soon figures out something's wrong with the new addition to their family, and Esther does not like being figured out, and does some pretty extreme things in response. But being a murderer isn't even Esther's biggest secret. Surprisingly good little horror movie boasts some impressive acting and takes the hard route to its scares -- using plot instead of gore or jump effects.
Town, The (C, 2010) Ben Affleck co-wrote, directed, and stars in this top-notch crime film based on the Charlestown section of Boston, where armed robbery is a profession handed down from generation to generation. Affleck is part of a crew that knocks over banks, armored cars, and even Fenway Park. During one bank robbery they take a female manager hostage and they're worried that she may have picked up information that could implicate them, so to find out how much she knows, Affleck starts a relationship with her. The relationship turns real, though, and since one of his partners has been becoming more violent (which isn't Affleck's scene), Affleck decides he wants out of the life. Some higher ups have too much use for Affleck's skills, though, and they threaten to hurt his new girlfriend if he doesn't do their bidding. But the feds are after her, too, so Affleck has to find a way out of the situation, for her and himself. Very nicely-done, action-packed crime drama. Usually I don't push Blu-Ray because I think it's an overhyped format, but in this case you should probably go for Blu-Ray, since it includes an extended cut of the movie that's about an hour longer.
Now that you've read all of that, go read my Twitter feed and learn about exploding midget tits.
1.28.2011
Vomit fetish, anyone?
Since I don't think I could get a full blog post out of telling you that my cat likes asparagus (although that is true and I kid ye not), I guess I'll just give ya some more random movie reviews, without theme.
============
Boxer's Omen, The (C, 1983) aka Mo. Mind-boggling Shaw Brothers craziness full of bizarre special effects. When his brother's neck is broken by bad-sport Thai kickboxer Bolo Yeung, Chen Hung swears revenge and starts seeing mystical symbols and priests. A guy rots away and coughs up a bat puppet, which a black magician and Buddhist priest battle over. The black magician casts over spells using a rotting human head covered with entrails, which leads to spider attacks that kill a monk. The monk's mummified body later tells Chen Hung that their fates are intertwined, and when he decays, Chen Hung will die. Chen vomits a live eel and becomes a monk. He battles the black magician, who eats entrails, sends alligator skulls to attack Chen, and even sends his own decapitated head to try to strangle Chen with his neck veins. Chen wins and resumes his boxing career, but other black magicians gather, resurrect a girl by sewing her inside an alligator and then eating regurgitated banana peels and chicken anuses (no special effects in some of that -- just actors with strong stomachs), and they blind him. He has to face them (even though he cheated and had sex since the last duel), and to do so he has to travel to Nepal to get a sacred Buddhist relic. Then things get so crazy that I'm giving up on trying to describe them; you just have to see it, it's like a fever dream on psilocibin. Not much of a plot, but since it's mostly a vehicle for weird, no-limits-of-imagination special effects, it doesn't need one. Essential, gory cinematic psychosis that nothing can prepare you for. I fell asleep during this once and had the freakiest dream...
Manhunt (C, 1972) aka The Italian Connection, Black Kingpin, Hired to Kill, Hitmen, Manhunt in Milan, Manhunt in the City. The mob in Milan hires a couple of American hitmen (Henry Silva and Woody Strode) to kill a small-time pimp named Luca Cannale. The reasons why aren't completely clear, but it appears to be something about making him the scapegoat for a bunch of dope-money skimming between the Italian mob and its American faction; how that's supposed to work is a mystery, but these mob guys look more brutal than smart. Anyway, the whole city's soon after Luca and his wife and daughter are murdered, and Luca goes from being a silly, oily sugar-pimp to a fear-driven killing machine, beating and shooting dozens of men out of sheer desperation. His main offensive move seems to be the head-butt; not only does he head-butt his would-be assassins, but also crushes a wall phone and shatters the windshield of a speeding car. He also uses the crane at an auto wrecking yard as a murder weapon. Lots of great action scenes and some memorable characters help distinguish this Italian crime/bad-haircut shoot 'em up. It's on the Action Classics 50 movie DVD set, even though the packaging misidentifies it as an old Western.
Whole movie:
Protect Your Daughters (B&W, 1933) aka Reckless Decision, Suspicious Mothers. Pre-code morals expose of overprotective parents and their drunken hard-partying kids. One mom fears for her daughter because she stays out all night and wears raggedy panties. Her best friend Beth seems like a much nicer girl because she's promised her preacher father to not get married until she's twenty-two. Preacher dad rails against "modern young rowdies headed for Perdition" (girls on bicycles with big ol' shorts on) and does fiery sermons against kids who were caught during a raid on a speakeasy, unaware that his good little Beth was one of them. Furthermore, Beth has secretly gotten married to her boyfriend when she was too drunk to remember it. Despite all the debauchery, the parents decide they were wrong and the kids are alright after all! Go figure.
Singapore Sling (B&W, 1990) Unique, bizarre, and (unfortunately for me since I'm determined to attempt it) hard to describe sickie directed by Nikos Nikolaidis. It's either a sleaze film trying to pass itself off as art, or an art film trying to be sleaze, but whatever it is it's at least partially a tribute to the film noir classic Laura, and maybe Pasolini's Salo. A detective who's been shot in the shoulder while trying to track down a girl named Laura ends up in the clutches of the people who may have killed her: a crazy-as-tequila-worms incestuous mother-daughter duo who are into all sorts of extreme sexual perversions. They like to vomit in his face during sex, or tie him to the bed and shock him so he'll convulse while being screwed, pee in his face, and more. It's likely to get worse, because when he showed up they were burying the badly-disemboweled-but-still-alive body of another guy. While they keep him captive they enact weird scenarios, either for his benefit or as part of the games they play with each other. Sometimes they talk to the camera. There are lots of messy eating scenes and some fairly graphic masturbating with handfuls of fruit. The plot is too art-crazy to be very compelling, so the film tries to stay interesting via the visuals (the black and white cinematography is excellent, and each frame is artfully composed). Overall it's pretty pointless, but it's worth watching for the weirdness. All of the twisted goings-on would probably be unbearable under most circumstances, but the tone of the whole film is completely surrealist comedy and can't be taken seriously enough to really offend... well, offend me, anyway -- your mileage may vary. Even all the vomiting came across as more silly than gross. So, even with the subject matter, I wouldn't rate this as one of the ultra-disturbing movies (like Irreversible or the All Night Long or Guinea Pig flicks or whatever) -- it's closer to the Happiness camp. Still, though, despite the high level of craftsmanship, I doubt the makers of Laura would be too flattered by this homage.
