Invisible Agent - 1942

Recently I wandered around the library in Chinatown, perusing the whatever selection of DVDs, Blu-Rays and what have you.  I had gotten off work early, as is often the case during these holidays, and I was just killing some time.  I picked up a Universal DVD pack, five Invisible Man features on one boxset.  Win!

It was never my intention to watch all of these films, fuck, I would've been happy not watching ANY of them but simply having the DVD at my house with the option to watch them.  But I was in a weird mood last night, I poured myself an oatmeal stout, and I put on Invisible Agent, chosen at random from the DVD set.

I haven't seen anything old in a really long time.  I realize that I've been marathoning 70's films, I've been slamming down slashers like they're going out of style (and truly, aren't they?) and I've been having fun with recent films.  I haven't gone back to the black and white, or the 40's especially, in a long motherfucking time.  So this was nice to have a quick, fun, simple film, right towards the end of the original "golden age" of horror.

This was the fourth in the Invisible Man series, at this point we had seen the Invisible Man, Invisible Man Returns, the Invisible Woman, and now this.  In this, we have the supposed grandson of the original Invisible Man who is now in hiding, and in the beginning he's tracked down by government agents, trying to get the invisible formula.  We're at war, see, and the Nazis are up to no good.  We need to infiltrate behind enemy lines, and only an invisible man can do it.  Invisible Man Frank Raymond quickly agrees, and barely 15 minutes into the movie he's already invisible and parachuting in over Nazi Germany!

I had a thought as I was walking to work today, that in a way this is the Marvel movie of it's day.  No wonder Universal tried to reboot the classic monster series again!  This is quite literally taking the established character, who'd had a origin movie and maybe a sequel or two, and then you're pitting him against a superpowered villain.  In this case it's Nazis instead of say Thanos, but the construct is pretty much the same.

Invisible Agent is pretty slow, and it relies heavily on gimmick and eye candy, but then so does the Marvel cinematic universe.  We watch in spellbound glee as a cup of coffee drinks itself, as clothes get put on a person we can't see.  We wonder, when anyone's talking to him, where he is.  Every time a door is opened we don't know if the Invisible Man came in, or left, etc.  It's for sure kitschy, but it is fun nonetheless.  Even in the effects driven world of 2018, where a movie like Aquaman comes out and they probably built a total of three sets and the rest was all CGI, Agent still has it's draw.

At less than 80 minutes, Agent flies by, and even with a lot of unnecessary dialogue, it still flows by quick as a waterfall.  It's harmless fun, extremely of it's time, and fun in that way.  I'll give it 3.5 stars!  Why not right.

Oh!  I do want to mention one thing.  Again, product of it's time.  They have Peter Lorre, a decidedly white man, playing a Japanese general in the film.  And seriously, I didn't even know until the very end he was supposed to be Japanese.  I mean, I know it was commonplace at the time to do this sort of casting, but sometimes they'd use makeup, or do other terrible effects like that.  Nothing.  They just thought with maybe a very ambiguous accent people would think he was Japanese.  And honestly, it's horrible.  It's ridiculous.  But hey, 1942.  I guess that's how it goes.

Jason X - 2001

I was doubtful if I was going to review this movie or not.  Sure, I have reviewed a lot of the Friday the 13th series and I was always against reviewing any of them at all, because I didn't think they fit the "nature of this blog".  But who am I kidding.  There's no reason to do that.  No one cares.

Jason X was scripted and made while Freddy Versus Jason was being conceived and in development hell.  There was a brief stint when they wanted to make another Jason movie to I dunno, remind the audience who he was.  They got a random assortment of people involved including director David Cronenberg, and at some point the idea came up, take Jason to space.  Okay.  Sure?

Jason X is by no means a real movie.  This isn't real, right?  This is some alternate dimension where the Jason series would've made sense going to space.  Of course, this wasn't the first nor the last horror movie to randomly take it's franchise and it's killer to space.  Hell, I even reviewed the Leprechaun movie where the Leprechaun goes to space.  Ugh.  Why, god?

Jason X in the beginning is in the far off year of 2010 when we have technology to effortlessly freeze people with cryogenics.  He is killing people at the cryo lab and eventually main girl Rowan gets him locked in a cryogenics freezing chamber.  He's frozen along with her, fast forward to the year 2455 and now it's the future where Earth is gone, Earth 2 is around, and amazing space technology exists.  They bring Rowan back to life and of course Jason comes back to life soon enough as well, and now Jason is on the loose again!  In space!

And...it's not that bad.  It's pretty lame and stupid obviously, but it's dumb enough to be fun, and it is for sure making fun of itself.  Eventually there's a robot that kills Jason, and these robot ants rebuild Jason into "Uber Jason" and he's got a metal body and a new mask, and it's somewhere around this point you just accept your lot in life, and take it for the nacho cheese flavored dipping sauce it is.  This is by NO MEANS made to be taken seriously, and in a way it's almost making fun of the very idea of Jason just by existing.  It shares a similar feel to the self aware horror movies that had been coming out previously like Scream.  It also reminds me of the huge departure made with Slumber Party Massacre II.  But that was a significantly bad film, whereas this one is more baffling.

It's hard to rate this.  This is not a horror movie, nor is it a proper sequel.  I could be extremely harsh on it, yelling about it's lack of really keeping with the series.  But then, I would have to throw Jason Goes to Hell, probably Manhattan, and definitely Jason VII and probably Jason V under the bus as well.  I think it's only fair to say that most likely, this is not canon.  Hell, what the fuck does canon even mean anymore?  Does anyone really care?  I sure fucking hope not.

I guess it can have a middle of the road 2.5 stars.  Not sure what else to give it.  It does entertain, it's for sure one to watch with friends while you drink and smoke.  Not a movie to ever critique as an actual film, that's for fucking sure.

Blood Massacre - 1991

I'm following up on the dangling threads that I've promised to no one really, and Don Dohler is one of those threads.  I said that I would check out all the films he's made since I've enjoyed several of them, and now I'm closing that gap with Blood Massacre.

Don Dohler completed this film in 1987, and I'm stealing right from the IMDb trivia right now:  "When filming on the movie almost completed, director Don Dohler sent what had been made up until that point to his investors (as a show of progress). The investors then requested that he re-shoot the entire movie on lower-quality film. When Dohler completed the film the second time, the investors took the master-print and disappeared. They (and the film) resurfaced years later, when they attempted to present the film with a different title (and poor-quality editing, as well as unnecessary padding). After that, the director begrudgingly released the film, and made no attempts to fix what the investors ruined; he said in an interview that he wasn't in the mood to, '...shoot the film a third time.'"

That sucks.  So basically, some people tried to steal this film away from him.  And I watch this, and I honestly really, really wonder why.  Why the fuck would you try to steal this movie?  Now, I loved my intro to Dohler.  I watched The Galaxy Invader and I liked it for it's kooky weirdness and backwoods creativity.  It was amateur but embraced it and the pacing was good.  Nightbeast was even better, dialed up in cheesiness factor and bizarre qualities.  The Alien Factor was fun and strange, his first movie. Fiend was slower and less engaging, a sort of quasi-thriller/mystery where neither of those elements existed and instead it was replaced by inept half ideas.  Which leads to this film.

Blood Massacre sounds on paper like a decent idea.  A group of petty criminals pull a robbery at a video store (?) that goes wrong and they escape.  They hijack a woman on the road and force her to take them to her house.  They hold her and her family hostage, but there's a surprise in store for these criminals!  The family is actually all cannibals, and soon its a game of who's hunting who!

