Adam and Eve - 1983

 Where does one start with this particular pic?

Man. I thought I’d seen it all. This is, as stated before recently even, why I do this. I seek things out to discover an Italian schlocky adventure film about Adam and Eve from the 80s with nudity and talking snakes and fucking and lunacy. 

Adam is created and makes Eve from sand. They live in innocence until Eve discovers the apple tree with a tempting snake. Once she and Adam eat the apple, they promptly fuck, which puts them in clothes and forces them out of Eden. They wander until they reach a tribe of savages who confront them. 

With an 80s soundtrack and all “giving a shit” thrown to the wind, this is a regular romp. Movies this fun are few and far between. It’s purely insane in a so bad it’s good way while being keyword entertaining. Not that much truly happens, but the plot is linear, which really helps it. 

Hard to describe, it’s just so much a product of its time and it’s so genuine. I texted my buddy last night about The Evil Dead and how the remakes are so obviously not having fun.  You can feel the energy behind the camera in Evil Dead which vanishes when you get to the 2013 one.  This movie, you can feel the energy in this as well.  And it's infectious.

One of the more memorable movies I've seen recently, I loved this.  It has Mark Gregory from The Bronx Warriors and Thunder Warrior in it, and he's a compelling presence on screen.  Made it significantly more fun, I'll say that much.  I give this 4.5 stars.

The Last Island - 1990

 1990??!!  I was going to guess like 1981!  My god.

I put on a movie that said desert island and end of the world, and I'm like, hey cool.  I liked The Quiet Earth.  I liked Miracle Mile.  I liked Cast Away.  What I don't like though....endless dialogue.

I mean, dear lord is this boring.  There's a decent looking aftermath of a plane crash, and that might be the only good thing about it as people stand around and I guess "drama" happens?  Yo, this is is a boring as fuck film that I genuinely turned off, but will review anyways,

Attack Force Z - 1982

 Also known as Z Men.  No, I'm not still in New Zealand.

But, I did put on this Australian war drama with Mel Gibson and Sam Neill basically because it had the two of them in it, and also because one sentence synopsis always sound pretty decent at minimum.  Australians in China fighting Japanese?  Good cast?  I'm in!

The thing this doesn't tell you is that its a long feeling talky drama about more hide and go seek warfare than action.  Mel Gibson leads a group who find a small village and descend upon a house where Chien Hua lives with a bunch of neighborhood kids and they hang out there waiting for the Japanese.  The Japanese have been in control around these parts and have been oppressive so the village is willing to help them, and a romance even blooms between Chien and one of the soldiers. 

Almost more interesting than this review was the thought I had in my head as I watched...  Is this my least reviewed genre?  I mean, within a certain scope right, like I probably haven't done much musicals or comedies, but like I don't stick to a format and war films probably fit right in with my format.  Yet I've done very little of them.  And I actually really like war movies, I used to watch The Thin Red Line and stuff like all the fucking time.  

This really hits a big road block as the men hang out with the kids and the relationships build.  Maybe, maybe if you're in the right mood, but still....its done better elsewhere.  I want to give it basically credit for the cast and some mild tension moments, so it can have like a 1.5

Blood Run - 1994

 Mid 90s serial killer looking thing? I’ll take it. 

I start Blood Run and in the first 10 minutes theres a nude chick using a shower head to maybe masturbate, followed by a lesbian scene. Yes, this is made for tv softcore feeling trash cinema. At its purest. 

I watched this in part with my gf, who’d never seen anything like this before. She was genuinely shocked, which I loved. And for “what this is”, this movie is great. With a variety of faces you’ll know from one thing, like the druggie mom from The Crow, the chick from Hellraiser, the dude from Cyborg Cop, theres even another chick from Children of the Corn 4!

The cast is an immediate elevation, and then the nudity. Unfortunately it’s a talky cop centered drama about a serial killer and not a slasher. He is on some case, meets The Crow’s mom, she goes topless(?!) and theres some killings or something I guess thrown in there. 

They just absolutely do not make this kind of thing anymore. Super low brow and cheap, softcore, late night, half drunk, half chub, dumb dad entertainment. This is the kinda crap I remember my dad watching, this and the stupidest comedies you’d ever think of. 

I kinda loved it, but it’s boring as sin still, and theres better versions of this. But I’m giving it at least a 2 for what it gets right. 

