The Driver's Seat - 1974

Some actors get a reputation outside of cinema, which affects how they're seen in the public eye, the movies they're cast in, and much more.  This phenomena is not particularly something I care about.  I have always been of the opinion that an actor is an actor.  What they do in their private life doesn't fucking matter.  It has no effect at all on how they act.

I love Daniel Day Lewis.  I tell this to my buddy.  "Dude, Daniel Day Lewis is an asshole," he says.  First of all, how would you know that?  Have you met him?  "Apparently on set Daniel Day Lewis was a major dick to XYZ actor or actress and director."  Obviously if this was Weinstein level bad I'd give a fuck.  But just "being an asshole?"  Who gives a fuck?!  First of all, who knows why he was doing that.  Maybe the actor had it coming.  Second of all, it DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER.  Did it effect Lewis's performance?  Fuck no it didn't, the dude is amazing.

Elizabeth Taylor is an actress like this.  Married like 8 times, bout to fits of weirdness and intensity, she garnered quite a reputation outside of cinemas.  She's a gay icon.  She's controversial.  She has all sorts of legends and cult followings.  Do I give a shit?  Fuck no.  But movies like The Driver's Seat get reputed as legendary because she is acting weird in it, and thus it gets some giant cult following.  Well, okay.  Giant-ish following.  It's not super known.

People do agree with me in their online reviews that this movie induces a general sense of "what the hell?"  It played at Cannes and garnered similar reviews.  It's a movie with an electric feel to it, something you want to watch, but cannot comprehend, and don't know how to interpret.  I watched it with equal parts interest and disgust, love and hate, boredom and intrigue.

Elizabeth Taylor stars as Lise, an eclectic and bizarre, enraged and unexplained character.  She is prone to extremely weird dialogue and actions, doing seemingly incomprehensible things at random.  In the beginning she buys a shirt, then later flips out when she learns it is stain free.  This is by far not out of character for her the way she's written.  This movie was an exercise in having bizarre things for Lise to say and do with nothing to explain or restrain her.

Driver's Seat feels like it was made purely to capitalize on the weirdness factor, which means it's a precursor to the self aware.  Also it was definitely going for the "experimental film" thing.  It even has Andy Warhol in it, in a small role.  Eventually, things do get explained a bit, but not to the point where they make sense.  Just to the point where someone couldn't get mad and say the movie had no plot.

It's not a great film.  It has it's moments of comedy and weirdness and sexuality that shine through, but overall, it just feels like a garbled mess, and it does feel exploitative.  Oh, and surprise surprise, this was a return to the 70's boxset!  I actually went back to it, like a druggie with a bad habit.  I think others would like it way more than I did, but I will still give it 2.5 stars

Guess where two of the stars come from.

Iced - 1988

I texted my new girl, sort of paid attention, ran through a array of different emotional and sexual feelings, and generally "lived" while I watched Iced last night.  I also ate dinner.  Chicken, cauliflower and bell pepper tacos.  Don't judge me.

There's not a lot to talk about with Iced, it's some subpar late 80's horror slasher that I watched solely because it was on some dudes IMDb list of movies from the 80's that were bad.  And well, it was.  It was both from the 80's and it was bad.

Iced is a long shot from the early 80's horror flicks.  This one is a bit more self aware, it is going for a more complete story versus just delivering the scares.  It even has some Scream like self-commentary moments, but they are few and mostly amateurish.  Specifically they make comments about how there "would normally be a killer targeting the hot women, who would be killed while naked, or having sex, or both" and then later on in the movie, the women are killed while you guessed it, being naked, having sex or both.

Sex is weird huh?  I was thinking while I was watching this movie, the overarching moral lesson behind a lot of horror movies seems to be that sex is bad.  Is sex bad?  Perhaps we missed the lesson though.  Maybe it has nothing to do with sex.  My second thought is vulnerability.  I think as a species we are extremely aware of when we're vulnerable.  Physically I mean.

Sex is a very vulnerable place to be.  You're concentrating on something which is taking so much of your attention, it's an action which is not associated with your immediate survival, you're naked or undressed, you don't have your weapons or your protection with you.  Perhaps we misinterpret the moral lesson now because we see movies doing things we don't understand.  We see the killer targeting sexually active people because "sex is bad" and not because of the vulnerability factor.  Also, when it's usually the women that are killed?  The reason could more so be that the killer is eliminating our survival as a species.  We know, obviously, that the human race is going to survive an average horror movie.  But it's a microcosm for what we're ultimately afraid of in our roots as a small tribe of hunter/gatherers.  If a predator was targeting our women, we would completely die out, having no way to keep the line going without reproduction.

