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Are you circumcised?

Okay so the whole 31 days of Halloween kinda petered out, and that’s okay. I’m moved on to other, far more hilarious things, like... Samurai Cop!

You know, you KNOW you’re doing something good, when the first name on your listing is the lead henchman... and your lead actor appears twice on the poster. Because he has twice as much haircut!

The best way to understand this movie would be imagine that you just saw Lethal Weapon, and you decided that what was missing in that movie was swords; swords are cool, because last night you watched Highlander, and that was totally cool. You know what else is cool? Long hair, gotta have your dude with a mane, man... oh, and you need a dude who’s big, and kinda creepy, and that’s going to be the dude that will fight your lead.

And let’s not forget a gratuitous amount of tits! And a black partner, and the chief yells a lot! And the lead guy, who’s totally a samurai, and speaks fluent Japanese, and you totally have to put him in scenes where he’s showing off those sweet abs of his, can’t forget the female demographics!

Okay, so we have probably the worse car chase scenes that I’ve ever seen. To make them more exciting, we’ll speed them up in post-production. Oh, and we can’t afford to put a lot of money on special effects, so go easy on the blood. What do you mean you can’t afford bullet holes? Okay, fine, we’ll just put lots of gunshot sounds, and the actors will have to act like they’re getting shot. After all, that’s what I’m paying them for, to act.

The best acting in the movie goes to Robert Z’dar; he’s seriously the only guy that’s actually trying. Everybody else is just hamming it up, but that meat’s expired, man. Ridiculous dialogues, haphazard editing, mom’s post-cancer wig, a ton of cut-rate stormtrooper goons... and lead guy’s trunks, Really, that’s a part of the 80′s that NO ONE missed. That and his sunglasses.

Best parts of the movie: the girls were fairly cute, even if the sex scenes were completely pointless. How pointless? the lead henchman gets a sexy scene with the henchwoman. Not that I’m complaining, I’m all for redheads!

Also amazing: Mexican-looking driver henchman gets set on fire, oh noes! Better put him out. And this fire must be magical, because suddenly, he’s not Mexican no more. But that’s okay, because we’ve got this super cool token Asian henchman, and because he’s cool... he gets a sexy scene too! Hurray for racial equality! Sure, there’s the partner who at one point gets threatened to have his dick cut off, but he’s probably the one guy with common sense in this whole thing: the best way to deal with hand-to-hand combat, is to shoot the other guy. Boom! Problem solved!

I laughed more than I expected, and the biggest cringe factor in this inept film, is how humiliating it must have been for most of the actors to have this thing associated with their names. Sure, some have played in several films before and since, but for some, this was the only film that they made. And I totally understand why they wouldn’t want to continue after this experience.

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Mushi-mushi?

Slowly but surely, I’m catching up with all those movies that you’ve pretty much all seen a long time ago. After Germany (via Spain), we’re now heading to Japan, for a movie that has been rated one of the ten best horror films of all times, Ringu!

So, are the critics right? I sure as hell am not going to argue with the 97% approval rating on the tomatometer. Having seen other Japanese horror movies that were done in the same period, I’d say that this one is one of the best, if a bit quaint. I mean, who even has a VCR anymore (okay, I do, but I’m weird), so the idea of a cursed videotape is a little... confusing now.

Okay, the general idea has been reused, and adapted to other technologies, but it mostly reminds me of the Faces of Death movies that teens would watch in morbid fascination for shock value. It’s the modern era campfire ghost stories, or as we have now, “fake news” sites (or Daesh propaganda videos.) Of course, nowadays, the news already shows plenty of graphic violence, so we’re getting pretty jaded by it.

But that’s sort of the trick about the tape. It is not violent, or graphic, in and of itself, it’s just weird. Of course, some of it is lost in both the cultural and linguistic translation, as some cultural symbols, and cultural traditions just can’t really transfer well from one culture to another.

Japan is an interesting case, as we are generally tempted to think of that country as being super high-tech, ahead of the trend, so by extension, logical and rational, right? Well, there’s actually a very strong spiritual tradition that has endured, and cohabited with the technological advances. In effect, they constantly explore the consequences of the deus ex machina, the machine ghosts that are all around us, and how artificial intelligence impacts human society.