Single White Female (C, 1992) Bridget Fonda dumps her boyfriend because he cheated on her (if I'd been him I'd've dumped her for having the most asshole-looking haircut ever) and she moves out and gets a new roomate, Jennifer Jason Leigh. At first JJL seems mousy and shy, and they bond. Then Bridget gets back together with her Significant Dipshit, and JJL reveals herself to be possessive, obsessive, and maybe worse. She starts trying to take over Bridget's life, buying clothes like hers and even copying that awful bedwetter haircut; that's a definite commitment to one's psychosis, especially since it makes her look like a redheaded Matthew Laborteaux (Albert from Little House on the Prairie). After trying to manipulate Bridget's life to keep herself part of it, JJL resorts to swinging sharp objects, including spike heels, knives, bailing hooks, etc. Enthralling and intense even if it runs toward cliche by the end.
Want to read more things I say that are perhaps stupid and about farts and nipple tissue and the things that can be done with baby ducklings? Maybe you can find them at my twitter feed.
============
Boxer's Omen, The (C, 1983) aka Mo. Mind-boggling Shaw Brothers craziness full of bizarre special effects. When his brother's neck is broken by bad-sport Thai kickboxer Bolo Yeung, Chen Hung swears revenge and starts seeing mystical symbols and priests. A guy rots away and coughs up a bat puppet, which a black magician and Buddhist priest battle over. The black magician casts over spells using a rotting human head covered with entrails, which leads to spider attacks that kill a monk. The monk's mummified body later tells Chen Hung that their fates are intertwined, and when he decays, Chen Hung will die. Chen vomits a live eel and becomes a monk. He battles the black magician, who eats entrails, sends alligator skulls to attack Chen, and even sends his own decapitated head to try to strangle Chen with his neck veins. Chen wins and resumes his boxing career, but other black magicians gather, resurrect a girl by sewing her inside an alligator and then eating regurgitated banana peels and chicken anuses (no special effects in some of that -- just actors with strong stomachs), and they blind him. He has to face them (even though he cheated and had sex since the last duel), and to do so he has to travel to Nepal to get a sacred Buddhist relic. Then things get so crazy that I'm giving up on trying to describe them; you just have to see it, it's like a fever dream on psilocibin. Not much of a plot, but since it's mostly a vehicle for weird, no-limits-of-imagination special effects, it doesn't need one. Essential, gory cinematic psychosis that nothing can prepare you for. I fell asleep during this once and had the freakiest dream...
Manhunt (C, 1972) aka The Italian Connection, Black Kingpin, Hired to Kill, Hitmen, Manhunt in Milan, Manhunt in the City. The mob in Milan hires a couple of American hitmen (Henry Silva and Woody Strode) to kill a small-time pimp named Luca Cannale. The reasons why aren't completely clear, but it appears to be something about making him the scapegoat for a bunch of dope-money skimming between the Italian mob and its American faction; how that's supposed to work is a mystery, but these mob guys look more brutal than smart. Anyway, the whole city's soon after Luca and his wife and daughter are murdered, and Luca goes from being a silly, oily sugar-pimp to a fear-driven killing machine, beating and shooting dozens of men out of sheer desperation. His main offensive move seems to be the head-butt; not only does he head-butt his would-be assassins, but also crushes a wall phone and shatters the windshield of a speeding car. He also uses the crane at an auto wrecking yard as a murder weapon. Lots of great action scenes and some memorable characters help distinguish this Italian crime/bad-haircut shoot 'em up. It's on the Action Classics 50 movie DVD set, even though the packaging misidentifies it as an old Western.
Whole movie:
Protect Your Daughters (B&W, 1933) aka Reckless Decision, Suspicious Mothers. Pre-code morals expose of overprotective parents and their drunken hard-partying kids. One mom fears for her daughter because she stays out all night and wears raggedy panties. Her best friend Beth seems like a much nicer girl because she's promised her preacher father to not get married until she's twenty-two. Preacher dad rails against "modern young rowdies headed for Perdition" (girls on bicycles with big ol' shorts on) and does fiery sermons against kids who were caught during a raid on a speakeasy, unaware that his good little Beth was one of them. Furthermore, Beth has secretly gotten married to her boyfriend when she was too drunk to remember it. Despite all the debauchery, the parents decide they were wrong and the kids are alright after all! Go figure.
Singapore Sling (B&W, 1990) Unique, bizarre, and (unfortunately for me since I'm determined to attempt it) hard to describe sickie directed by Nikos Nikolaidis. It's either a sleaze film trying to pass itself off as art, or an art film trying to be sleaze, but whatever it is it's at least partially a tribute to the film noir classic Laura, and maybe Pasolini's Salo. A detective who's been shot in the shoulder while trying to track down a girl named Laura ends up in the clutches of the people who may have killed her: a crazy-as-tequila-worms incestuous mother-daughter duo who are into all sorts of extreme sexual perversions. They like to vomit in his face during sex, or tie him to the bed and shock him so he'll convulse while being screwed, pee in his face, and more. It's likely to get worse, because when he showed up they were burying the badly-disemboweled-but-still-alive body of another guy. While they keep him captive they enact weird scenarios, either for his benefit or as part of the games they play with each other. Sometimes they talk to the camera. There are lots of messy eating scenes and some fairly graphic masturbating with handfuls of fruit. The plot is too art-crazy to be very compelling, so the film tries to stay interesting via the visuals (the black and white cinematography is excellent, and each frame is artfully composed). Overall it's pretty pointless, but it's worth watching for the weirdness. All of the twisted goings-on would probably be unbearable under most circumstances, but the tone of the whole film is completely surrealist comedy and can't be taken seriously enough to really offend... well, offend me, anyway -- your mileage may vary. Even all the vomiting came across as more silly than gross. So, even with the subject matter, I wouldn't rate this as one of the ultra-disturbing movies (like Irreversible or the All Night Long or Guinea Pig flicks or whatever) -- it's closer to the Happiness camp. Still, though, despite the high level of craftsmanship, I doubt the makers of Laura would be too flattered by this homage.