However, the problems with this are multiple.  When it actually comes to intrigue and acting, these are not Dohler's strengths.  Makeup, effects, and bizarre are Dohler's strengths.  If you actually sit through this movie, you'll get the treat of a nice makeup shot in the very end, but other than that, it relies heavily on bad actors, an undeveloped script, and clunky pacing.  Some might appreciate this, as it's the classic bad bad movie type thing, but I like my bad movies covered in cheese factor or weirdness or anything!  I don't just want dimly lit, slightly out of focus, emotionless actors saying vague lines of dialogue.

The acting by some of the house cannibals is decent, and the end sequence of the last 20 minutes or so is okay.  The movie is not even 90 minutes, so I would be lying to say I was bored.  I wasn't bored, but I also was not entertained at all.  It just sort of played out, and I watched, mostly out of a firm determination to get through it instead of anything else.

If I had seen this film of his first instead of one of the better ones, I might have chalked the whole of his filmography up as bad amateur Z-grade similar to Robert Emenegger.  I'm glad I saw his better movies first, but I have to say, this one was pretty awful.  I will give a star I guess.  For the makeup and occasional riffability factor.

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie - 1974

Also known as, and I quote Wikipedia here: "In total, the film was released under more than 15 different titles internationally." So in other words, a lot.  One of those happens to be Don't Open the Window.  Don't... returns.

I was reading about this on Wikipedia, like I was saying, and I found something.  Something which, if I was cooler, I may have known about before.  In the 2007 release of Grindhouse, it's well known that they made a bunch of fake movie trailers to be shown in the mix of those movies, to give a somewhat authentic experience of the 70's.  One of those was a fake trailer for the movie Don't.  I have to say, this is remarkably prescient of what I've been saying about this series.  For further breakdowns of Don't movies, see this and this.

Sleeping Corpses was absolutely titled wrong if it was ever called Don't Open the Window, and I struggle to think of why you'd ever make that name be your alternate title.  There was maybe one scene with a window in the entire film. This was not only falsely lumped in with other Don't movies, this was lumped into the astronomically huge Zombie or Zombi series, which itself is a fucking disaster zone of alternate titles, false sequels, and various other shrug-inducing antics.

I should see all of these, right?

So hence, I should maybe include my links to Zombie and to another version of Zombie 3 I've seen, Nightmare City?   Okay, this is getting old.  But I find it fascinating.  You just don't see this sort of massive false advertising and fake sequels anymore.  There's a whole different era of movies that existed before us.  And an era before that, and one before that, and shit, it's amazing yo!

George and Edna are thrown together in the beginning of this movie because Edna hits George's bike.  They drive to the remote countryside, get lost, and discover some scientists using utlrasonic radiation to kill bugs.  Edna starts seeing a creepy guy wandering around, and he comes after her all zombie like, but no one believes her.  Soon enough, the cops get angry at the antics of Edna and George and go after them, while in the meantime zombies keep getting raised from the dead and going after everyone else!

This one was fast paced, quick and fun.  It's another worthy entry into the zombie movies we all know and love, and it stands the test of time.  Main characters that are likable, good music and sound effects, minimal in approach, great location, it's got it all.  It's a movie that would look exactly the same if you made it now, just add in two lines of dialogue about how their cell phones don't work, obviously cause they're in the middle of nowhere.

I have virtually no complaints.  It was solidly entertaining and I'd highly recommend it for people who love a zombie movie.  It was on my list a long time, and I'm glad I get to check it off and give it a...huh 4 or 5 star rating.  I guess 4.5 it is.  Really solid.

Black Demons - 1991

Alright.  Fucking finally man.  I have been watching these movies at the increment of about one a year for a long ass time, and I believe!  I believe with this one I am finally done.  This is a series that I've seriously been watching since the start of this blog with:  Demons, Demons 2, Demons 3: The Ogre, Demons 3:  The Church, Demons 4, Demons 5: The Devil's Veil, and Demons 6: De Profundis.

Where does this one belong?  This one is the third one to be labeled as Demons 3.  Hence, this is also known as "Demons 3:  Black Demons".

First of all, this is not Demons 3.  This is a entirely different idea from the first two, and while I could see the relationship with the raising of the dead and stuff, there is not much more that holds it together besides the fact that there are undead creatures in this movie.  But, you know, I honestly don't think this was seen as a true "series" to anyone, more like similar ideas.

In the beginning of this, Dick is a straight-arrow kid who spots some black children playing on the street.  He meets an old blind black man who invites him to some ritual where Dick passes out, unknowing of what happened there.  Then Dick and his friends Kevin and Jessica are driving to Rio de Janeiro when their Jeep breaks down.  They find a nearby house with friendly Jose and his maid Maria.  They stay there for the night.  Dick wanders out and finds a graveyard.  Suddenly a ritual flashback occurs and six zombies pop out of their graves, coming for everyone!

This movie walks a very fine line between racist and just plain crazy.  Sure, it definitely has some racial things going on here.  Every black person in the film is evil or a stereotype, and the black gathering that Dick goes to is straight out of some 1950's racial stereotype where the black people dance around with spears and beat on drums.  When the zombies, who are also black people, are raised from the dead, they're all former slaves, out for revenge, which is nice, but it still feels exploitative.  And finally, Maria is black, and Jose is a real asshole to her constantly.

All that aside, the movie is pretty good!   It's probably one of the more linear, easy to follow Demons entries, and it's minimal approach helps that.  The actors are decent, the effects are decent, and it moves along quickly enough.  It was shot in Brazil and looks nice, and the whole feel of it is super 80's, which for 91 may be an insult, but it felt nice to me.  Like one of these classic 80's giallo films.

There's a ton of eye gouging and eye effects in the film.  The first two kills involve both girls getting their left eye gouged out...  How much ya wanna bet that they liked the way it looked the first time and were like, shit let's just do that again?

There is a lot of blood, and there is a lot of fire.  It's a decent enough movie, and I didn't dislike it.  With a bit of nudity it may have been near perfect in fact.  It has some weird racial stuff that is offputting, and it's a bit old looking for 91, but given that it's sort of the "last reach of the classic giallo feel"  I will give it 4.

So, technically Cemetery Man with Rupert Everett is sometimes called Demons 95.  Like the year 1995.  I have seen it, a very long time ago, and I sort of remember it.  Do I rewatch it and review it for completion?  I'm not saying no, I'm not saying yes.  We will see.  Maybe.  No promises.  For now, I'm calling it a done franchise.

Christmas Evil - 1980

I'm on a bit of a theater binge lately, especially since the last time I went out to a horror movie it was The Manitou, and I loved it.  I remember that after I saw The Manitou I made a note to myself saying "you should do that every Tuesday".  And given that this is Christmas time and given there's so many Christmas themed horror movies out there, my local Alamo Drafthouse played Christmas Evil.

"Christmas evil?" I exclaimed, not knowing which one this was, all I knew was that it wasn't Don't Open Til Christmas.
That British fluff with it's head held high, and this for-sure-shot-in-the-70's movie with many a sigh.
I attended the theater with a crowd full, and there I sat waiting, while the movie started out dull.
"We're following the killer again, he's our main actor?!" I thought in my head, and I reduced the score by a factor.
The actor was okay but the script asked for a lot, didn't they know that it was overwrought?
But I gave it a chance and there I sat through it, in my opinion not worth it, cause it was bad and it knew it.