The thread that ties the whole story together is the binding of occult forces, with parapsychological research, unto modern technology, creating what we could call a poltergeist, a sort of malignant house spirit. The third Clarke’s law, “ Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic “, describes most everyday technology for the vast majority of the population. Wireless transmission of information, search engines that find answers to our questions, even guessing what we are searching before we can finish our question, the capacity of carrying entire libraries of documents in our pocket, entire orchestras, even now, translating languages in real time...

Magnets, how do they work?

For most people, the answer is science... but they don’t know how it works, it might as well be spirits and goblins, and effectively, spirits in the machines, that can serve our needs at the push of a button. 

What I’m saying is, it’s fairly good. I came very close to watching Tetsuo, the Iron Man instead, which also plays along the line of man and machine (plus pretty much the entire Cronenberg cannon) but it would have broken the direction that I’m taking the viewing list.

Next, a director who slaps his actors in the face!

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Wear rubber for protection

Sometimes, the best laid plans require some adjustments along the way. The film that I was supposed to watch and write about, well, it didn’t grab my attention like I hoped that it would, so I had to revise, and pick something a bit more... enthralling. So the happy replacement was... The Loreley’s Grasp, aka, When the Screaming Stops.

From the creator and director of the undead Templar series,  Amando de Ossorio crafts a tale that ties murder with a mythological past. Most of his work was done in a ten year period, from the late sixties to the late seventies. He is considered one of the main directors of the Spanish horror boom of the seventies.

And it’s a seventies movie, funk bass and tight pants galore! The lead, Tony Kendall (which sounds like Ken doll, and makes sense, as he started as a model) plays Sigur, the hunter hired to watch over a girl boarding school, and kill the beast that has been killing innocent people.

Not just killing, mind you, but eating their hearts, Compared to Hammer Films, who minimized the special effects to save on money, the Spaniards decided to go all in, realism be damned. The monster side is made up of old Star Trek surplus props, saving money by using only the rubber gloves and mask, covering the rest in a convenient flowing black cloak (similar to the effects for The Wolfman.) To deflect from the minimal presentation, we never get a clear shot of the monster, using all quick edits and rustled bushes.

To compensate for this lack of monster, we get plenty of slim young women in fairly revealing clothing, a handful of nipple shots... and rubber people getting butchered. If we were to ascertain the strength of the monster by how easily it gets the heart out of it’s victims, while you seemingly only see flesh being ripped, the rib cage is easily accessible, so it could tear through without really trying. Nice.

But the monster is only half the Lorelei; she is also a type of mermaid, so we have a fair redhead sauntering around in a green bikini, using her charms on her would-be killer. While she is charged with keeping the treasure of the Nibelung, along with some leopard-print swimsuit-wearing assistants and a “dwarf”, under orders from her father Wotan. Will her forbidden love triumph?

Hahaha... no. Not that Sigurd wasn’t tempted, but a man with dynamite, a radioactive dagger, and a cute blonde paramour isn’t going to let something like divine magic, a big pile of gold, and a hot redhead stop him! There’s justice to be dealt!

Okay, there’s a few things that are funny in this movie: the fact that all the women wear pale foundation ALL THE TIME even tho they are tanned; they also wear perfect makeup to bed; it takes five deaths before ANYONE hears the screams (even if they are IN THE SAME HOUSE); and apparently, one reason that professors cannot be trusted is because they don’t abide by the basic lab safety protocols.

The movie was not available in Germany until 2012, and the company that finally distributed it did a 70′s style dubbing to it, which fans of the genre must have been thankful for.

I enjoyed this movie, it kept my attention, and it reminded me that silver skulls makes for very nice decoration ion the human skin.

Just remember to put a stopper on the container of acid, okay?

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We are moving forward in time, to 2014, which saw the unexpected release of a vampire film from Iran. Today’s film, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night!

To give you an idea of what to expect, mix up Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, with Nadja, and add a sprinkling of Curtis’ Charm, and you get something of the film.

Is it good? Look at it this way: I stayed awake through sleeping medication to watch it. One of its strong points, story and direction-wise, is that it was headed entirely by a female director, Ana Lily Amirpour, who also wrote the script. You get some fascinating character development, with minimal dialogue, but high in flavor and atmosphere.

You will find all the tropes of edginess in the nightlife of Bad City: drugs, prostitution, poverty, theft. But while it could have been exploitatively (as it usually is) it only serves as a backdrop that shapes it’s different characters. 