Single White Female (C, 1992) Bridget Fonda dumps her boyfriend because he cheated on her (if I'd been him I'd've dumped her for having the most asshole-looking haircut ever) and she moves out and gets a new roomate, Jennifer Jason Leigh. At first JJL seems mousy and shy, and they bond. Then Bridget gets back together with her Significant Dipshit, and JJL reveals herself to be possessive, obsessive, and maybe worse. She starts trying to take over Bridget's life, buying clothes like hers and even copying that awful bedwetter haircut; that's a definite commitment to one's psychosis, especially since it makes her look like a redheaded Matthew Laborteaux (Albert from Little House on the Prairie). After trying to manipulate Bridget's life to keep herself part of it, JJL resorts to swinging sharp objects, including spike heels, knives, bailing hooks, etc. Enthralling and intense even if it runs toward cliche by the end.
Want to read more things I say that are perhaps stupid and about farts and nipple tissue and the things that can be done with baby ducklings? Maybe you can find them at my twitter feed.
1.21.2011
So this guy walks into a bar...
...but that guy ain't you, because you're here, and that guy ain't me, because I'm sitting here typin' this, so what do either of us know about him? Nothin'. Don't even know why I brought it up. Must be I just need a title for yet another bunch of movie reviews and am trying to be frickin' clever. I try that a lot (mostly on my Twitter page) and luckily I'm usually a little better at it than I am right now, so maybe we oughtta dispense with all that and get down to business...
============
Beach Girls and the Monster, The (B&W, 1965) aka Monster From The Surf. A goofy-looking monster (kinda like a kid's drawing of the Black Lagoon creature, but with a pointier head) is clawing surfers to death. It doesn't stop the partying, though, with lots of girls dancing to Frank Sinatra, Jr.'s music like they're desperately trying to shake sand out of their bikini bottoms. One of the surfers has an oceanographer dad who's frustrated by his son's interest in surfing instead of fish, a limping friend whose bad leg keeps him out of the fun so he works on sculptures instead, and a bitchy stepmother who torments them all just out of hellish spite. If the monster isn't actually a mutated aquatic creature (and he sure's hell doesn't look like a real one), there are plenty of suspects who could be stuffing the suit. Padded with plenty of beach-party boogieing and some surfing footage (that was originally in color but it's black and white on the DVD). The monster's ridiculous but at least they did throw in a little blood, and it's short enough. Cheap goofy fun.
Trailer:
Whole freakin' movie:
Book of Eli, The (C, 2010) Thirty years after a nuclear war, Denzel Washington is on a mission from God, trying to deliver the last existing Bible (the rest were destroyed after the war because religion caused it) to someplace west. He's a phenomenal fighter (maybe because of God's protection, because damn near nothing about him is the least bit plausible, including the fact that his Ipod still works) and is easily able to cut down the hoards of scavengers who try to steal from him. He comes to a town run by power-mad Gary Oldman, who's searching for a Bible because he knows it's a powerful mind-control weapon he can use to further enslave the ignorant and desperate. When he finds out Denzel has one he stops at nothing to take it, and Denzel and a girl have to wander the wasteland, dealing with crazed cannibals and Oldman's henchmen. The film creates a stark post-nuke world, but one that's got more holes in it than a gyro captain's longjohns. For one thing, the U.S. is only around 3,000 miles wide. That wasn't much of a mission from God if it took him 30 years to walk it, because that's less than a quarter mile a day. Walking to your mailbox every day is almost as urgent a mission from God. Denzel's also pretty hefty to have walked constantly on a diet of the occasional scrawny, hairless cat. And why Oldman would need a real Bible to control the masses when he could have just made up his own hoo-ha to feed the dupes is beyond me. The message is simpleminded and annoying, and the big twist at the ending is completely ridiculous and just doubles-down on an already-overwhelming jackpot of stupid. Denzel is good as always, and the movie's got a good look to it, and it's entertaining enough if you can turn your brain off enough to not just be bludgeoned down by the stupidity of the thing. But that's the problem... there's just SO MUCH stupidity that it's hard to get around it.
Giallo (C, 2009) An ugly, jaundiced psycho uses his taxi to abduct pretty girls so he can terrorize them and destroy their faces. A girl searching for her fashion model sister, who's been abducted by this lunatic, teams up with a lonely, too-focused-on-his job specialist in tracking serial killers (Adrien Brody), and they try to discover the killer's identity and put a stop to him before he can murder or mutilate the sister. Dario Argento is attempting a return to form here, but alas, his skills have waned and he seems to have used up all his really ace ideas, so this is pretty standard profiler vs. serial killer stuff, with only occasional hints of Argento's trademark stylishness. It's still worthwhile viewing for Argento fans (or even those who aren't); just don't expect anything too special.