Wow, alright!  That worked out fairly well.  That above it to be done to the key of Twas the Night Before Christmas, by the way.  And honestly, yeah that's pretty much my sum up.  Mistake number one, follow the main killer, mistake number two, ask him to do a lot and ask for a broad range on a pretty slim script, mistake three have bizarre pacing, mistake four it was just bad.  Just bad bad.  As I watched and I heard the audience laughing at parts, I did think that maybe it was enjoyable to others...but I don't know, this one just felt bad pretty thoroughly to me.

As a child, Harry Stadling watched Santa come deliver him gifts.  Then he crept back downstairs and watched Santa fondling his mom, as it was obviously his dad in a costume.  This screwed him up somehow, and now he's a disgruntled toy shop employee who's got this idea of what Christmas should be, and of course no one agrees.  I also loved that the flashback happens in the year 1947, then when it cuts to Harry as a man it says "present day".  So present day like, now, 2018?  Cause then Harry is like, 70 something years old....if he was at the youngest 6 or so in the flashback...

Anywho, Harry is taking on Santa's duty of keeping a nice/naughty list, he's upset that his job is more concerned with their company than the toys, he's taken advantage of, and it all eventually prompts him to turn himself into Santa.  A Santa who rewards the nice, but takes vengeance on the naughty.

The problem is that what was for sure going to originally be a psychological almost drama got turned into a not-horror movie.  I say not-horror, cause seriously this isn't even close. Harry randomly kills three people outside of a church when he begins killing, and then there's like 30 minutes before the next.  I'd be willing to bet a lot that there was only one kill originally but then they added more cause it wasn't fun enough.  Either way it's still not fun, and the movie just plods along.

The pacing is a serious problem.  The movie follows him too much and he's not that interesting, and it for sure felt at times like we were just killing time.  An hour and 40 minutes where for sure 20 or more could have been cut, it just keeps going, and every time it gets dark or good, the mood changes and we watch inept nothingness for way too long.  They try to make some observations about Christmas and the nature of consumerism, but it's not well written or well performed enough and honestly it's not like they're ever suggesting any alternate ideas or bringing in anything new.

It was a cheap ticket, I got to take a nice walk first, and I enjoyed my time out, but then the movie was for sure a disappointment.  I'll give it 1.5 stars.

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood - 1988

This is as far as I'm going to go in my reviews for this series on my blog.  I have no intention, I swear to you, of reviewing the first Friday, or Part 2, or Manhattan or Jason X or Freddy Vs Jason.  Okay.  I might watch and review Jason X actually, but it wouldn't be for the completionist in me, it'd be for the part of me that wants to riff on it and have a laugh.

Freddy Vs Jason had been in the talks for a long time, ever since I think 1985 or so.  Shit got in the way as it always does and they kept spinning their wheels while releasing single movie sequels for both the Nightmare and the Jason franchise.  They had this cool idea though, of having Jason fight someone who was actually a challenge, since all of the time he was going after teenagers and a few adults.  It wasn't exactly the most fair fights.

Enter the idea of a woman with vague mental powers, and basically it's Jason versus Carrie.  Carrie in this case is actually Tina, a young woman who as a child had her father die in Crystal Lake.  She returns to Crystal Lake early into the movie and in a moment of sad lament, uses her powers.  Her powers have the unexpected result of raising Jason from the dead, having been left chained to the bottom of the lake in Part VI.  Jason is in full on kill mode, and the whole kill cycle begins anew.

This movie was not the best entry into the franchise.  Online they make mention of all the violence cut out of the film, all the blood that would get slashed from our viewing pleasure, and what this results in is a largely bloodless movie.  There is of course the sleeping bag death, which is cool, and there's head crushing and machete slashing and such, but it does seem a bit calm compared to say Part IV.

Tina as a young heroine is fine.  She spends most of the movie in a state of waffling between doing what she wants and doing what the therapists and such want for her.  Her therapist has a side story that maybe he's been exploiting Tina's powers for unknown reasons, and Tina's mom is in her corner most of the movie.  Eventually Jason and Tina are in the same area, and it all results in a final showdown, which is pretty fun, but ends in a weird way.

This would start the Jason series on a really bad, almost done-for-comedy series of follow-ups.  With this one, Manhattan, Hell, and Jason X, these four movies in a row are pretty bad, pretty much bottom of the barrel, and very much part of what gave slashers a bad name.  When I was younger, Scream was almost the only slasher someone was allowed to like.  If you liked a slasher besides that, or even horror, you were probably made fun of.  That was the fun of being young around the year 2000.  It wasn't until later that horror became cool again, which I think was originated by Scream but then further legitimized when torture porn became a thing.  Why torture porn would "legitimize" horror is anyone's guess, but that's the fun of being 13-21 or so, "gross crap" was/is cool.

This one was also not fun in any of the ways some of those later Jason movies could be.  It didn't have the comedy in it, it didn't reach for anything that made it self aware.  It was just an unexplained girl with mental powers and Jason in full on zombie mode, and by the numbers kills.  Which I guess gives it a low point for the series with 1.5 stars.

Treasure of the Jamaican Reef - 1975

Again IMDb says one year and Wikipedia says another.  I'm going with Wikipedia on this again.  Life, huh?  It just don't stop.

So I had a bit of a movie marathon last night and I watched two of the 70's set, this being the second one.  I again had a moment where I wanted horror and I leafed through my description booklet, remembering that one movie said something about a shark or a haunted ship or something.  I am going to have to go back and reread the description to this, because I seriously thought it said anything about sharks or ghosts or ANYTHING, but there was none in this movie.

Instead, Treasure of the Jamaican Reef is about a group of people that go out treasure hunting in, you guessed it, the Jamaican Reef.  Cheryl Ladd of Charlie's Angels stars as part of the gang made up of pretty random-ass people also including ex-football star Rosey Grier.  They head out to the beautiful waters searching for their bounty, and gather up their snorkeling and scuba gear to hit the warm waters.  And in the warm waters they stay.

Seriously at least 50-60% of this movie take place underwater.  And I'll say, it looks fucking amazing.  Given this said shark (I swear it said it somewhere) and given the creepiness of the underwater barges and ships and stuff, I was genuinely interested in this for quite a while.  We see amazing documentation of the ships, and the narration in the film provides a nice backdrop for "what they're doing" which I wouldn't have known otherwise.  Seriously, watching this I felt like I learned a lot about how one might find and excavate an underwater ship, and they use all sorts of marking techniques, technology, and other stuff to search for the treasure.

In the meantime, they're followed by a small group of baddies who don't get enough screen time to be memorable and who promptly die still a ways away from the end.  Also, there's a bit about storm and a missing buoy and a crashed airplane, none of which are big subjects, but merely touched on in this film as it flies by without a care in the world.

I'd say this was high budget by the looks of it.  On this DVD set it is the only film which has been preserved in 2.39 to 1 scope formatting, and easily the best looking of any film in the set.  The audio is another story, as the levels jump all over the place, and there's many times you won't have a clue as to what they're saying as the water swells, the ship rocks, and their words become random nonsense carried off by the wind.

I did like the underwater scenes, the highly detailed tracking of the gold, and hell even the acting is good.  This would make the ultimate weed movie, cause it's highly entertaining and yet has no significant plot at all.  Nothing really happens per say in the entire length of this thing, but it's still fun enough, and there's even a nice sense of tension in the early water scenes if you think a shark might be coming.  I stopped hoping for a shark 50 minutes in, I remember.  I will give this 4 stars.  Fuck it right?

Hustling - 1975

Not to be confused with the movie 'Hustle' also from 1975.