I found fascinating that The Girl, who remains nameless throughout the film, can communicate so much purely through her presence and facial expression. In fact, a lot of the character’s story is told by non-verbal signals. There is nothing explicit in this film, which is refreshing in it’s subtlety.

While it is never said that she is a vampire (because everybody knows what fangs imply), she manages to incorporate a black cape in a modern setting in a way that makes total sense in the context. The mix of eternal youthful lifestyle and potential immortal life is a nice touch.

And come on, when was the last time that you saw a cool chick skateboard in a movie?

Arash, the male lead, comes out as a sort of mix of young Brando and James Dean, but socially awkward, and the only apparently good person in Bad City. Atti “the prostitute” is another interesting character, exploited by Saeed, her nasty pimp and drug dealer. The dialogue is sparse, but so much gets conveyed through their interaction and through non-verbal communications, that you don’t feel that there’s anything more that need be added for the story to take place.

I would highly recommend it for any viewer that is interested in somewhat more arthouse or indie films. And for cat lovers, because there’s probably the chillest fat cat in film that I’ve ever seen. But be aware, the dialogue is in Persian, so find a copy with subtitles.

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Now on day six of my venture, we move on to the late fifties, with Horror of Dracula!

After Lon Chaney Jr and Claude Rains, we’re moving on to two other big names in horror, Christopher Lee as Dracula, and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. It is the first Dracula movie that Hammer Films put out, and the first appearance of Lee as Dracula, who will reprise his role in five more films.

After several black-and-white films, it’s refreshing to see some color. Well, Technicolor, which means that the blood is bright red, and a little too thickly textured, to make sure that it stands out on the screen, and stays there, wherever it’s been applied. This is not, in itself, a flaw, more of a characteristic of the era.

Again, as with The Wolfman, the running time is relatively short (at eighty-two minutes) so they don’t waste time on long expositions and character development. Harker arrives, gets settled in, and moments after meeting the count, you find out that his presence is a cover, as he is there to kill Dracula. It’s a deviation from pretty much all other versions of the story, and it’s fine, really. It helps make the character a little more sympathetic than in the book, where he is a jingoistic, arrogant twat. But that’s the victorian era for you.

In another change from other stories, there’s no shapeshifting, hell, no bats at all; this is most likely for budgetary reasons, but then again, there’s not much of a need for such tricks, and it would distract from the plot, which is quite simple, the count is out for revenge. And if your bad guys is Christopher Lee playing Dracula, you have a presence ready-made for sexy scares.

I love the fact that they stuck with the cape, which stays with tradition, and serves to emulate bat wings. They also decided to be more practical in terms of locations, as instead of traveling to London, they are just across the border in an unnamed country (Belgium? Switzerland? France?) so that the pursuit is done by cart, no muss and fuss about sea voyages and plagues of rats. The use of a wax cylinder phonograph is cute, as it would have been the first ipod of it’s days, so only few would have access to it, and the general public would be clueless about it’s existence, as portrayed in the film by the servant’s reaction to Van Helsing’s use of it.

According to many commentators, Horror of Dracula is the best one of the series. It may be so, but I’d have to watch some of the others to compare. You don’t go watching Hammer Films for exceptional quality, but for the mixture of horror and camp, with just enough blood and gore to serve the story, and super-dramatisation to harken back to the early days of silent film.

I would recommend this type of films for the squeamish, with just enough blood to show wounds, but no geysers of gore for shock effect.

I’ll be staying with vampires for the next entry, but going to an area that we really don’t expect to see films from!

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Continuing the thirty-one days of Halloween, I’ve stepped back to the furthest in time that I’ll go for this adventure, back to the forties, with The Wolfman!

Of the classic monsters, the wolfman was pretty much the only one that I hadn’t seen. And given that in this movie, you have three fairly big names for the oldies (Lon Chaney jr., Bela Lugosi, and Claude Rains), I was due to watch it.

First off, the poster is deceptive, just like movie trailers now, showing you stuff that isn’t in the movie. In this case, we’re talking about the leading lady, who is nowhere near showing this much skin, much less cleavage in the movie. I guess that the forties were a different time, where it didn’t take much to get men’s attention.

Now, beyond that, I’d say that I’m having trouble seeing the titular wolfman as anything scary. At all. There’s weird bit of continuity that make no sense: why did Bela turn into a full wolf, but Lary turn into a wolf man? Why (and how) does he slip into a dark outfit when he turns into a wolf? I mean, for budgetary reasons, it’s cheaper than doing a full suit, but still...