Machine Gun McCain (C, 1969) aka For A Price, The Untouchables, Gli Intoccabili. Peter Falk wants a bigger piece of the mob's Vegas action, so he devises a plan involving getting an armed robber, Hank McCain (John Cassavettes), out of prison after twelve years. McCain's son has a plan to rob a casino and McCain likes the idea but isn't impressed with his son and, in fact, doesn't really give much of a fuck about him. McCain picks up Britt Ekland and marries her and carries out the ingenious heist on his own, getting away with two million bucks... but the mob isn't about to let that stand. It's a convoluted Italian crime drama with a typically-intense performance from Cassavettes and a noteworthy score from Ennio Morricone, and it's well-made but unfortunately lacking in action. Cassavettes barely even gets to use a machine gun; one burst from a Sten does not a title justify. There are a few explosions but it's mostly reliant on Cassavette's performance to keep it interesting. Good thing he's up to the task, and it's still good, gritty stuff that doesn't pull any punches, even if it's not quite as good as it could've been.
Violent Professionals, The (C, 1973) aka Milano Trema - La Polizia Vuole Guistizia. Luc Merenda (who's a reasonable facsimile of Fabio Testi) is put on suspension for excessive use of force against a couple of escaped criminals who really had it coming (they even shot a terrified little girl point blank in the face). Immediately afterward, the police chief is murdered by the mob, and Luc is driven to even things up, and if he has to go outside the law to do it, then so be it. To infiltrate the criminal underworld he beats up a pimp and takes his whore, starts a fight in a mob-connected pool hall, befriends a junkie, and still manages to foil a bank robbery. He takes a crime boss (Richard Conte) on a crazy-driving rampage to audition for a job as a getaway driver. While driving for a bank robbery, one of the thugs shoots a pregnant woman in the belly for no reason, and Luc figures out he's dealing with more than just mobsters; they're terrorists trying to spread chaos and overturn the whole country. Great, action-packed Italian crime drama directed by Sergio Martino. The car chase is a standout, and the moody music score is good.
============
Beach Girls and the Monster, The (B&W, 1965) aka Monster From The Surf. A goofy-looking monster (kinda like a kid's drawing of the Black Lagoon creature, but with a pointier head) is clawing surfers to death. It doesn't stop the partying, though, with lots of girls dancing to Frank Sinatra, Jr.'s music like they're desperately trying to shake sand out of their bikini bottoms. One of the surfers has an oceanographer dad who's frustrated by his son's interest in surfing instead of fish, a limping friend whose bad leg keeps him out of the fun so he works on sculptures instead, and a bitchy stepmother who torments them all just out of hellish spite. If the monster isn't actually a mutated aquatic creature (and he sure's hell doesn't look like a real one), there are plenty of suspects who could be stuffing the suit. Padded with plenty of beach-party boogieing and some surfing footage (that was originally in color but it's black and white on the DVD). The monster's ridiculous but at least they did throw in a little blood, and it's short enough. Cheap goofy fun.
Trailer:
Whole freakin' movie:
Book of Eli, The (C, 2010) Thirty years after a nuclear war, Denzel Washington is on a mission from God, trying to deliver the last existing Bible (the rest were destroyed after the war because religion caused it) to someplace west. He's a phenomenal fighter (maybe because of God's protection, because damn near nothing about him is the least bit plausible, including the fact that his Ipod still works) and is easily able to cut down the hoards of scavengers who try to steal from him. He comes to a town run by power-mad Gary Oldman, who's searching for a Bible because he knows it's a powerful mind-control weapon he can use to further enslave the ignorant and desperate. When he finds out Denzel has one he stops at nothing to take it, and Denzel and a girl have to wander the wasteland, dealing with crazed cannibals and Oldman's henchmen. The film creates a stark post-nuke world, but one that's got more holes in it than a gyro captain's longjohns. For one thing, the U.S. is only around 3,000 miles wide. That wasn't much of a mission from God if it took him 30 years to walk it, because that's less than a quarter mile a day. Walking to your mailbox every day is almost as urgent a mission from God. Denzel's also pretty hefty to have walked constantly on a diet of the occasional scrawny, hairless cat. And why Oldman would need a real Bible to control the masses when he could have just made up his own hoo-ha to feed the dupes is beyond me. The message is simpleminded and annoying, and the big twist at the ending is completely ridiculous and just doubles-down on an already-overwhelming jackpot of stupid. Denzel is good as always, and the movie's got a good look to it, and it's entertaining enough if you can turn your brain off enough to not just be bludgeoned down by the stupidity of the thing. But that's the problem... there's just SO MUCH stupidity that it's hard to get around it.
Giallo (C, 2009) An ugly, jaundiced psycho uses his taxi to abduct pretty girls so he can terrorize them and destroy their faces. A girl searching for her fashion model sister, who's been abducted by this lunatic, teams up with a lonely, too-focused-on-his job specialist in tracking serial killers (Adrien Brody), and they try to discover the killer's identity and put a stop to him before he can murder or mutilate the sister. Dario Argento is attempting a return to form here, but alas, his skills have waned and he seems to have used up all his really ace ideas, so this is pretty standard profiler vs. serial killer stuff, with only occasional hints of Argento's trademark stylishness. It's still worthwhile viewing for Argento fans (or even those who aren't); just don't expect anything too special.
Machine Gun McCain (C, 1969) aka For A Price, The Untouchables, Gli Intoccabili. Peter Falk wants a bigger piece of the mob's Vegas action, so he devises a plan involving getting an armed robber, Hank McCain (John Cassavettes), out of prison after twelve years. McCain's son has a plan to rob a casino and McCain likes the idea but isn't impressed with his son and, in fact, doesn't really give much of a fuck about him. McCain picks up Britt Ekland and marries her and carries out the ingenious heist on his own, getting away with two million bucks... but the mob isn't about to let that stand. It's a convoluted Italian crime drama with a typically-intense performance from Cassavettes and a noteworthy score from Ennio Morricone, and it's well-made but unfortunately lacking in action. Cassavettes barely even gets to use a machine gun; one burst from a Sten does not a title justify. There are a few explosions but it's mostly reliant on Cassavette's performance to keep it interesting. Good thing he's up to the task, and it's still good, gritty stuff that doesn't pull any punches, even if it's not quite as good as it could've been.