Godmonster of Indian Flats - 1973

 Mildly clunky name...  am I still doing that?  3/10

Godmonster of Indian Flats I'd oddly heard of before, and not seen.  Perhaps on the C or D tier of known horror movies involving giant monsters or some list similar to that is this bizarre, low budget sheep monster movie.  Is it weird that this is not the first sheep attack movie I've reviewed?  Yes that's right, and I have to imagine Psycho Sheep of Butte was at least mildly inspired by this.

There's a new black Sheriff in a small cowboy town, and that creates a bit of problems as there is also a big, decent looking sheep monster that is going around causing trouble.  This goes on in this kinda plotless, whatever movie.

Quite slow, quite long feeling, this is fine borderline bad or good at parts, depending on your mood.  Amateur as fuck, where theres a shot in the movie that’s got a hose shooting up water into the frame if the shot… like come on guys. That’s so obvious, so distracting. But when the giant mutated sheep is preying on kids… best shit ever. 

On a low energy Monday this is a fine time waster to zone out to and tune in for the cool parts. 1.5 stars

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - 1964

 Perhaps one of the more famous clunky titles of all time?  Is this the best known?  I give it a 10/10 on the clunk-ometer.

This movie has always been a bit of an anomaly.  As I grown in age and movie versed-ness, I have a grown profound depth of appreciation for Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, Eyes Wide Shut and Killer's Kiss.  Naturally, love for him began where it likely always does with 2001, Clockwork Orange, The Shining and Full Metal Jacket - sort of the "big four" of the Kubrick movies.  I've seen Paths of Glory and Spartacus each about 3 times, and The Killer I really love as well.  I used to own Strangelove, and I took it as like...B+ tier Kubrick.  I found it very funny and the production of course is incredible.  We'll see with this rewatch.  So in a way, it leaves Lolita in a bizarre section for me of underseen.  Appreciated, but relatively unknown. 

This movie was my introduction to Peter Sellers and is perhaps an infamous dark comedy.  Just out of curiosity it made me wonder, what are the first examples of satire and dark comedy in film in general?  And honestly I feel like the genre was left alone after the early satire of silent comedies like Modern Times and The Dictator.  It made me remember that I thought recently with the film One Battle After Another...  give me more satire.  It can be so transcendent, so biting, so smart, so funny.  It can really be the best.

As a plot recap, a General exceeds his authority and issues a strike command on Russia.  This command will code all further communications to need a three letter decrypter.  We follow a specific plane on its route to Russia, we follow the General and his assistant in a dialogue where we expose the decision to exceed authority, and lastly we go to the President in his war room with his officials as they work through the problems and the precarious situation.

Starkly dark, I forgot about the depth of the insanity of General Ripper played by Sterling Hayden.  I forgot about how funny the President and his conversation - one sided - with the Russian president is.  And the comedy acting from George C. Scott is tone perfect.  As I watched it, I began to think that this is maybe the best performances in any Kubrick film, which is really saying something.  

Also, did I forget this or did it fly over my head...  Ripper clearly says his reasons for doing this, for endangering the world and for throwing everything to chaos.  He describes fatigue after intercourse, in a devoid of emotion way where we can see that here is a man that evaluated himself in such little insignificant ways that when he sensed his partner was unsatisfied he decided to nuke the world.  Normal aging and normal libido issues of a pathetic male will destroy the world, and that moment is so dark along with his subsequent suicide is such a crazy dark moment in this film that I forgot about.

So on rewatch it's like, is this only because it's a comedy that this is not lumped in with the other big ones, especially 2001?  I mean, this is absolutely A+ tier.  This is one of the best satires, one of the best comedies, its shot incredibly, and its astonishingly well production-designed.  They infamously got in trouble for being TOO accurate, which is hilarious.  Maybe it is just going to show that comedy is always looked down on, in some ways.  But this is for sure a five star film,

The Spirit of the Beehive - 1973

 I saw this on a list of underrated 70s art films, so last night I threw it on with no info on it.

The Spirit of the Beehive begins with sort of vague meandering slice of life style flavors in the middle of nowhere, Spain.  Young Ana and her sister are running around having a carefree life while other things are happening in this broken, isolated town in which they live.  It shows something that when the movie Frankenstein comes to town, virtually everyone shows up, and watch the movie.  Ana seems specifically affected by the scene where Frankenstein kills a young girl in the original 30's film, and we go from there.