By today’s standards, this movie is pretty cheesy. What I appreciate the most of this film is Chaney’s opinion on the role of the monsters in horror films: he disliked that directors just played horror for horror, and monsters had no motivations for what they did. He played his character with motivation, which is more attention to the craft than most actors have, besides obsessive method actors I guess.

It’s unfortunate that he never got away from under his father’s shadow, and that he couldn’t use the makeup art that he had learned from “the man with a thousand faces.” He also never recovered from Abbott and Costello, whom he blamed for destroying the old movie monsters. I can’t blame him, and their work have inspired generations of terrible parody films of all sorts.

My best take from this viewing is that I need to see his portrayal as Lenny in Of Mouse and Men, and I need to see his father’s Phantom of the Opera.

But for tomorrow, it’s on to another giant of horror, and Hammer Films!

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Let’s have a murder party!

Thirty-one days of Halloween continues! We’re staying with something of an oldie, the original House on the Haunted Hill.

I grew up watching Masterpiece Mystery on PBS, so I grew up with Vincent Price. I had no idea who he was at the time, besides his presence, and of course, his voice. To me, he remains one of the best actors, and humans, that have influenced my life. Finding out a few years ago that he was also a gourmet cook who wrote a cookbook just topped the sunday with extra sprinkles of awesome.

Now, I had seen the 1999 remake of this film (with Geoffrey Rush in the title role) and I enjoyed it. It went a bit more into the background story than the original, but you don’t really need much of a backstory to enjoy this film.

It comes surprisingly short at 75 minutes, in an era where studios feel obliged to put out movies at lengths that we used to expect out of James Bond films. But then again, it doesn’t feel the need to pad the story with pointless drivel to push it towards the more standard 90 minutes duration, and that’s for the better.

Five strangers are invited to spend the night in a haunted house, and if they last until morning (with the repeated tease of “alive”), they will each get $10,000. Now, that doesn’t sound like much money now (which is why in the remake, the reward is jacked to a cool one million each), but all the guests are in need of cash, for reasons.

At least one of the characters is pretty much there to raise the female demographics, because her place in the story is very inconsequential. Lean on special effects, which is fine, because there’s no need to clutter it I must say that I am glad to have seen this movie, even if it was rather tame, because it got me to check out the director, William Castle. Among other films that he directed is 13 Ghosts, of which I also saw the remake (and enjoyed.) He was the king of gimmicks, with what Alex Jones would call “crisis actors”, or carnival barker-style claims of fright and horror.

I enjoy a good b-movie once in a while, because they are fun. And I enjoyed this film, because Vincent Price. You can’t have a horror film fest without most of the classic actors, and Price is along the top 5 of the representatives of must-haves.

What’s for tomorrow? Another must! 

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No vacancies

Day three of thirty-one days of Halloween. We’re staying in the hotel business, with another classic, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

There is a good reason that he is referred to as the master of suspense. With a tight script, excellent direction and great camera work, he could pull off things that directors now would spend millions in special effects and post-production trickery.

I really preferred the treatment on mental illness in this film. It’s not used as an easy cop-out, the reveal is well-developed, with no judgement on the illness, and none of the over-dramatisation that is too often used by directors and producers when they decide that their audience is too dumb to figure things out on their own.

Unlike Nicholson, Anthony Perkins doesn’t look, or act like a psycho each time that he blinks. Norman Bates looks and acts like a dweeb, so there’s not much to tie him to the crimes; he looks and behaves more like a henchman, protecting the true villain, which, in fact, he is.

There’s no need for multiple scenes of splatter fests, no gallons of blood and gore. What little blood and wounds are seen are as minimal as can be, simply to indicate that death took place. No overexploitation of young naked women, even in their clothed states, there’s no exploitation of the female form. Okay, it was the fifties, but still, Hammer films did not shy away from showing skin, in color no less!

In a way, the poster is a misdirection, hinting at some sort of sexploitation, showing a shirtless dude and a girl in underwear, possibly to fool people looking for a cheap thrill, all of which takes place in the first five minutes. Anyone who stayed to get more ended up getting a different sort of thrills.

