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

Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key - 1972

 Woof.  Mouthful.  Clunk-Ometer 9/10.  Not only is it a mouthful, it has completely nothing to do with the plot of the movie as far as I can tell?

The film has been released under several alternative titles, including Gently Before She Dies, Eye of the Black Cat, and Excite Me.

Eye of the Black Cat, because as unconnected as it is, there are allusions in this movie to an evil black cat, which although it has nothing to do with anything, I guess is there?  Excite Me is a decent title.

A reclusive writer and his wife have their maid killed by someone and immediately hide her body because of fear of the police.  Then, the writers niece Floriana arrives and senses something off.  Perhaps for legitimate reasons or perhaps to find out what's going on, Floriana seduces the writers wife and then gets involved with a local racer.  Its a ton of characters I didn't even mention and a lot of dialogue in this convoluted movie with an equally or perhaps more convoluted name.

I've seen this title kick around on various lists, of Italian thrillers of this time, cult movies, etc.  The main actress Edwige Fenech was a sex symbol of her time and has a rockin bod, and was in the somewhat less clunky named The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh.

Confusing plot, lots of stuff going on, some good sex scenes and some decent deaths.  Its a good one, but definitely a vibe movie.  I'll give it 3 stars.

What Have They Done to Your Daughters? - 1974

 

More accurately translated title:  The Police Ask for Help

Clunky man.  The pluralization of daughters, the length of the title obviously.  Why not call it The Police Ask for Help?  

This movie is about a prostitution ring that has a string of deaths happen, and the ambiguous guy on a motorcycle who may be doing it.  It s a police procedural sort of as well, and  is part of the poliziottesco thing which I have touched on here, namely I believe in the Swinging Seventies set.

Its a fine enough story and there's some deaths and some nudity, its mainly a lot of dialogue, and you know, its all whatever I guess.  I don't know what to say about it really.  The poster is better than the movie, I love the extreme cop guy screaming in the background, this looks like a badass surreal exploitation movie, which this is decidedly not.  I'll give it like a two I guess.

For the name, it can get a 2/10 on the Clunk-Ometer

The Slasher ... Is the Sex Maniac! - 1972

 Also known as Penetration and So Sweet, So Dead

"So what motive is there for these crimes?" "I don't know.  Perhaps it could be traced to a homosexual." Reasonable, if you ask me.

I'm tracking down and watching what I'm going to call "clunky named Grindhouse flicks".  The Killer Must Kill Again (or as I saw it, The Dark is Death's Friend) counts.  These should have incredibly convoluted, bizarre and otherwise awful names that you have to think about when you say them.  Sure, its a granted that a lot of these are a case of translations.  But, you know, not all of them.  This is a relatively short list that is hard to search for, so we'll see how it goes.

I like the title of this a lot.  I like how its like, a revelatory statement.  "Oh my god, Fred!  I've got it!  The slasher... is the sex maniac!"  You know, if you have a sex maniac on the loose and a slasher on the loose, its a good bet they're the same.  I mean, maybe this was not known in 1972, but I feel like the logic makes sense.

A decidedly not sex maniac is on the loose, killing women who are cheating on their husbands.  The killer is clad in black with a fedora and a women's stocking pulled over his face to make his face obscured.  Its an awesome look, like a mix between Freddy Kruger and I Know What You Did Last Summer (somewhat clunky name there, actually).  The lead cop begins to track him down, it goes from there.

A proto slasher this definitely is.  Killing women with plenty of nudity, a masked killer, a body count, moral related deaths.  Its more of a slasher than a Giallo, as this is much more of a police story than the norm of that genre.  

This is a good, fun, fast paced entry with plenty of kills and nudity to keep you interested.  It isn't that clunky of a title, I'll give it like a 4/10 on the "Clunk-ometer".

The Dark is Death's Friend - 1975

 Also known as The Killer Must Kill Again.

Not to bring up Video Nasty again, but this is crazier than the friggin' Mansion of the Doomed.  This had as much blood as that and this has a rape scene, so you know, why was this not a Nasty?

I want to try to find a picture of the excessive 70s house that's in this movie.  With a yellow living room that had weird see through plastic columns and designs everywhere, this was something else.  It made me realize that a lot of the Nasties did not feel specifically 70s... or early 80s?  Maybe it was the ridiculous stuff going on in those movies, or maybe just incidental.  Something to think about.

This movie has a killer on the loose get tapped by a man to get rid of the man's wife.  The serial killer tracks her down, rapes and kills her.  He puts the body in his trunk, and soon enough his car gets stolen!  Now the killer is after the people who stole his car, while in the meantime, the police are getting involved in the murder of the wife.

This movie was more of a thriller than a traditional Giallo.  It has no fetishization feel nor wonky electronic score, and instead almost feels like a character study.  In that, it is fun and it moves okay, there is actually not a lot to say about it beyond that early 70s house.  Unfortunately that doesn't retain throughout the movie, otherwise I'd give it an entire star higher.  As is it can have a 2.5

Clunky name, huh?  I give it a 2/10 on the Clunk-ometer

Mansion of the Doomed - 1976

 Also known as The Terror of Dr. Chaney; also known as Massacre Mansion, Eyes, Eyes of Dr. Chaney and House of Blood.  From Wikipedia:  While not prosecuted for obscenity, the film was seized and confiscated in the U.K. under Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 during the video nasty panic.

I did not do this on purpose.  What I did was try to find a random movie from 1976 to watch, as I scrolled back through this blog and stumbled upon my goal to watch 76 movies from 1976.  I forgot about it, and no, that is not my next goal.  But crazy huh?  That I accidentally watched another Nasty?

Mansion of the Doomed stars Gypsy's love Richard Baseheart.  Richard is a doctor who has a daughter who has lost her eyes and is now sad and defeated.  He does what any good dad would do, he begins to rip out other peoples eyes to try to restore hers, except it keeps not working.  But he doesn't give up that easy!

They came after this movie?  Yo, this would basically be PG-13 now.  It has some eye gouging and it has some makeup effects to depict people with ripped out eyes.  That's it.  Its very tame.

Long, talky, with okay effects, and nothing else worth noting.  You might forget what happened in the first 20 minutes when you're only at minute 25.  Welcome to the Machine by Pink Floyd was in this??  I must've missed it.  For mostly that fact I guess I'll give this 2 stars.