Violent Professionals, The (C, 1973) aka Milano Trema - La Polizia Vuole Guistizia. Luc Merenda (who's a reasonable facsimile of Fabio Testi) is put on suspension for excessive use of force against a couple of escaped criminals who really had it coming (they even shot a terrified little girl point blank in the face). Immediately afterward, the police chief is murdered by the mob, and Luc is driven to even things up, and if he has to go outside the law to do it, then so be it. To infiltrate the criminal underworld he beats up a pimp and takes his whore, starts a fight in a mob-connected pool hall, befriends a junkie, and still manages to foil a bank robbery. He takes a crime boss (Richard Conte) on a crazy-driving rampage to audition for a job as a getaway driver. While driving for a bank robbery, one of the thugs shoots a pregnant woman in the belly for no reason, and Luc figures out he's dealing with more than just mobsters; they're terrorists trying to spread chaos and overturn the whole country. Great, action-packed Italian crime drama directed by Sergio Martino. The car chase is a standout, and the moody music score is good.
1.17.2011
2011 Already Rocks!
Earth Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light 1
Continuing in the same vein as HEX: Or Printing in the Infernal Method + The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull, Angels... sounds like the Ennio Morricone soundtrack to a lost Sergio Leone spaghetti western... Kinda bleak + barren, sorta sparse + airy... The perfect accompaniment musick for a viewing of Alexandro Jodorowsky's El Topo.
I've had an on-again, off-again relationship with the music of Mogwai for years now, finding some of their music brilliant but being wildly disappointed by other stuff...
Gotta say that this rekkid is mostly brilliant, with some truly surprising bits popping up from time to time. And 'surprising' doesn't turn up as often as it ought to when describing new music... not as a good thing, anyway!
Both rekkids have super-snappy cover art, + both make for excellent long-distance driving musicks, too, so start planning that roadtrip!
1.16.2011
Just more movie reviews yet again also
Kinda short this time 'cuz I'm more in the mood to go watch movies than I am to write about 'em, but hopefully these'll be interesting, and I think I've been walloping ya'll with too much material at a time, anyway. Nobody really needs to read that much of me.
And, for people who wanna read even less of me, here's my Twitter page where I'm only allowed 140 characters at a time. :)
====================
Ghost Story of Yotsuya, The (C, 1959) aka Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan. A shiftless samurai is so angry at being rebuffed when he asks a girl's father to let him marry her that he murders him and his retainers. He and his friend frame another samurai for the killings and then he marries his victim's daughter, as he'd wished. She begs him to avenge her father's death but he puts it off and is abusive to her, even after she bears him a child. He decides he's not interested in her anymore, and he's also dirt poor, so he decides to get rid of her and marry a rich woman. To justify killing her he tries to trick a man into having an affair with her, but then poisons her instead. The poison makes her face rot with hideous ulcerations and she swears vengeance upon him before she dies. He also kills her would-be lover, nails them both to boards, sinks them in a lake, and marries his rich woman. But the forces of the supernatural aren't going to allow him to get away with his evil deeds so easily... Artistic, high-class Japanese horror film is a bit slow-paced, overly-mannered, and the plot can take a few confusing turns, but the atmosphere is powerful and the ghosts are ultra-creepy and unrelenting (sometimes appearing as bloody, rotting corpses but also manifesting as snakes). It adds up to something pretty close to a masterpiece. Don't miss it.
Watch a condensation online here, or try to catch it next time TCM shows it.
Jonah Hex (C, 2010) Horrible adaptation of the DC Comics Western (one of the greatest comics ever, so don't let this shit film put you off) changes some things for absolutely no reason and dumbs it all down. Scar-faced bounty hunter Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin, who's way too good for this material and would've made a good Hex if he'd been given some sort of script) is contracted by the government to track down his old enemy Quentin Turnbull (oddly enough, John Malkovich), who's developed a nation-destroying weapon, which is basically a repeater-cannon that sometimes fires glowing cannonballs that blow up big. Hex gets help from sympathetic prostitute Megan Fox (so it's at least got eye candy, albeit used poorly since the cinematography's not so hot) and a tribe of Indians who can bring him back from near-death. They've also given him a superpower he didn't have in the comics and doesn't need in the movie -- the ability to bring the dead back to talk to them. It's unnecessary and shows a lack of faith and misunderstanding of what made the source material classic. Rather than go with a straightforward story, they didn't trust the audience's intelligence and tried to throw in a bunch of wacky high-tech junk and supernatural elements (just as a way to add explosions, even though it's a Western), and gave Hex less to do. He seems like a tag-along in his own movie. He's got the bad attitude but has to use stupid weapons like horse-mounted Gatlings or dynamite-firing crossbows instead of his badass skill with a six-gun. Top it off with an atmosphere-destroying metal soundtrack by usually-good-but-not-good-here band Mastodon. Disappointing.
Lost Highway (C, 1996) David Lynch, trapped in a need to keep topping himself for weirdness, goes off the rails and into the weeds with this slow, murky neo-noir-sense. A jazz saxophonist who's being stalked by someone who sends him videotapes of him and his wife sleeping either murders his wife or is framed for it. He's locked up in maximum security, where he turns into a different guy entirely. Since he's no longer the jazz fella, they release him. Now he's an amnesiac young mechanic who starts messing around with a violent crime boss's girlfriend. He gets in a lot of trouble with her and then changes back into the jazzman as his separate existences meld. This is probably great fun for those who don't like to know what's going on, or pretentious sphinctertwitchers who like to pretend that they do when they really don't, but mostly it's an overlong bought of frustrating confusion that never pays off. There are some elements to it that make it worth watching, mainly in the form of uber-creepy Robert Blake in heavy powder and lipstick, sans eyebrows. He's incredibly nightmarish ("I'm at your house now. Call me.") The cast also includes bit parts for Henry Rollins, Mink Stole, Gene Ross (from S. F. Brownrigg's films), Gary Busey, and a brief shot of Marilyn Manson for no real reason other than he's an ugly freak so why not, it's not like it's going to disrupt anything to just toss him in, because there's nothing to disrupt. It's a very slick and good-looking film and creates a disturbing, dreamlike atmosphere, but it's too weird for its own good, the pacing is leaden, and if there's some sense to all the plot threads it's not worth the effort to try to make sense of them. More likely there is no real structure and Lynch is hoping that you'll impose one upon it and assume he's a genius. I won't and he isn't. This would probably be well-loved in France.