Another great tool that the director uses in this is the internal dialogue, especially the fictional conversation that we all have to convince ourselves that we’re doing the right thing when we’re doing something bad, or out of the ordinary. The girl is not particularly cunning, none of that whole devious temptress that we’re too used to, just someone ordinary, who sees a chance and takes it, and gets in way deeper than anything that anyone could expect to happen.

It’s a shame that Hitchcock never won an Oscar. Sure, he won a bunch of other prizes, and he got five nominations (including one for Psycho), but never a win.

It reminds me that I really have to catch up on my Hitchcocks, I have not seen anywhere near enough of them.

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Shiny, not chrome.

So, day two of thirty-one days of Halloween. and again, a classic that everybody but me has seen, The Shining.

Well, first off, I like and respect Kubrick as a director and artist. One of my favourite movies is Doctor Strangelove, and Clockwork Orange deserves it’s top position in sociopolitical commentary. On the other hand, I’ve read too many things about the human side of the guy to prevent me from idolise him as others have.

I like Stephen King as a human, but I can’t stand him as a writer. I respect his success and all, but quite frankly, I find him tedious to read, and I don’t get into his methodology. Jack Nicholson has turned out some outstanding performances, even if they too often fall unto the same schtick, the mercurial crazy man. I’m not too impressed with his personal life either, with it’s borderline pedophilia. 

That being said, my take on the movie is that I found it tedious. I get it that it’s a slow build-up to the man going buck nut, but if you pay any attention, you can see from the beginning that he was ready to snap. And not because it’s Jack Nicholson.

There were many elements of a decent story in there, just not the one that we were shown. Take out the ghosts’ actions, and you have a tense movie about mental illness. When you look at Jack’s behavior, you see a buildup of a man suffering from deep depression. And his son Danny also seem to suffer from some form of impairment, possibly dissociative disorder. On the other hand, a straight-out ghost story could well have been possible, if those elements had been fleshed out better.

Now, you may say that I just don’t get it, and that’s fine. I have seen movies that deal with both mental illnesses and ghosts that were much more effective: Stir of Echoes, and Session 9 come to mind. I would say that trimming things down and running the story in the ninety minutes range. I preferred the actors’ performances in those movies, keeping things more subdued and relatable.

What can I say, maybe I knew too much about the movie before hand, or I expected too much out of it, or I resented the psychological torture that Shelley Duvall endured at the hands of both Kubrik and Nicholson during the shoot. Maybe it was the horrendous freaking carpets all over the place. But overall, for me, it was a disappointment.

Can’t win the all.

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Well, we’re fucked now.

,Over the course of the month, I’ll be watching and posting on horror and supernatural themes, which I call “31 days of Halloween.” Most of you will probably be shocked by the movies that I’ll be watching, simply because most of you most likely saw them when you were teens; what can I say, I was into different things at the time, and I never got around to catching up.

So, to open this frightfest, I’m starting with a Carpenter classic, The Thing.

One way that you could explain the movie is, imagine that Agatha Christie wrote And Then There Were None, but with aliens. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but it gives the general feel: a bunch of people, isolated and cut off from everything, are trapped with a killer hiding among them. In a way, it’s also the basic plot of Alien, but in the antarctic, instead of in space, and no corporation’s shady dealings. And with Kurt Russel.

Given that the movie was released in 1982, you’d expect the special effects to be dated. While they do look a touch plastic, compared to what is produced now, that they didn’t use any sort of the terrible computer effects from the eighties, they hold up pretty well. What makes them work is how freaking weird and thoroughly alien they are. It’s gory and messed-up in a way that only Cronenberg could come close to emulating.

I’d say that the strongest point of the film is the soundtrack. Here, Carpenter hired soundtrack master Ennio Morricone, who delivered music that highlights the growing desperation with an oppressive, yet sober track. It’s pretty fantastic, and it delivers just the right kind of creepiness, something that is sorely lacking in most horror movies.

My one disagreement with the film is that there’s a clear night and day, which doesn’t happen in the poles. It’s all or nothing, as we see used later in 30 Days of Night. It’s a bit of nitpicking, I know, but there it is.

The ending is nice and masterful, with the protagonists ambiguously neither winning nor losing, in a way that reminds me of Hemingway's For Whom the Bells Toll.

Tho, I have to say, I was fully expecting Jack Burton to drive off into the sunset in his rig... perhaps with a space yeti?

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Shiver me timbers!