I would have to guess that movies being made for TV had really only started in the 70's.  I've never thought of that before.  The popularization and the acceptance of television was probably not enough in the 60's the justify a TV movie, at least not until the very late 60's.  Quick moment of research goes by here....Wikipedia tells me the first true example was in 1964 with See How They Run.  So, it started a bit earlier, but I can imagine it was still a novelty in 1975.

Lee Remick stars as Fran.  She's a tough independent woman reporter working for the paper, at a time when journalism was still respected and these people had every right to do whatever they wanted.  She notices, along with the general public, the amount of prostitutes that are now out there on the street in New York, and decides to write an article about it.  At just that time, tough talking street walking Wanda has just been arrested, so Fran pays the bail and makes her an offer, $50 an hour to write about Wanda's life.

What we have is the story of the friendship between the two women, each outspoken and rebellious in their own way, each a tough soul just getting by in their own world where they don't make the rules but they can bend them a little sometimes.  An exposé on the life of a prostitute is given- we see the seedy motels where they do their work, the characters they consort with, the places where they're unwelcome and the general bad vibes they get from people at times.

What I liked about this is that it's not directly about Wanda being saved, as such, and it's also not only about how "bad" prostitution is.  Sure, they have Wanda get beaten and raped at one point.  They have the usual conflicts with the pimp.  They have the young plucky other prostitute who eventually commits suicides.  But in all that, we also see the loves and challenges of any independent woman who controls her own fate, and we also understand that in her own way she is proud of what she does, accepts it, and makes peace with in and the people it effects.

While uncovering the work of a street walker, eventually Fran uncovers that with all the work someone like Wanda does, she should be making lots of money, but she's not.  So eventually it comes out that other companies, other businesses are taking cuts.  Whether its the landlord who owns the hotels they stay at or whatever, Fran discovers that the haughty aristocrats who look down on Wanda are a lot more involved in her life's work than they'd care to admit.

This one was fairly decent.  It moved along pretty quickly, it made you think, and it even had a good point or two about the nature of prostitution.  In my lifetime we have seen the start of legal prostitution in the United States, and we have seen the stigma of it change a bit, with large groups clamoring for the rights of what are now called "sex workers".  Like so many things, it's a subject which has gradually made it's way towards dignity and acceptance, helped a bit by things like this movie and the article is was based on.

I could give it high marks for that, for sure, but honestly I'm looking at it as a film first, not a document of the state of America.  I will give it 3.5 stars though, and recommend it.

Jane Eyre - 1970

Alright, we're digging back into the realm of randomness the 70's box has delivered in it's infinite wisdom.  This time it's a made for TV adaptation of the classic story by Charlotte Bronte.

Jane Eyre (which I confused with a story by Jane Austen) is that sort of typical stuffy old timey British love story.  No wonder I confused it for Austen.  This is a genre which I haven't seen very much of, and it's pretty obvious as to why.  Unless it's a ghost story or maybe about Marquis de Sade, I'm just not that interested.

Jane Eyre is a orphan, going through hell as a young girl.  She eventually escapes that and begins working at Thornfield Hall.  Thornfield Hall is run by George C. Scott as Edward Rochester.  If you think I kept on smiling when I saw him because I thought of Dr. Strangelove, you are absolutely correct.   That aside, he does a good job as a loving but mysterious man.  Rochester and Eyre fall in love and he wants her to marry him eventually.  But turns out he has a secret, and she's about to go through a bit of a life change.

It was certainly a bit talky and very long, but I didn't hate this.  It's so simple and well acted that it's hard to have any violent reaction to.  I mean sure, I wanted to dislike this as a 2018 rebel who might still be considered a youth to some.  But I don't know.  It's certainly not offensive. It just sits there light as day, no glaring omissions or issues, and it presents a story of some people who have issues but ultimately, who the fuck doesn't?

One thing which I sort of hate about these older style things is that people fall in love and get married at the drop of a hat, and we're supposed to buy that this is real and legit and it's destined and will last forever.  It's seriously like after talking for 3 weeks and having a few mild flirts they can assess that they truly love each other.  Then they just get married immediately, and hey whadayaknow it was real love and they live happily ever after.  It's a gripe about the idea in general, not specifically just this movie.

When I have no effects or whatever to write about these certainly get shorter huh?  Oh, it did have music by John Williams.  So, that was cool.  I'll give it a 3.

Border Cop - 1979

I remember for some reason I got really intrigued by Telly Savalas a while back.  After I saw him as Blofeld and after I saw him in Horror Express I did some deep dives and tried to find horror movies with him.  I think my interest soon turned to other things, and I'm pretty sure I haven't seen him in anything since.  So imagine my joy when I got a Savalas movie in the 70's set.

Imagine my excitement (which wasn't much to begin with, mind you) as I watched this long, talky, bland as fuck late 70's border-concerned cop drama.  Imagine as I watched it, hoping that it was originally a made for TV film just so that it wouldn't be very long.  It was the full 90 minutes though, so no luck with that one.  Also, some of the movie is in Spanish.  There is no subtitle option on this DVD, and I had no idea what they were saying.  Sure hope it wasn't important!

Telly plays...  wait, oh shit.  Teleplays?  Telly plays...teleplays?  See what I'm doing here?  Telly plays Frank Cooper.  He's a cop on the border of Mexico and the US, fulfilling Trump's dream of keeping all them illegals out.  He's sympathetic sure, but he's also got some racial ideas of his own it seems, and he's not the most likable guy ever.  He clashes with the usual border-crossers, the local street gang thugs and prostitutes, and generally upholds the law.

And shit.  What the fuck does one say about this movie?  There's not much.  I'm looking for something interesting to say about it, and here's what I found.  Border Cop does feature a real cow being killed.  On IMDb, they list the year for the movie wrong.  Sorry IMDb, I'm going to assume my 70's boxset is right on this one, since Wikipedia agrees as well.  And lastly, IMDb trivia tells me "One of the first US indie films to premiere in the US on pay cable TV (HBO) without a US theatrical release."  So, that's kind of cool I guess.  But to imagine paying for this dreck, ouch that sucks.

I read another review right now which made me feel like I missed this being potentially not that bad, but in the end, do I fucking CARE?  No!  I don't care.  This could easily have been not awful.  But I got through it, in my memory I wasn't totally drunk or anything, and it fucking counts whether I have anything to say about it or not.  I'll give it 1.5 stars for Telly Savalas.

Good Against Evil - 1977

Well now, here we are with another basic as fuck name.  What was the other one?  Ohh yeah!  Stunts.  Pretty plain right there.  And this, well shit it's about good guys fighting bad guys.  But since the devil or whatever is involved it's the "evil" concept.

I wonder, again, if there's a movie called "Good guys fighting bad guys"?  Well that's it guys! I finally stumped IMDb.  I finally got so basic that there is no movie on IMDb called that.  In fact there's not even a "good guys against bad buys".  There is however "The Good Guys and the Bad Guys" starring Robert Mitchum.  I vote that for the inclusion on this blog, I watch it.  What say you?

Back to this movie.  Good Against Evil.  Now, here is something I've been struggling with.  I want to watch horror movies.  This Swinging 70's set doesn't have much in the way of that.  So I scoured the description booklet for something that sounded like a horror movie.  I found a few candidates, and this one won out.  It said it had exorcism and cults and Dack Rambo, how could I say no?!  Y'all know I love me some Dack.  Or is that dick I love?  Therein the question.