Here's the only scene in the film that you really need to see - it's brilliant and creepy and way better than the rest of it:
And, for people who wanna read even less of me, here's my Twitter page where I'm only allowed 140 characters at a time. :)
====================
Ghost Story of Yotsuya, The (C, 1959) aka Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan. A shiftless samurai is so angry at being rebuffed when he asks a girl's father to let him marry her that he murders him and his retainers. He and his friend frame another samurai for the killings and then he marries his victim's daughter, as he'd wished. She begs him to avenge her father's death but he puts it off and is abusive to her, even after she bears him a child. He decides he's not interested in her anymore, and he's also dirt poor, so he decides to get rid of her and marry a rich woman. To justify killing her he tries to trick a man into having an affair with her, but then poisons her instead. The poison makes her face rot with hideous ulcerations and she swears vengeance upon him before she dies. He also kills her would-be lover, nails them both to boards, sinks them in a lake, and marries his rich woman. But the forces of the supernatural aren't going to allow him to get away with his evil deeds so easily... Artistic, high-class Japanese horror film is a bit slow-paced, overly-mannered, and the plot can take a few confusing turns, but the atmosphere is powerful and the ghosts are ultra-creepy and unrelenting (sometimes appearing as bloody, rotting corpses but also manifesting as snakes). It adds up to something pretty close to a masterpiece. Don't miss it.
Watch a condensation online here, or try to catch it next time TCM shows it.
Jonah Hex (C, 2010) Horrible adaptation of the DC Comics Western (one of the greatest comics ever, so don't let this shit film put you off) changes some things for absolutely no reason and dumbs it all down. Scar-faced bounty hunter Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin, who's way too good for this material and would've made a good Hex if he'd been given some sort of script) is contracted by the government to track down his old enemy Quentin Turnbull (oddly enough, John Malkovich), who's developed a nation-destroying weapon, which is basically a repeater-cannon that sometimes fires glowing cannonballs that blow up big. Hex gets help from sympathetic prostitute Megan Fox (so it's at least got eye candy, albeit used poorly since the cinematography's not so hot) and a tribe of Indians who can bring him back from near-death. They've also given him a superpower he didn't have in the comics and doesn't need in the movie -- the ability to bring the dead back to talk to them. It's unnecessary and shows a lack of faith and misunderstanding of what made the source material classic. Rather than go with a straightforward story, they didn't trust the audience's intelligence and tried to throw in a bunch of wacky high-tech junk and supernatural elements (just as a way to add explosions, even though it's a Western), and gave Hex less to do. He seems like a tag-along in his own movie. He's got the bad attitude but has to use stupid weapons like horse-mounted Gatlings or dynamite-firing crossbows instead of his badass skill with a six-gun. Top it off with an atmosphere-destroying metal soundtrack by usually-good-but-not-good-here band Mastodon. Disappointing.
Lost Highway (C, 1996) David Lynch, trapped in a need to keep topping himself for weirdness, goes off the rails and into the weeds with this slow, murky neo-noir-sense. A jazz saxophonist who's being stalked by someone who sends him videotapes of him and his wife sleeping either murders his wife or is framed for it. He's locked up in maximum security, where he turns into a different guy entirely. Since he's no longer the jazz fella, they release him. Now he's an amnesiac young mechanic who starts messing around with a violent crime boss's girlfriend. He gets in a lot of trouble with her and then changes back into the jazzman as his separate existences meld. This is probably great fun for those who don't like to know what's going on, or pretentious sphinctertwitchers who like to pretend that they do when they really don't, but mostly it's an overlong bought of frustrating confusion that never pays off. There are some elements to it that make it worth watching, mainly in the form of uber-creepy Robert Blake in heavy powder and lipstick, sans eyebrows. He's incredibly nightmarish ("I'm at your house now. Call me.") The cast also includes bit parts for Henry Rollins, Mink Stole, Gene Ross (from S. F. Brownrigg's films), Gary Busey, and a brief shot of Marilyn Manson for no real reason other than he's an ugly freak so why not, it's not like it's going to disrupt anything to just toss him in, because there's nothing to disrupt. It's a very slick and good-looking film and creates a disturbing, dreamlike atmosphere, but it's too weird for its own good, the pacing is leaden, and if there's some sense to all the plot threads it's not worth the effort to try to make sense of them. More likely there is no real structure and Lynch is hoping that you'll impose one upon it and assume he's a genius. I won't and he isn't. This would probably be well-loved in France.
Here's the only scene in the film that you really need to see - it's brilliant and creepy and way better than the rest of it:
1.11.2011
Attention Comics Shoppers: boycott this piece of shit.
Since this blog is very comics-friendly, I wanted to make sure to get this out so people will be aware of where some of their shopping money might be going.
Spread the word on this guy.
Even in a world full of assholes, this reeking smear of buttcrack-ripened fuck-scum, Travis Corcoran of Heavy Ink Comics, stands out. After this weekend's tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others, six of whom (including a 9-year-old girl) died, this festering bile-clot posted the following on his website:
His only problem with the shooting?
In a linked post he goes on to explain his infantile "politics," which sound like the product of someone who's been spending too much time with the X-men and too little time in the real world. But I don't really give a good goddamn what his politics are; there is no excuse, left right or libertarian, for advocating murder. When someone doesn't understand the basics of humanity, I don't need their political opinions, because they have nothing to teach me, about anything.