Took a couple day’s break, but here I am again. Given my latest research, I was in the mood for something somewhat light, something fantastic, you know, an adventure. Thing is, adventure movies are actually fairly hard to find nowadays, so you have to look to the past a little.

Enter, Treasure Planet.

It was an interesting blend of period fashion with scifi, and a nice use of computer animation, which I believe was among the first that Disney used. My biggest complaint about the movie was the absolutely cringe-inducing emo pop song that was supposed to make us feel for the kid... well, it made us cringe, as teenagers do.

I like that, while it had the Disney cartoonish designs for the aliens, the mother was shown in a way that was surprisingly realistic; you could actually see the aging that took place between the early childhood scene, and the later teenage period of the overworked single mother, something that is rare to see. I mean, she had darkened eyelids, instead of wrinkles, or grey hair, which would be the sort of cheap way to show the passing of the years.

Another good point about the story, is that they didn’t wrench in a love story with the kid; one takes place, but through secondary characters. There was also some pretty adult themes going on, with characters dying is fairly gruesome ways. That the whole “absent father” trope was used, but left pretty much unresolved (I fully expected him to pop up at some point) is an interesting way to deal with things as they happen in the real world.

Overall, very enjoyable, and somewhat disappointed that I didn’t watch this earlier. 

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A gambler and a samurai walk into a bar...

Sometimes, you just can’t pick a genre to watch, so you mash them up. But how to mix up westerns, samurai, Cirque du Soleil, and Cheers in one movie?

Enter Bunraku

So in a future post-world war society, where guns (and all such implements) have been bad, people have turned back to medieval weapons and martial arts to resolve conflicts, order drinks, make new friends, and run for mayor. Sort of.

It’s a stylised martial arts fantasy drama, where a nameless American drifter and a Japanese bushido practitioner meet in Cheers, er...  I mean the bar that Woody Harrelson is running to team up and take down kung fu murder gangs and lumbersexual Hellboy.

It’s an interesting film, if a little cluttered, with big name actors not really having a script that develop their characters, but with several set pieces that call back both the Stephen Chow films (especially Kung Fu Hustle) and Scott Pilgrim (all the different killers that have to be faced and beaten.

Every scene is entirely show in a studio set. Nothing was shot on location anywhere, which probably saved a lot of money to the production. The name bunraku is a type of Japanese puppet theater; the movie uses pop-up books and paper cut-outs to illustrate the fact, as well as to show the subtitled dialogue from the Japanese characters.

The director has nothing much on his resume, the co-writer and executive producer has a long resume of movies, but theater and TV that go across all genres, but none of them cerebral. I get the feeling that they got the big name cast (Josh Hartnett, Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore, Ron Perlman, with narration by Mike Patton) to try and sell the movie to American audiences, but in my opinion, were not necessary at all for the film. As much as I like most of them, I feel that the movie would have been better served by using lower-rank actors, or better yet, make it an animated movie. Keep the actors for voice acting if you want, but there’s not enough character development to require that much skill. They mostly just phone it in.

I’m not saying that it’s a bad movie; it’s entertaining, and kinda perfect as a Saturday night movie when you just want to tune out and relax for the ride, and you don’t want too much gore splettered all over the place, and you’re not in the mood for big bang gunfights.

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Everybody was kung fu surfing!

Hell has no fury like a black mama pissed. There’s nothing like a weird genre mash-up, and even better when it’s relevant to our current times. So last night’s viewing gave me Surf Nazis Must Die!

I haven’t seen a  lot of Troma films, but I hold them dear to my heart, as truly independent filmmakers, and reveling in gross, sexy, weird schlock. While many are pretty cheaply made, it bears knowing that Troma also distribute movies that would not otherwise get a North-American distributor (like the magnificent Killer Condom.) It appears to be the case for this feature, which fits the Troma spirit, but has higher production values than one would expect from the rebel production company.

The set-up is fairly simple: in the near future, Los Angeles is hit with a massive earthquake that effectively destroys the city, and abandons it to gangs... who surf, because California. And the biggest, meanest gang of them all are the Surf Nazis, led by Adolf and Eva. Through their gutter-level ideology, they kill the wrong man for standing up to them, and mama gets hers revenge.

It’s a fun little film, that can best be appreciated as BLM takes on the alt-right. You could easily substitute the gang members with current figureheads (Adolf with Spencer, etc.) and you’d get a good feel as to how potent that faction is, and how self-destructing they are; not a lot of solidarity in the gang if you show any weakness!

