Crypt of the Living Dead - 1973

Also known as Hannah, Queen of the Vampires.

The black and white era of movies was over in the 60's pretty much.  There was a line in the mid 60's where just about everything was being shot in color, and whether that's cause the audience expected it, or color got cheaper, or black and white wasn't "cool" anymore, I'm not really sure.  I expect it would've been a combination of all of these.

However, some outlying films were still being made in black and white, and Crypt aka Hannah was one of these.  But I tell you, this movie looks and sounds and plays out like it was made LONG before 1973.  IMDb and Wikipedia don't claim that this is one to have been made earlier and just released now, so I'm left to assume that this movie is incredibly dated, no doubt extremely low budget, and quite scraping.  Scraping as in, scraping the bottom of the barrel.  It's a term, and I'm going to start saying it.

This is a heavily atmospheric movie, which I will admit I liked.  It had a creepy eeriness to the movie, and it was well made.  I liked the music a lot and even incorrectly guessed it was done by a well known person - spoiler alert it was not.  Good music though, good cinematography, and a strangeness that suited my mood quite well.

I'll admit that after Last of the Belles I was feeling really uninteresting in this boxset.  I didn't want to delve into another bad 70's movie, and I was really against the prospect which I do have to face here:  this boxset is not sci fi, horror, or any cool genre like that.  This is a set of themed movies and...  Ugh, okay fine.  I will reveal the boxset:

As you can see, this sounds promising, until you realize that by "cheesy" they are basically going to throw any sort of random-ass unknown public domain 70's movie onto it and justify it cause "it's from the 70's".  Of course this is actually two sets back to back, the Excellent 80's and the Swingin' 70's which is where I started.

It was a decent enough return to the horror or thriller genre, and I was glad to have picked this one.  Some dumb western or "comedy" movie might've pushed me over the edge of sanity.  3.5 stars.

F. Scott Fitzgerald and 'The Last of the Belles' - 1974

Also just known as The Last of the Belles.

Tell me what's wrong in this picture.  The genre definition for this movie is: Biography, Drama and Romance.  You can well imagine, you should be able to guess what's wrong there.  I don't really review dramatic romantic biographies.  Thanks, boxset.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is suffering from writers block while hanging out with his wife on a trip.  He is also a pompous asshole and a self absorbed douchebag in the film.  He suddenly gets inspired by his wife, who is apparently a total bitch.  He thus begins to write the story "The Last of the Belles".  And we transition to follow his short story he's writing.

In The Last of the Belles, Susan Sarandon plays Ailie Calhoun, a simple small town girl with dreams of something bigger.  She is the object of intense attraction by about everyone in town, and suitor after suitor seems to become infatuated with her.  Sarandon does a good job, and desperately tries to sell the role and carry the film, but goddamn this film was just so BORING.

I got through a lot of this in one night, and at some point realized I was an hour into it and still had a soul-crushing 38 minutes left of the thing.  I turned it the fuck off and finished it last night while I sipped rum and drew my comic book I'm drawing.  I left the room a few times without pausing this movie.  I'm 1000% certain I didn't miss a thing.

It's just not what I'm looking for.  Sorry, bro.  It's romantic, it's well acted, it probably makes sense, but it was dull, it was long, and I didn't care at all.  The little intro and outro with F. Scott aren't even good, they barely are different at all in fact.  So...  That said, I was considering giving it zero stars, and you know what fuck it, why change that?

The Hanged Man - 1974

TV movie, a pilot for a possible series with Steve Forrest, and a western movie.  What am I doing reviewing this you may ask, but then you'd obviously be new to the blog if you asked that. This ones going to be short.

Steve Forrest plays a convicted criminal in the old west, and he is about to be hanged for his crimes.  He consorts with the priest, he is regretting his crimes, but it's whatev, he'll be hung anyways.  Then the day comes, and he is roped up and hung.  But twist is he somehow survives the hanging.  Laws state that someone could only be sentenced to death once, so he is then free to live, and he turns over a new leaf and begins to protect a widow and her farm from some baddies.

First of all, this movie felt way longer than the IMDb length listed of 73 minutes.  I almost clearly remember it being an hour 45 minutes or so, but I wasn't paying 100% attention.  I had watched the 80's classic Firestarter and pretty much chugged a 40 of Country Club Malt Liquor.

Trust me, this picture of Country Club is much more interesting 

than any photo from the film would have been.

Firestarter is a great underrated Steve King flick.  It's got to be up there with the best, and I firmly believe all the best King movies were the ones made in the 80's. So I followed it up with 74's The Hanged Man, I was feeling buzzed from the booze, and I switched to rum during Hanged.  Thus, I didn't really pay attention like I was saying.  

I have one more 40 of Country Club in my fridge, I'm saving it for yet another 70's movie.  

Although I had a slight desire when I was watching this to watch it again, and pay attention this time, I know already that I'm not going to do that.  I haven't made my "announcement" yet, but I have something like 98 more movies to watch for this blog, and that's a giant hint if there ever was one.  

This movie gets a slightly below average 2 stars.