This is for sure an awesome idea they had here.  What this is, as I've mentioned many a time on here, is another fucking TV pilot they turned into a movie.  And it would've been pretty good as a show, I think!  The Exorcist had come out, The Omen had come out, they had been popular, and how could we translate that fad onto the TV so that everyone everywhere could watch it?

The answer came, as it always does, in Dack Rambo.  What a cool name!  Okay no, but the idea is that there's this girl who is being watched by this cult.  She's their sacrificial virgin or something, and they need to control her life.  They say early on they have to make sure she does the right things, and obviously keeps herself pure for their purpose.  But then Dacky Duck intervenes and meets the girl and they quickly fall in love.  The cult says no no and they try to get a horse to stomp Dack, then later they end up hypnotizing the girl and steal her away.  Now Dack has to get her back!

That would conceivably be like the first two episodes or the first 50 minute episode.  Episode two, girl has been kidnapped, and on his way to track her down he runs into old flame Kim Cattrall.  Kim's daughter has been writing pentagrams and otherwise acting evil, and there's getting the priest, there's the exorcism, and then Kim wants Dack to stay but he's too set on his first love, and so he parts ways to find her, and...that's it, we end on the cliffhanger since that's all the show they filmed.

I guess Dack would follow the cult and the girl from spot to spot, encountering their evil roadblocks and trying to figure out the grand scheme of things.  Presumably she'd find out she's the sacrificial virgin along the way, and develop a way to stop being hypnotized, etc.  Now, hear me out - this is an awesome idea for a show!  A show where literally the whole horror genre could be at your disposal, cause you could say the cult just "taps into that demon" and uses it against Dack.  They could grab an ancient book, summon a golem, or maybe a ghost, and then Dack would find an occult book or spell and fight it, next episode it's saving a child who can't talk because of some spell, etc.  Sounds like a fun show to me!  And there's not a lot of horror themed shows in general, definitely not from the 70's.

Despite sounding off about how cool this was, it's wasn't a great movie per-say.  It was too slow in the beginning, drastically changing tone later.  It was hard to follow at times.  They really rushed the love story of the two characters, but I get it too.  They wanted to get right to the horror, which I do appreciate.  It was surprisingly good looking and somewhat creepy, for a TV show.  High budgeted.  The acting and the look of it were good too.  I don't know!  I may have liked this.  But yeah, dude, the pacing was pretty awful for the first 45 minutes or so.  In the end I think it's around a 3 or 3.5.

Grotesque - 1988

How could something with so great a poster be so awful??

Get ready, patient reader, because I haven't seen anything I disliked in a very long time.  I was in a self-defeating, angry, weird mood yesterday.  I left work, I went home, I bundled up cause it's fucking cold right now, and I put on Grotesque.

What did I want?  Something that either of these two posters would promise me.  Poster on the right here looks like a fun 80's romp filled with Linda Blair and stereotyped film punks.  Left looks like a weirdo arthouse thriller.  Sure!  Give me either of those!

The actual delivery however...  Oh man.  Holy fuck.  This one was BAD.  As in B A D bad.  I'm literally tying to think of a good thing about it.  I'm not going to give it too many points for topless female nudity, nor am I giving it anything for having a washed up Linda Blair in it.  I don't know if it gets ANY points!

Linda Blair and her friend are driving to Linda's dad's house in the mountains.  He's a Hollywood effects guy who retired out there, and they're gonna go visit.  On the way, they run into a broken down VW van full of punks.  These are the punks you'd expect: overacting to an insane degree, inconsistent, sometimes really tough other times completely idiotic.  They try and get tools from the girls to fix the VW but the girls drive off.  They go to Linda's dad's house, but pretty soon the punks show up to exact revenge.

I'm going to have spoilers present.  Cause if that was it, sure, fine whatever.  Works for me.  But instead...  The punks promptly start killing the family, and everyone dies.  30 minutes or so in and you kill the known actress.  Now these overactors eventually find a hidden room, and inside, a deformed guy!  Deformed guy gets out, and starts killing the punks!  Then some of them escape and go to the police, police suspect the punks killed the family but have no evidence.  Eventually the punks get cut loose, get kidnapped by Linda's dad's brother, and he reveals he too is deformed!  Then we have a projection issue and pull out!  And Linda Blair and co are all alive, in a theater, watching what we've seen so far!  Then Frankenstein and the Wolfman are in the projection booth, and they decide to go terrorize them all!  Then Grotesque ends!  WHAT THE FUCK!?

The self awareness was awful, the comedy was awful, the acting was awful, the effects were awful, the locations...were good, but if that's the best thing about it...Really?!  The best thing, literally, is that Linda Blair and Robert Z'dar got paychecks.  Probably not for a lot, mind you.  But that has to be the only redeeming factor.  Which still gives it a zero in my book.

Firehouse - 1973

There seems to be a lot of these TV pilots turned into movies on these boxsets, both the Sci Fi Invasion set and this 70's boxset.  I bet I run into more on the 80's set as well.  I wonder if they still would ever do this with a pilot?  I mean if you film a hour long pilot to a show, and then decide not to make the show, you still have a supposedly interesting idea which is half done.  Could just sorta, I dunno, finish it and slam it into theaters, onto TV, or Amazon or whatever?

Firehouse was going to be a TV show about a black firefighter who comes to work in a all white firehouse in New York.  The tensions there would be palpable, as the firefighters put him through a normal hazing ritual made worse by racial tension.  Additionally, the black firefighter would have inner conflict due to his supposedly "white" job and leanings, thus separating him from other black men.  Throw in the general racial stuff in the 70's and you're gold.

It succeeded, I'd say.  I put this on because I started a new Swinging 70's movie disc last night, and reading the descriptions I knew this would be the shortest movie.  This thing is like an hour and ten minutes long, so I was for sure right on there.  And it played out about as decently as one might expect.

Richard Roundtree plays Shelly.  He's a former criminal, but somehow became a firefighter after.  He's married to a loving wife, and he gets on at a local NY firehouse after one of them dies in a fire that's later ruled an arson.  The tension in NY is high, as the black people in the ghetto fight against the oppression they're facing.  In the firehouse, the other firefighters range from uncaring to outright racist.  When it's discovered the arson was started by a black man, and later when Shelly lets a young black man go because he swears he didn't start another fire, the tension in the firehouse builds.

Fill in some interesting comedic and character moments, and we eventually see Shelly begin to make a place for himself in the house.  The main guy against him, Billy, is a hard working 3rd generation Italian firefighter, who is mainly angry at the newborn hatred all of society has for the government.  A lot of black men are against the government, and given that the government signs his paycheck, he is understandably mad at the situation.  The movie does do a good job of giving the characters enough relate-able moments each.

I feel like the effects, all real fire and stuff, were pretty awesome.  The realism of the movie helps.  It's about 60% dialogue and tension, 30% fire, 10% nothing.  The nothing flies by though, since the movie is so short.  I did wonder who the target audience would be, though.  It's not blaxploitation enough for that fan base, and its both a bit depressing and very progressive.  So I guess that's maybe why it didn't become a show.

Either way, it's entertaining and well acted.  The relationship between Roundtree and his wife was really well done.   The Firehouse idea would later spawn a TV show, although with the race angle dropped.  It ran for one season, obviously not making a huge impact on the TV world.  I can't really love this or hate it, but I feel like it lands on the "like" side of the coin.  So, three stars.

The Klansman - 1974

Who would have every thought that I'd end up reviewing many films by a well known James Bond director, and the dude that started the franchise, Terence Young?  I previously watched the Charles Bronson vehicle Cold Sweat which would've been a few years before this film.  I guess since this has a budget and actors, Young still had some pulling power?