Of course, he does have free speech, and should be allowed to say what he wants, no matter how repugnant, or how much of a worthless piece of shit it reveals him to be.
But with free speech comes the free market, and I hope everyone will use its power to see that this guy goes broke.
That's apparently already well under way, judging from reactions on his store's forum.
Anyway, every dollar you spend is a vote for the kind of world in which you wish to live... and I don't know of many who'd want to live in a world like Travis's.
So, spread the word. I don't care how much of a discount this turd gives, the price is too high if he's what you're supporting. Do your comic shopping elsewhere.
Spread the word on this guy.
Even in a world full of assholes, this reeking smear of buttcrack-ripened fuck-scum, Travis Corcoran of Heavy Ink Comics, stands out. After this weekend's tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others, six of whom (including a 9-year-old girl) died, this festering bile-clot posted the following on his website:
1 down, 534 to go
His only problem with the shooting?
It is absolutely, absolutely unacceptable to shoot “indiscriminately”.
Target only politicians and their staff, and leave regular citizens alone.
Please!
In a linked post he goes on to explain his infantile "politics," which sound like the product of someone who's been spending too much time with the X-men and too little time in the real world. But I don't really give a good goddamn what his politics are; there is no excuse, left right or libertarian, for advocating murder. When someone doesn't understand the basics of humanity, I don't need their political opinions, because they have nothing to teach me, about anything.
Of course, he does have free speech, and should be allowed to say what he wants, no matter how repugnant, or how much of a worthless piece of shit it reveals him to be.
But with free speech comes the free market, and I hope everyone will use its power to see that this guy goes broke.
That's apparently already well under way, judging from reactions on his store's forum.
Anyway, every dollar you spend is a vote for the kind of world in which you wish to live... and I don't know of many who'd want to live in a world like Travis's.
So, spread the word. I don't care how much of a discount this turd gives, the price is too high if he's what you're supporting. Do your comic shopping elsewhere.
1.09.2011
Today's movie reviews are brought to you by the letter G...
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1.02.2011
The writer chick from White Zombie
Every once in a while I get ahead of a big curve. It's usually more out of curiosity and luck than because of any sort of genius, but, what the hell, it works. Like, I was listening to Metallica the week that Kill 'Em All came out, while most of the public didn't know they existed until the video for "One" came out years 'n' years later. And I was waaay ahead of the White Zombie curve; I picked up their first LP, Soul Crusher, pretty soon after it came out. I'm still amazed that a record store here in Podunk had a copy, and it may even be one of the originals, I'm not sure - it just says "Silent Explosion" and doesn't mention Caroline on it. Back then I was trying to buy anything that looked punk/metal/heavy/noisy, and Soul Crusher had a really freaky cover. In those days I didn't know anybody who was into metal or punk at all, so everything was on a "buy it and see" basis.
And this album... wow. Big payoff. Nobody else sounded like early White Zombie. That may be a good thing, because songs like "Shack of Hate" aren't exactly a thing to be imitated by the unqualified.
Anyway, I liked it and was impressed with the scary noisy-craziness of it. I was also intrigued by the bass player, who looked kinda female-ish, but you couldn't be sure 'cuz the pics were fuzzy and the name was "Sean." I hoped it was female, anyway, since I found it disturbingly cute. Below are pictures from the sleeve, with as much lyrical content as would fit in the scanner just so you can get an idea how insane the early shit was if you haven't heard anything but "Thunder Kiss 65" or "Black Sunshine." Note that Rob Zombie (real name: Rob Cummings) is going by the name Rob "Dirt" Straker at the time. I still think that's a much cooler name than "Rob Zombie," but, whatchagonnado, nobody ever consults me before they just do stuff.
And here's the other side of the sleeve, for what's still my favorite Rob Zombie art ("Give Me Some Stuff!"):
A couple of years later, Make Them Die Slowly came out. Sean hated the album, but anything that includes the ungodly-fucking-badass "Demonspeed" can't be all bad:
If you can get through the first minutes of that song without a chill running down your spine, check yo' pulse, 'cuz, honey, you dead!
By the time that came out I knew that, yep, Sean was indeed female, and I safely had a lil' crush going. I'd heard of the "Psycho-Head Blow Out" EP by then, so I wrote the band, just a very short note asking if it was still available and if they had any other mersh, T-shirts or whatever. I didn't really expect a reply since in my experience bands didn't write back much (about the only bands I ever got replies from were a forgotten thrash band called Executioner, whose very-cool guitarist wrote me a really nice letter (complete with phone number!), and Kinghorse. The Dead Kennedys would send you merchandise lists and the Meatmen would send you vaguely-pornographic comics and lyrics, but just about everyone else would ignore ya). Imagine my surprise when I not only got a nice handwritten letter back from White Zombie, but from Sean herself! What a sweetheart. I was impressed that she'd taken that kind of time for my tiny lil' note and wished I'd spent more time heaping praise on the band instead of the bare-bones note.
It was on the back of a flier, so here's that, too.
Anyway, a couple years after that they hit it big with MTV and you all know the rest. But here's what you may not know, 'cuz I didn't until a week or two ago: Sean has a book out: I'm In The Band: Backstage Notes From The Chick in White Zombie. It's a big photo history of White Zombie, loads of pictures of Sean with people from Pantera, The Cramps, Marilyn Manson, Monster Magnet, and about any band you can think of, plus stories of drunken antics (White Zombie didn't mess with drugs much but Sean could match Pantera's post-show drinking, apparently) and various injuries (she once held off an emergency appendectomy to finish a gig). Plus it's a look into what it's like to be one of the few females in the metal world at the time (there were others, but you have to dig into obscurity - like Jo Bench from Bolt Thrower, etc. - to find 'em). And she was far from just eye-candy... that's some badass bass-ism she's throwing on those albums.