 There's multiple ways of looking at movies, and this is very much the type of movie that points out that one must look in multiple ways.  There is "what is the movie about" and then there is "what happens in the movie".  What happens in this movie is that Ana is told Frankenstein is real, that he lives in an abandoned stone hut nearby, and that Ana goes there looking for him.  She secludes herself more and more, eventually meeting some sort of criminal in the hut and befriending him.  She self isolates more and runs away, and is found and has some sort of newfound distance from her family and social situation.

That is only part of the story, because "what this is about", well that's the real story.  And honestly, I don't know, which is why its effecting, underrated, and has stood the test of time.  Our minds and how they work, how we are different from our siblings and parents and societies for no explicable reason.  Childhood, fantasy, obsession, and choice.  Chance, luck, circumstance.  Emotions, otherness, maturity, helplessness, fear and anxiety...  Its just a thoroughly emotional movie without barely a single sign of outward emotion.

Nearly censored but deemed to be too boring and let slip through the cracks, the movie is also about Spain as a crucial moment politically, and since I know very little about that situation it goes over my head.  But there is true pain here, raw and unfocused, fearful and hopeful, pure and fractured.  Its certainly a vibe film, one you don't go to for a three act structure.

One of the more affecting but vague things I've seen, I'd joyfully mention this in the same conversation with Tarkovsky and some of Kurosawa.  Its a masterpiece.  5 stars.

Faust - 1926

 So I finished some bullshit on youtube recently and in its bizarre algorithm it suggested Faust to me.  Okay, why not?

Faust is a great example of German expressionism, and a true silent cinema classic.  It is about an hour 45 minutes of incredible black and white, silent cinematography complete with title cards and a piano soundtrack.  It is the classic story of Faust, the old man who is in a awful, poor and destitute city where he has been fairly useless to stop this as an alchemist.  He burns his books and at the last minute sees a page telling him that if he were to summon the dark forces, the dark forces could help in his quest.

This is so visionary and so awesome.  I mean, the beginning alone is 20ish minutes is some of the most incredible cinematography of all time, with many moments of me sitting here wondering "did it ever really get better than this?  In all of cinema?"  The middle part slows, and under a modern lens it drags a little bit, but there is still so much very cool effects and cinema and LIGHTING!  The lighting in this, my god, have we as movie watchers completely gotten away from lighting as an effect?!

It made me think of a realization, albeit basic, that I had recently.  I was bemoaning the loss of cinema and how people just watch shit on TikTok or whatever now, and at that time I realized: movies and stuff are only about 100 years old. This movie especially points that out, and it points out how much the art form has already changed in that time.  From black and white, jerky hand-cranked cameras, silent, title cards, rear and front projection etc, to 1930s "Technicolor", to 70s "Sensaround", to 3D, to now 4DX and all the many things in between that I haven't mentioned.  This art form has been altered and redefined and reworked so many times, and in such a short time frame, who am I to push back against it moving online and embracing a more homemade, shorter length trend?  There is barely a "norm" in cinema to even talk about when one says "cinema is not like this, it's like _______"

Like I said, this movie has a lengthy middle segment.  Basically Faust gives up on saving the world pretty quick in, and decides to just become a youth again.  Once he is transformed, he falls in love with a woman he sees and resets his focus on her.  That cues like an hour of more situational comedy, where Mephisto is screwing over Faust and his love while Faust is twisting Mephisto to his will.  It drags a little bit here, because it just feels unconnected to anything before or after, but it's fine.

I don't know if cinema truly did get better than this.  Its unlikely.  The look of this reminds one that cinema is truly a visionary artform, which we sometimes forget about when the newest thing is action, adventure, sci fi, animation, etc. It would be interesting if like in painting or poetry or some other artforms that exist, if the "old style" or "original" version of this still existed, in any real way.  If there were new black and white, title card, silent, hand-cranked films.  Maybe there are?  I wonder what they're like.

This is a vision, a masterpiece, an incredible object.  I dunno how many people are dialing it up 100 years later, but if you do, you're in for a treat.

Missile X: The Neutron Bomb Incident - 1979

 Also known as The Tehran Incident.