I don't know dude.  I watched this, in small parts over the course of many days.  That is not my norm btw.  I will be writing two reviews today, as after this I watched another racially charged flick, and I handled that one in one sitting.  But this one, I just couldn't do it.

The Klansman has an all star cast.  Lee Marvin plays Sheriff Bascomb, Richard Burton as Breck, Cameron Mitchell, OJ Simpson, David Huddleston, Bond girl Luciana Paluzzi, and more star in this racial entry.  Early in, it's apparent there's a lot of racial tension in the town in Alabama where this takes place.  There's a big fight the sheriff breaks up, then a white woman gets raped by a black man.  She is ousted from the community, and the Klan members are out for revenge.  Sheriff has to protect every black person in town, and in the meantime he clashes with the local community and political forces, members of both are racist, and it all comes down to a big shootout in the end.

This one was not especially great.  From minute one, there is no lesson, there is no moral, there is no real comeuppance for the klansmen in the film, and in fact there's times where I'd say they're cast in a sympathetic light.  It's not really an effective tool for tension building even!  Much like Cold Sweat, it feels formulaic and sluggish from a viewing standpoint.  Not only is it despicable, it's boring!  The acting is good, and you almost want to give it points for that, and given the amount of drama that went on behind the scenes, basically none of this shows.

All in all, I guess it is self aware in it's approach, and deserves a bit of points for that.  It wallows in it's own grotesque horridness, and 100% if it was made today it'd be going for the culty grindhouse audience.  I found a really well written review that states it better than I can.  But I don't know.  I really find racism to be offensive, and when they drop "nigger" every 4 seconds in this, and when the sheriff literally makes a black woman lie about the white man that raped her, and every other thing that's awful that happens, it made me sick.

I supposed it can have 1 star.  For the cast.

Amityville 1992: It's About Time - 1992

This isn't quite the same deal as what I'm doing right now with Friday the 13th.  I'm not, and I repeat NOT going to go through the entire 8 film original series, as well as the couple new reboots.  Fuck, Amityville, you're pulling your own weight at 10 fucking movies.  You're cropping out entire other real horror series!  How dare you.

This is the direct sequel to the other Amityville film I reviewed here, Amityville The Evil Escapes.  I didn't really know the franchise then, and I still don't, but these movies do feel like true sequels.  It's the story idea versus characters or a true connection, so this this not a series that's going to have recurring characters or a "survivor" lady or anything.  It's all over the map.

In The Evil Escapes, a generic movie family inherited a lamp which was evil and brought misfortune to everyone.  In this one, a generic movie family dad buys a clock, and it begins to bring similar evil as the lamp brought.  The clock I would say is better than the lamp, and thus this one is a little better from the get go.  The thing is still a little dumb, sure, but one thing I thought was cool was that as the clock's evil spreads, it begins to build itself into the walls, having moving clock parts and pendulums and such going on everywhere.  Also, just the fact the clock can symbolize our own mortality and the short amount of time we have to live, I'll give this more points.

Stephen Macht plays Jacob, and along with his wife and two kids, they live in some new house.  Jacob comes home with the clock, things start to go evil, and problems begin to arise.  I won't lie that this movie is extremely boring, and not very well done.  It's got plot lines that are not given enough time, it's got a lot of time where seemingly nothing happens, too long is spent on dumb sideplots that go nowhere, and shit's not great.  Jacob gets attacked by a dog early on, and is in his room recovering most the movie, while in the meantime we see most events from the lens of his wife.

The lamp has undefined powers from the get go.  Seemingly it can manifest visions that actually hurt people, much like Freddy Kruger.  It can also exert a sort of influence over people, as it does to Jacob's daughter Lisa.  It can also create boiling acid just about anywhere, as used by Lisa, and it makes you wonder, if it can do that then why bother with any of these other things?

Spoiler warning, cause the end made me mad.  In the end, it's revealed the whole movie was a dream from Jacob's wife.  Then the events of the dream start to happen in real life, Jacob comes home with the same clock.  The wife smashes it and leaves, and thus this whole movie didn't happen?  Then Jacob's son smiles at a character, hinting it did happen. It's a fucking stupid ending which only cements the fact this movie wasn't good.

Also, the title?  I mean come on.  It's About Time?  No, cause literally, it's about a clock?!  So literally it's telling you sort of what the movie is about!!  At first I hated it, now I just think it's insane.  I can imagine it now.
"What do we call this Amityville entry, Bob?"
"I dunno John.  What's this one about?"
"It's got an evil clock in it."
"So it's about time?"
"Well, not really, but sort of I guess."
"Alright.  Just put that on it.  No one's going to watch this movie anyways."

I can't rate it much higher than the last one reviewed.  In fact, I think it gets the same rating.  Certainly boring, I remember checking at least ten times to see how much of the movie was left.

The Mutilator - 1984

Yup, I'm officially off the deep end.  And on a long, long streak break from the 70's boxset.  It originated, I think, with Jofer Jeff a while back, and I liked it of course, as one is apt to do.  I just sort of kept it going, encouraged by your deafening roars for more...  And by that I mean, encouraged by nothing.

For every average slasher flick, for every bad one, for every good one, there's always more out there.  For every bad one there's a good one, for every middling one, well there's pretty much guaranteed another middling one.  This one, The Mutilator, is extremely middling.  Also, when I started this flick the title on the screen was not The Mutilator, it was titled Fall Break.

This is the only film made by writer/director Buddy Cooper.  It's not bad, considering that.  It's not original, obviously, but it's fine enough I guess, and it at least had loads of blood versus some of those others.  It's weird that this was very graphic, and yet the stuff they cut out of other films seems less crazy than this by comparison.  After all, this is the film that has a meat hook taken to a vagina.

In the very beginning, a kid playing with a gun accidentally shoots his mother.  Fast forward to when he's grown up and his dad has gone crazy and begins killing people.  The kid and his friends take a vacation to the beach, are followed by the dad, and are picked off one by one.  It's weird that the dad would wait all those years huh?  Why not kill the kid sooner?  Why wait til he's in his late teens and then do this?  If only that were the only plot hole.

This has the same thing as Slumber Party Massacre, wherein you see the killer more and he wears no mask.  He has no lines thankfully, but the fact that this had no sequels again makes me wonder why some films get them and others don't.  They do again definitively kill the killer, literally chopping him in half, but shit, others have come back from worse.  I sort of wonder why these things happen, and I always enjoy seeking out random obscure sequels that exist out there.  Despite the lack of reviews for movies of that nature on this blog.

There's kills, there's nudity, there's some originality, there's a lot of decent things here.  It's all been done, but it's here again, and pretty soon the over-saturation of the market might begin and I'll switch back to the 70's boxset, and somehow life will go on.  But for now, 3 stars.

The Manitou - 1978

For a really long time, The Manitou was sort of my Moby Dick in horror movies.  Well, that or my Doctor Frankenstein.  The Manitou may conceivably be my superhero origin story, the radioactive spider that bit me and turned me into the type of bro that buys and marathons 70's films.  How relevant that it was a 1978 film, a film that was shot in a city where I live near and work, and the last film of a director who died at 30, an age where my own life changed significantly, with me and my wife separating.

I had a pretty fucking cool night last night.  I went out to a kink singles mixer, I kissed some hot older woman, I went to the Alamo Drafthouse and saw this movie, and what the fuck?!  Did this movie get BETTER when I was asleep or something?  I know that my excitement is temporary and all, I know I'm riding one fuck of a high right now, but shit!  Some days are just perfect.