Because she is kind, she doesn't mention her ex-boyfriend Rob Zombie overmuch in the book. Rob is apparently a childish, vindictive sort of guy, and for the last two years or so of White Zombie's existence, he traveled separately from the rest of the band and didn't speak to them. J (who is apparently also a very cool person - never heard a bad word about 'im) used to have to repeat things Sean would say to him even when she was in the room, because he'd refuse to even acknowledge her existence. Excellent taste in women aside, I think Mr. Zombie's a bit of a douche, but those are my words, not hers.
Anyway, your interest in this book will vary according to your interest in Sean and/or White Zombie, but since I adore this lady about as much as it's possible to adore anybody you don't actually know, it's the coolest thing I've snagged in quite a while and I fully recommend it, and I'm glad I get a chance to repay her kindness for the letter she sent by plugging her book.
You now buy it!
Because you know you want more pics like this...
Also, you should check out her other bands, Rock City Morgue, and new project Star & Dagger, both of which are killer.
And if big pounding crunchy loudmusic isn't your thing, multitalented Sean also designs scarves.
More Sean-age from YouTube:
Sean's art collection:
Sean meets Coffin Joe:
One guy's tribute video:
And if absolutely none of this interests you, something's terribly wrong with ya and you should get it checked out before your limbs fall off and your innards liquify. But, you can still follow me on Twitter anyway and count how many references to bodily fluids I make before you succumb to your horrific maladies. I don't think Sean has a Twitter account or I'd be following that like a baby duckling.
And this album... wow. Big payoff. Nobody else sounded like early White Zombie. That may be a good thing, because songs like "Shack of Hate" aren't exactly a thing to be imitated by the unqualified.
Anyway, I liked it and was impressed with the scary noisy-craziness of it. I was also intrigued by the bass player, who looked kinda female-ish, but you couldn't be sure 'cuz the pics were fuzzy and the name was "Sean." I hoped it was female, anyway, since I found it disturbingly cute. Below are pictures from the sleeve, with as much lyrical content as would fit in the scanner just so you can get an idea how insane the early shit was if you haven't heard anything but "Thunder Kiss 65" or "Black Sunshine." Note that Rob Zombie (real name: Rob Cummings) is going by the name Rob "Dirt" Straker at the time. I still think that's a much cooler name than "Rob Zombie," but, whatchagonnado, nobody ever consults me before they just do stuff.
And here's the other side of the sleeve, for what's still my favorite Rob Zombie art ("Give Me Some Stuff!"):
A couple of years later, Make Them Die Slowly came out. Sean hated the album, but anything that includes the ungodly-fucking-badass "Demonspeed" can't be all bad:
If you can get through the first minutes of that song without a chill running down your spine, check yo' pulse, 'cuz, honey, you dead!
By the time that came out I knew that, yep, Sean was indeed female, and I safely had a lil' crush going. I'd heard of the "Psycho-Head Blow Out" EP by then, so I wrote the band, just a very short note asking if it was still available and if they had any other mersh, T-shirts or whatever. I didn't really expect a reply since in my experience bands didn't write back much (about the only bands I ever got replies from were a forgotten thrash band called Executioner, whose very-cool guitarist wrote me a really nice letter (complete with phone number!), and Kinghorse. The Dead Kennedys would send you merchandise lists and the Meatmen would send you vaguely-pornographic comics and lyrics, but just about everyone else would ignore ya). Imagine my surprise when I not only got a nice handwritten letter back from White Zombie, but from Sean herself! What a sweetheart. I was impressed that she'd taken that kind of time for my tiny lil' note and wished I'd spent more time heaping praise on the band instead of the bare-bones note.
It was on the back of a flier, so here's that, too.
Anyway, a couple years after that they hit it big with MTV and you all know the rest. But here's what you may not know, 'cuz I didn't until a week or two ago: Sean has a book out: I'm In The Band: Backstage Notes From The Chick in White Zombie. It's a big photo history of White Zombie, loads of pictures of Sean with people from Pantera, The Cramps, Marilyn Manson, Monster Magnet, and about any band you can think of, plus stories of drunken antics (White Zombie didn't mess with drugs much but Sean could match Pantera's post-show drinking, apparently) and various injuries (she once held off an emergency appendectomy to finish a gig). Plus it's a look into what it's like to be one of the few females in the metal world at the time (there were others, but you have to dig into obscurity - like Jo Bench from Bolt Thrower, etc. - to find 'em). And she was far from just eye-candy... that's some badass bass-ism she's throwing on those albums.
Because she is kind, she doesn't mention her ex-boyfriend Rob Zombie overmuch in the book. Rob is apparently a childish, vindictive sort of guy, and for the last two years or so of White Zombie's existence, he traveled separately from the rest of the band and didn't speak to them. J (who is apparently also a very cool person - never heard a bad word about 'im) used to have to repeat things Sean would say to him even when she was in the room, because he'd refuse to even acknowledge her existence. Excellent taste in women aside, I think Mr. Zombie's a bit of a douche, but those are my words, not hers.
Anyway, your interest in this book will vary according to your interest in Sean and/or White Zombie, but since I adore this lady about as much as it's possible to adore anybody you don't actually know, it's the coolest thing I've snagged in quite a while and I fully recommend it, and I'm glad I get a chance to repay her kindness for the letter she sent by plugging her book.
You now buy it!
Because you know you want more pics like this...
Also, you should check out her other bands, Rock City Morgue, and new project Star & Dagger, both of which are killer.
And if big pounding crunchy loudmusic isn't your thing, multitalented Sean also designs scarves.
More Sean-age from YouTube:
Sean's art collection:
Sean meets Coffin Joe:
One guy's tribute video:
And if absolutely none of this interests you, something's terribly wrong with ya and you should get it checked out before your limbs fall off and your innards liquify. But, you can still follow me on Twitter anyway and count how many references to bodily fluids I make before you succumb to your horrific maladies. I don't think Sean has a Twitter account or I'd be following that like a baby duckling.
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