A great element of the film is that the two black characters are not thugs or hapless victims, they are good, upstanding citizens, who are competent in their jobs. Unlike more standard tropes, where the blacks are caricatured, in this instance, the incompetent thugs are (mostly) white. And mama takes no shit from anybody. There’s nothing super-heroic to her actions, just plain and simple, vengeful justice, using the tools at hand.

If you watched The Warriors, and wondered what it would be like if they surfed, well, this is your answer. You can watch a huge amount of the Troma catalog for free on Youtube, but remember that if they don’t sell physical copies, they can’t make new movies!

Nazis Don’t Surf!

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On a quiet misty morning

At the time that George Lucas was reviving fantasy epics (take away the spaceships, and Star Wars is basically Dungeons and Dragons), he commissioned Roger Christian for a short feature, to be packaged with his upcoming Empire Strikes Back. He had loved the script and gave him  £25,000 to shoot it.

Enter Black Angel.

source

The movie was only shown for a limited time, and then was lost for 34 years. The full master found, they showed it to convention audiences, who were amazed, and an Indiegogo campaign raised the funds to eventually turn it into a full feature (if low budget.)

If you are an epic fantasy fan, a gaming geek, or just someone who likes a good movie, Black Angel is for you. It is gorgeous. It has been compared with Valhalla Rising, and I see why, as there is little dialogue, and the land speaks entirely for itself, but Valhalla Rising was a terrible hack job. 

The much more appropriate comparison, for good reasons, is Excalibur. It looks like it should have been part of the same movie, and for good reasons: Excalibur’s director, John Boorman , made everyone in the crew watch it. The influence is pretty obvious.

His other influence was on Empire Strikes Back, and they used is slow-motion fight technique for the duel on Dagobah. In a way, they reproduced the conflict, with adjustments tailored to the story.

Shot in Scotland’s countryside, it compensates for his limited budget and crew but using the location to tell the story. The place is so silent, so otherworldly with it’s ruins, moss, vines and mist, you’re unsure as to whether this is a dream, or perhaps a trial in the afterlife. Now that it’s out in the public (you can catch it on Youtube), I feel that more directors should watch it, before they decide to douse their movies with CGI; Black Angel with more, with shoe strings, than most blockbusters with a hundred times the budget.

A most excellent watch!

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That did not go as planned

Like I’ve said previously, there are a lot of movies, classics, that I have yet to see. Some that I will be pleasantly surprised, and some that will make me dread existence.

And then, there’s Plan 9 from Outer Space.

source

Considering all the movies that I’ve seen, and some of my studies, it is a little surprising that I had not seen this... effort. I must say that I had seen Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, which allowed me to appreciate quite a bit the complete incompetence of the man.

Of Ed Wood, I’d give him his best traits: enthusiasm, and genuine love of movies. That he still managed to crank so many movies is testament to his dedication. It is somewhat engrossing to watch, in the same way that you can’t look away from who is going to obviously face-plant in both a horrible and hilarious way.

What surprised me the most about this movie is that it’s not as bad as I expected it to be. Probably because I already knew about his shoe-string budget, and his lack on anything resembling competence. Confusing dialogues, nonsensical editing, long-winded explanations that make no sense... the biggest sin that I can attribute to this film is the criminal under-use of Vampira. She is quite literally nothing but eye candy, and does absolutely nothing but standing there; he could have used a cardboard cut-out to pretty much the same effect.

The best way that I could describe this film is, a bunch of high school students put together a play written and directed by an eight-year-old, who caught bits of films (but never a complete movie) and spends a lot of time reading under the covers with a flashlight. About the only things missing in this are pirates and ninjas, most likely because he couldn’t afford them.  

While a bigger budget would have done nothing to save this (or most likely, any other) movie, I have to wonder what kind of madness he would have come up with with the tools and the resources that were afforded Uwe Boll. In my personal opinion, Boll made worse movies than Wood (I mean seriously, have you seen In the Name of the King???)

Having seen this, I’m kinda fascinated. I want to watch some of his other work, maybe track down those weird erotica he wrote. I mean, if I can watch Red Spectacles, I should be able to endure that... right?