The Manitou, being my Frankenstein, was a movie I saw when I was probably 8-9 years old.  I was already a huge horror movie fan, cause I know I had already seen and loved The Howling by that point.  I know this because of something I always loved, the art of people copying tapes from the video rental stores.  My grandmother was a master of this, and would copy multiple movies onto one of those 6 hour tapes.  One of the tapes contained The Howling first, and then The Manitou.  What a fucking double feature!  I remember watching it when I was really young, and I remember only "something about an Indian growing out of a woman's neck" and that it was scary.

I did revisit this, even in the context of this blog, but I didn't review it.  And honestly, I am convinced I was either super drunk, fell asleep, or watched the wrong movie.  Cause this movie is FUCKING awesome, and I would've remembered it.  And again, this is not just the crazy excitement talking.

First of all, the cast is great.  Tony Curtis plays Harry, a sort of hack psychic who preys on the good natured old women that hit him up for fake fortunes. Just that is pretty hilarious.  His ex Karen comes to town one day, telling him she'd worried because a weird bump on her neck has appeared in the last few days, and she wants him to comfort her and to use his psychic abilities to see into her future.  He draws a death card, and pretty soon the bump is getting worse.  Doctors see into it, and are confused cause it sort of looks like a fetus.  They figure out it's got something to do with Indian folklore from a book, written by Burgess Meredith in a small comedic role, and eventually they get Michael Ansara as a Indian medicine man to help them out.

The effects come often and come awesome.  This is way more effect filled than I remembered it being, with something coming at you constantly.  It doesn't ever feel stupid or hard to keep track of though, because with such a minimal cast, pretty low on the locations, it's all easy to keep track of.  Once the Indian itself comes out, it's a nonstop fucking effects party, and the shit it awesome!  Honestly, I had the thought many times while I watched it, but shit this movie is AWESOME, and the hour 45 minutes just flew by for me.  There's only one real slowdown, near the beginning, but even that has some nice character building moments, and a death of an old lady to help it out.

This is 100% the type of film I wanted it to be.  I remembered it being slower, I remembered it being a bit harder to follow.  But seeing it, on the big screen, in a vintage 1978 film print, with a fucking Alamo Drafthouse burger at my side, it rocked my world.  Five stars, hands down.

The Slumber Party Massacre / Slumber Party Massacre II - 1982 / 1987

I don't do a lot of doubling up on this site.  There's usually no reason for them.  I have only really doubled up when it comes to sequels or related films.  I wasn't going to do a double review of these movies, but hehe, I'm feeling like I want to save myself the time it takes to write reviews.  Home slice. Dig it?

We have had a long succession of good horror movies, or at least decent, on this blog.  We've had a lot of recent reviews of the Friday the 13th series, the Nightmare on Elm Street series.  Elsewhere in the blog I have Chucky and Children of the Corn and fucking.... The Howling and Witchcraft and the point is, I've reviewed a fuckton of horror movie sequels. If you think I'm going to link to all my reviews, you are dead wrong, you find that shit for yourself.  So why is it that despite my numerous horror movie sequel write-ups, most of the movies have been okay?  Make way for a real shitty one.

The Slumber Party Massacre is a very decidedly decent horror movie with a lot of tits, blood and thrills.  It breaks some norms by having the killer not wear a mask, speak a few lines of dialogue near the end, and then surely die in the end, where it would be pretty hard to bring him back to life.  It follows most of the slasher rules, and I'd say it's not necessary nor is it one to avoid.  For completion or even just casual slasher fans, I'd say sure, take a looksie.

Slumber Party Massacre II, uh what the fuck happened here?  My first guess was that the director simply had a background in MTV or filming music videos and decided to bring her scope of that to a horror movie...  My second guess was that maybe they saw the popularity of music videos and MTV and decided to up the appeal factor by having their horror movie chock full of similar nonsense?  I mean, I could guess about this forever.  IMDb gives no information on wtf happened.

You'd think this would be a situation where it's like 'how can you go wrong?'  It's a fucking movie called slumber party massacre!  Like the first one, you make a movie where a bunch of dumbass teens are spending the night in a house, some killer gets loose, and he comes after them, perhaps drawn to their nudity like an bee is to flowers.  But I knew I was in for trouble when, 40 minutes in, no killer had even appeared yet, and I was legitimately just watching teen girls talking and joking about their classes and boys.

I realize there's going to be people out there who liked the sequel.  It takes an almost version of Nightmare on Elm Street, where the main girl Courtney (who was in the first movie, but here is a different actress) is seeing visions of the driller killer from the first movie, and no I'm not referring to the 1979 film The Driller Killer.  Intercut with the killer is this random music video-esque footage of a leather clad rockstar who has a guitar with a drill on it.  There's music and smoke and lighting and I begin to think, are we going to have a fucking SONG here?  And sure enough, if you actually sit through this steaming shitpile of a movie, there is eventually a musical.  In a horror movie.

And I'm sure that others, who like the camp, who are not looking for a horror movie, who are looking for something else, maybe this is their speed.  It is certainly different, it's a different side of the 80's coin than the one I've been looking at in this blog as of late.  But christ, I just was not in the mood for this, as I was trying to have a 80's slasher marathon last night!  If it was still entertaining, if it had fun jokes and stuff, I'd be all for it.  But the comedy is bad and the movie is SLOW as fuck.  Nothing happened for a long time, and then the end is jam-packed like crazy.  Yo, spread that shit the fuck out.  Also, what's with all the straight-down-the-barrel camera shots, people looking directly at the camera as they talk?!  Get a real fucking cinematographer!!!

I'll give Slumber Party Massacre a 3.5.  As I think about it, the only issues it had were maybe, too much screen time for the villain, and it felt for sure exploitative.  But it was fun.

  I give Massacre II...either zero or half or one.  It's a real tough choice.  I do think others would 'get it' and enjoy it.  But for me, I think one star is more than enough.

Funland - 1987

C'mon dude.  For real?  Okay fine.

There's a bunch of smoke hanging over the Bay Area.  It takes a lot for pollution and smoke to stay in our air, given the high amount of wind and moisture.  In the 10 years I've lived here I've seen the air get steadily worse, the traffic get worse, the people get more douchy.  So now there's this fire in Paradise.  And we get the smoke.  They say I shouldn't stay outside.  So I sort of had a movie marathon today.

I get a bit high, a bit drunk, and I turn on Funland.  And who would think that later I...turn it off?  Yes, I fucking turned this shit off, even being high and drunk and willing to watch whatever.  But I still will not watch a bad comedy.  I will not abide a bad comedy that's not on my current boxset.  I have some fucking standards, yo.

I thought this was a horror. It's described as:  "When a mob family takes over an amusement park after the owner dies under mysterious circumstances, the recently-fired clown mascot seeks vengeance for the loss of his job."  I thought it would be a killer clown film, and I was willing to give that a chance.  Sounds fine, right?  Well, it was NOT.

This shit was not funny, interesting, definitely not a horror, and 1000% just a amateur piece of shit that even had bad acting.  The clown is on screen a lot, and he's not good.  The villains suck.  The plot is stupid and still hard to follow.  Some movies just suck.  This one, perfect example.

I give it a zero.

City of the Living Dead - 1980

Well now.  I recently reviewed Rats: Night of Terror.  And revisited the classic Italian horror film idea.  And now, fuck it.  I watched Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead.  This movie, now wtf how have I not seen this before?  This is first class classic Italian horror, all pumped up and exciting as it can be!