Well which incident was it?  Make up your mind already.  I am still having a hard time finding these things with clunky named and I might give up, but not before I review this Peter Graves movie with like, eh a mild 3/10 on the clunk-ometer.

Peter Graves is sent to Tehran because some madman there has a missile.  That's where we begin, and it's pretty simple as he gets linked up against the bad guy from 007's The Spy Who Loved Me.  John Carradine is in there, and its about as complicated as the alternate name here, The Tehran Incident.  In other words, straight forward you get it level.

Felt like a made for TV movie, and virtually nothing to say about it.  If you like background level sorta "stuff to put on" you might do this one on a blah Monday.  2 stars.

I think I have a few more in me here, but I'm going to drop in some random movies I've done that are on the Clunky Names meter, and a /10 rating of their clunky ass unwieldy name:

Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later 6/10

Quantum of Solace 5/10

I'll Kill You...I'll Bury You...I'll Spit on Your Grave Too! 10/10

The Serpent and the Rainbow 4/10

π - 10/10

Second Sight: A Love Story 3/10

F. Scott Fitzgerald and 'The Last of the Belles' 4/10

Click:  The Calendar Girl Killer 3/10

Prototype X29A 4/10

Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds 8/10

Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter 8/10

Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake 3/10

Stuff Stephanie in the Incinerator 5/10

The Brain from Planet Arous 2/10

Samoa, Queen of the Jungle - 1968

 I'm not having an easy time finding free movies with clunky names here, to tell the truth.  A lot of them are maybe too obscure to find online for free, definitely are not on the streamers.

No, The Case is Happily Resolved I cannot find.  Sssssss, the snake movie I oddly enough remember from my childhood is not on YouTube, how can these be that hard to find?

This title is mainly clunky because they thought they were being real sly by dropping in a, authentic aboriginal word from a culture, the island of Samoa.  They named their jungle queen after the Oceania island and presumably felt real proud, giving themselves a pat on the back.   1/10 on the clunk-ometer.

Beefy alpha male Clint is the leader of a group of disparate folks wandering through Borneo.  They see some stock footage of alligators and snakes, they encounter a cheetah or something, and then they find diamonds.  Samoa has the hots for Clint and want his jizz on her face while in the meantime a warring tribe is out to threaten Samoa and the guys.

This is barely over an hour and it doesn't hurt too bad.  The stock footage is always fun, and the rest of it really feels more like a 50's movie with hammy stage acting and barely-there plot and complication.  This is 1968?!  It feels like something from the 40s with how small scale and basic it is.  For that I'll dock it a star, and just land on a 1.5

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? - 1964

 Dear god with this title huh?!  I give it a 10/10 on the Clunk-ometer.

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (Mixed Up from now on) was introduced to me on MST3K, and for my review I chose to rewatch the MST episode.

Alternately known as The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies and as The Incredibly Strange Creatures.  This is returning to Ray Dennis Steckler, who directed The Hollywood Strangler, and I did not remember I coined a term in that review called Sub-Z: extremely low budget, below Z grade movies made with no apparent cinematic language.

A few things have always stood out to me in this movie; number one non ironically I think Steckler in this movie under the name Cash Flagg is a fuckin proto fashion icon.  It's 1964 and everyone else looks like it, while he rocks a black hoodie and black jeans and a short nondescript haircut, and seriously, he looks specifically modern!  This look did not age at all.

Secondly, this movie is so dizzying and so all over the place that it has a bizarre appeal to it that I actually really like.  Some of these that one sees multiple times sort of grow on you, and with MST3K I've rewatched a movie like Manos or Red Zone Cuba or whatever so many times that I start liking the actual movie therein, and this is one of them.  Yeah, its a TON of filler of bad dancing and singing, and yeah, its relatively plotless, but somehow, it just works for me?  Can't say why.

The two segments of the story here take almost an hour to join.  A gypsy woman who can enchant others to do her bidding has people that she takes over kill people, or commit other evil acts.  Meanwhile, Cash Flagg and friends mill around and do nothing until they wander to her circus and get taken over.  Also meanwhile, endless performing arts including comedy, songs, and light T and A stripteases.

This is a weird, weird watch that one really has to be in the mood for.  I like it for what it is, and I might be the only one.  It cannot get a good rating, but I like it.  I'll give it a 3.5