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Captain, my captain

If you were to ask ten-year-old me what would be the coolest job ever, I would have answered space pirate. Hell, ask most ten-year-olds the same question, and you’ll probably get the same answer. I mean even now, how best to sell an anime to someone who isn’t keen on animes? SPACE PIRATE.

And the coolest space pirate of them all was Captain Harlock.

This was my favourite show when I was a kid. A few years ago, Toei Animation released a big budget full feature film that takes up the story a hundred years later. I was a little apprehensive going in, because how often are out childhood memories crushed by later viewings, or by bad remakes?

Well, my fears were squashed by this gorgeous movie. Are there differences with the childhood incarnation? Of course, but then again, with animation being much more advanced now, they could add a ton of details. Gone are the midget crewmen, replaced by, well, common-sized people. The other change is that while the captain is still fond of ramming other ships, there’s no longer that big jack-knife blade that cuts ships in half. Not that he needs it.

The graphics are awesome, the story is also excellent, with crazy technology and massive space weapons. There’s still a space elf, he still has his weird-ass bird, and his laser sword. One cool thing is that the crew now wear armored suits in battle, and they look like Big Daddy from Bioshock. If Big Daddy brought a battleaxe to a gun fight.

And the ship. THE SHIP. The Arcadia is the best spaceship, bar none. In nerdland, there’s the eternal argument as to who would win in a fight between the Entreprise and a Star Destroyer; well the Arcadia would eat them both for breakfast, and teabag a Borg cube.

“-Captain, the fleet is assembled in a battle line, there’s too many of them. Do we change course?

-Go straight through them, they’re in my way.”

Now THAT is how to lead a crew. I am greatly satisfied with the result, it’s a great movie. It can be appreciated both by old nerds like me, as well as newcomers, who are not all that versed in the mythos. The Arcadia is the V8 Interceptor of space, and that’s awesome. You see that big bastard popping out of a massive cloud of space smoke (space smoke!) and you go weak in the knee.

I will watch this again, guarantied! And you should too.

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Dead from the get go

Some directors have to plod along for years, doing menial jobs, or playing second fiddle before they can get their ideas going and forge a unique style; many never do, and do a serviceable job directing TV shows; some are so unique and horrible at the same time, that they somehow keep getting tapped to direct movies (looking at you, Uwe Boll.)

And then, you have a few that power through the learning phase and become identifiable from day one. Today’s feature: Within the Woods.

By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37443141

Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell go a long way. How long? They went to school together, and they shot this proof-of-concept for what will three years later become Evil Dead.

Having looked at the budget ($1,600), it’s still pretty impressive what they’ve managed to do for a half-an-hour film. I have seen full-length features that could not do a tenth of what they did, and they were using professional equipment and actors.

You would not mistake the cast as professionals (tho again, professional pictures have had much worst performances), and Bruce Campbell has not yet matured into the magical man that he is today (he actually looks rather dorky in this.) But there are several direction choices that make the performance of the lead (who is NOT The Bruce in this one) much more believable; I’m somewhat reminded of Shelley Duvall in The Shinning, as Ellen Sandweiss spends most of her time trying her best to defend herself from the evil forces that were awakened. Her catatonic state at the end is much more realistic than most survivors who seemingly just live happily ever after. She will later on be cast as Cheryl, Ash’s sister in pretty much every Evil Dead incarnation that followed.

There are several elements of the movie that hint at Raimi’s later image: The POV camera of the monster, the look of the monster, the isolated settings. There are also typical tropes, with the indian burial grounds, the curse, and people who should know better, but are just oblivious. The whole “cursed indian burial ground” trope even predates Amityville Horror, which came out in 1979, while Within the Woods was made in 1978.

While the burial ground does not come back later when Evil Dead gets made, pretty much the rest of the story remains. Except that Bruce had finally grown into his chin, and now becomes the lead. It could have been interesting to keep a woman in the lead, especially if she is a hapless, not helpless protagonist; a lot of directors and screenwriters seem to mix these two up.

One thing that works interestingly into it’s favour is the bad quality of the footage. It’s a bad VHS copy, mangled and badly lighted, but it lends a certain found footage quality that makes more sense than most found footage films that were set up that way on purpose. It helps hide any bad makeup, and in fact, keeps a near-Alien feeling, and the monster is never seen clearly until the very end. 

I am pleased that I got to see this pocket-change film, and glad to see the seeds of the talent both of Raimi and The Bruce. I actually wished that it was longer.