Lucio Fulci is very well known on the cult movie scene, and it's pretty obvious as to why.  This movie is really badass and fun.  I'm cutting to the chase here I guess.

A priest hangs himself early on in the beginning of this classic flick.  It's a bit odd, and maybe there is some hidden thing surrounding this death.  Either way, pretty soon there's a bunch of random demons around the town killing people.  They have a multitude of powers, including the ability to kill people just by looking at them.  There's a bit of investigation going on, people trying to find out what's up with the bodies piling up, as well as why this town has so much other shit going on.

This being a awesome Italian 80's film, all the effects are real and high detailed.  The effects here come often and extreme.  Honestly there's hardly a few minutes that go by without some sort of random thing happening that calls for effect.  This might sound disjointing, something like War of the Robots, where you lose track of what's going on.  Somehow though, this remains focused despite having constant shit going on and randomness on screen.

The effects range from amazing to simple, simple still being good though. Goddamn did I love this.  I popped open a nice To Øl beer while I watched this.  I hesitantly gave the beer 5 out of 5 on my review site, and similar to that, I hesitantly give this 5 stars.  I need to see it again, 100%, but yeah this shit is a 5 star film no matter what.

Night of the Sharks - 1988

Night of the Sharks will join the elite group of films I have watched with people.  Also, this is my bouncing ball trick established with Hunk, where I give the 70's boxset a break and I watch something from the 80's boxset.

I had my ex-wife over, and I asked her to choose between this movie and a few others.  She chose this one, cause it was action sounding, had Treat Williams, and was generally not bad sounding.  What she didn't know?  It was filmed by some low rate Italian guy, had a fantastic 80's synthpop soundtrack, but overall was pretty lame and at 90 minutes, still way too long.

Night of the Sharks was entertaining at times, and I can't say it was all bad.  It was, however, still bad, and it was pretty dull.  The acting and the sharks are fine, but the plot and the pacing leave something to be desired.  What do they leave you desiring?  How about...uh...more?!

Treat Williams is David, who inherits a disc when his brother dies.  What he doesn't know is that on the disc is proof of an illegal gangs activities, and soon they show up to collect on it.  David also, in his profession, happens to be a shark hunter?  He chills out in his decidedly beautiful island (Dominican Republic filling in for Florida) and evades both the sharks and the gangsters.

And, it's what you expect.  The sharks are real, and well shot, but the action is not real nor well shot. I mean, it's gonna get like a 2 or a 2.5 in the end, but this isn't a fun one.  If you put this on, like I did, expecting a fun 80's movie to riff on, you may be disappointed.  I give it the lower half of those two ratings, the 2 stars.

Warhead - 1977

Warhead starring David Janssen is just the sort of mildly entertaining film one might expect from a mixed bag 1970's themed movies boxset such as the one I have.  It should surprise no one that this film is in the public domain, just as it should be extremely easy to see what I'll end up thinking of this remarkably unremarkable would-be thriller.

After all, what sort of movie is Warhead starring David Janssen?  Warhead starring David Janssen is a movie that was made for TV, and looks precisely like the sort you would see on TV.  When I go into the trivia section in IMDb, it says it was filmed in 1974 as a TV flick, and that couldn't be any more true.  It does beg the question as to which year is correct, and why it's 1977 on everything I see, but I'm willing to assume that Warhead starring David Janssen is so completely under the radar that no one gives a flying fuck.

Warhead starring David Janssen has main character Tony Stevens (that's Janssen) as a nuclear arms specialist.  He's called in to defuse a nuclear bomb that's been accidentally dropped, un-detonated, in the middle east.  The problem is that there is also a terrorist group led by Meshugi who are after the bomb, and they've got wildly evil plans to match their wild mustaches.  After they kill a bunch of soldiers, it's a regular ol' race to the bomb.

This is a supposed action movie, and what can I say, it is.  I'm not gonna call it a lie.  It's an action thriller, 70's style, and it does exactly what one might expect.  It has some pacing to it, takes the time to explore David Janssen's character a bit, hell even throw him a lady interest in there and have a brief philosophical dialogue about seeing people die.  In the end, as he witnesses the bloodbath caused by the bomb, you bet those words will come back to haunt him.  In this way, it's good, it's not just guns firing and shit blowing up.

However, Warhead starring David Janssen has also got some slow movement, certainly a lot of unnecessary over the top villain acting, and a plot that's so simple you might as well just have the only dialogue be the word "bomb" spoken in different inflections.  In other words, it's got some goods and some bads, it's completely middle of the road.  It's this sort of thing you could equally pay attention to, or just sort of put on.  You could equally hate it or love it.  You could certainly focus on the flaws, or focus on the unexpected charms.  I choose the standard middling approach again, 2.5 stars.

How Awful About Allan - 1970

Here's a fact about How Awful About Allan:  I legitimately watched this no less than three times.  I watched this movie, while sort of distracted, and I thought I missed something and wasn't paying enough attention, so I decided to see it again.  Second time, I did the exact same thing.  I was drunk, I wasn't paying attention, thought I missed something, decided to watch it again.

Third time was the charm, and I put it on, actually paid attention, didn't drink!  And...  um, did I miss something?  Should I see this a fourth time?!  No.  At this point, this movie is cut off, I'm not giving it another chance, and I'm officially just calling it good and writing in what I do know about this movie, which is honestly not that much.

At only 75 minutes, this should have been a breeze.  Scratch that.  This movie is barely 73 minutes, the credits are rollin up at 72:50-something, and I'm sitting there thinking, what the fuck?  This movie was incredibly badly done, and I didn't know what the fuck actually ended up happening in the flick.  Let's break it down in a rare, by the minutes look.  Spoilers.

Minute 1-2:  Allan accidentally catches his house on fire, with sister and father inside.  Allan saves sister, father dies, and Allan's eyes are hurt and now he's partially blind.  Allan's not physically blind though, it's psychosomatic and it's his "guilt" that makes him blind.
Minute 2-25: Allan walks around, talks, he lives with his sister, and nothing happens.
Minute 23-45:  Allan and sister get a roommate, who Allan distrusts for no reason, and thinks the roommate is maybe fucking with him, cause Allan begins to hear weird noises and see odd shapes.
Minute 46-55: A couple more odd shapes and noises, Allan's trying to get himself back into the hospital, roommate sort of stops coming around as much, nothing much happens.
Minute 55-71: Allan, in the climax, tries to leave the house, slips on some ice.  Nothing happens. It's revealed the roommate was only there for one day, Allan begins to hunt the figure that he sees.
Minute 72-73:  It's revealed it was his sister, fast forward to Allan living and now his vision is cured.  Allan gets a call from his sister and randomly goes blind again.

I mean, I knew I was in for a shitfest when literally from minute 2 or so through 20, pretty much nothing happened except walking around talking.  I didn't realize this movie was as old as it was, I thought it was mid-70's, but still!  Fuck, this was so slow!  I practically went insane watching this.

The movie has very little tension, very little in terms of "things happening" and it's riding that line of sanity/insanity too much.  Allan is made to be sympathetic, but he's not likable, and nothing about his blindness is ever really explored.  The shapes and the noises are fine and all, but what is his sister's plan exactly?  To send him back to the psyche ward?  To kill him?  Nothing is ever revealed, and if she wanted to kill him, could've easily done it.  I hate it when the villain's goal is to "drive them insane".  It's a really antiquated notion.  This notion that you just snap a person and then they could never get better.  Ugh.

I give it....  Ummmm.  Is half a star too low?  No?  Okay, sweet.