It's these things that make me adore horror movies.  Horror movies speak to a base primal part of who we are as people.  Provided of course that you look beyond what's immediately apparent and you're willing to dig into the root of the question "why?"  Why we're afraid of another person being the killer, for example.  It's not just cause humans are powerful and smart.  It's because we HAVE to be around other humans to survive.  As a species we're extremely vulnerable when we're alone.  Hence, we join a group, tribe if you will.  What would be worse than finding out that someone you brought into your tribe, that you trusted with your life, is now hunting you?

Iced says none of this because it settles for having a ski-masked killer hunting a group of friends at a ski resort in the mountains.  There's about 4-5 friends, and they get picked off while we get clues as to what happened, who the killer may be, and the history behind why the killer may be killing.  But mostly the focus is on some decent kills, plenty of topless scenes with big ol' titties, and average pacing/dialogue/acting/whatever else we judge these flicks by.

I sound like I liked this movie, which I guess in retrospect I did, kind of.  It was fine.  Nothing too memorable or nothing that stood out.  It worked.  I give it 2.5

Help Me... I'm Possessed - 1976

I like the use of a good ... in a sentence.  For dramatic effect, randomly changing topics, style of writing.  I've probably made use of it countless times.  Yet, I don't think I have once used it in a movie title, and I doubt it's in many other titles.

Help Me... is the story of a classic mad scientist.  In fact, it had many tropes that are time tested.  It has a hunchback, it has exploitation, it has torture scenes, it has half naked women, it even has weird pacing and stuffy actors!  See, all the things one would expect are here, I told ya dawg.

So we have 70's, but conversely this was not on the boxset.  I told you, I'm taking a motherfucking break.  But I am also continuing my 1976 marathon, though I guessed this was a different year when I guessed earlier.  It feels like its been a little while since I saw a 76 film, but reality is it really has not been very long.  Whatever.

Help Me is the story of the mad scientist and his hunchback cohort, living in the desert, doing experiments on a few people in their basement.  There has been a string of killings lately, so a cop comes poking around but the scientist is able to convince him they have nothing to do with the killings.  Then the scientists wife shows up and meets the scientist, his crazy sister, and eventually uncovers the sinister experiments the bro is doing in his basement.

Its... average.  See there?  I used the ...  But yeah, it is quite average.  It should have had nudity, is my primary thought.  It's like an sexploitation in quality, but since it has no skin, it's basically just a worse than average exploitation flick.  Which, honestly, I could take or leave.  It's pretty much nothin', it's blah, it's bland.  Acting is underacting.  Music is under-scoring.  The look is pretty much nothing.  This whole movie left no real impact.  In other words.

There's like a few moments of entertainment, and it might be fun to watch with friends or while drinking.  But it's got many other, better films I'd recommend for such ventures first.  1.5 stars.

The Prey - 1984

Remember when this blog was bursting with enthusiasm from a bad film seeker?  Remember the jovial and uncontainable fire that belched forward from me when I would watch some shitty movie?  I think watching these boxsets has killed a lot of my former enthusiasm for this.  It was something I deeply, deeply wanted to do, that I'd wanted to do for years, but I do think that it may have been a mistake.

The problem is that I don't really watch anything else when I'm in the sets.  It feels like, if I'm gonna watch something dumb, it may as well be the bad movie that's on the set versus the one that isn't.  Also, I do like some of the movies on the set.  But in the meantime, it becomes a tremendous chore to keep going through the set movies.  I wish there was an easy answer.

But nights like last night may be part of the answer.  I was trying to find a certain movie on youtube, one which I did not find naturally.  But it recommended this movie, The Prey to me.  It looked like a subpar 80's horror, and for some reason that greatly excited me.  I went home, did my laundry, cooked some pasta, and sat down to The Prey.

The Prey is a good example of the average Friday the 13th copycat.  It is almost the exact same flick as The Forest, which I reviewed over three years ago!  Wow dude, I have officially been doing this blog for way too long.  Similar to The Forest, it shares a lot more in common with Memorial Day Massacre now that I think of it.  Prey came before MDM though, so you know.  Just for completion, here is the link to the other movie that The Prey was similar to, The Final Terror.

Create the checklist here with me:  A group of six attractive teenagers are going to go camping in the wilderness.  There's a old forest ranger who saw something creepy years ago, a lone weirdo who was burned and wandering around the woods alone.  The group of six teens gets all hot and heavy on their first night in the woods, and the next morning two of them go missing.  Could it have to do with the perspective shots that play every once in a while accompanied by the sound of a beating heart?

Along with perspective shots, there are also plenty of psuedo-artsy shots of animals in relative close up, with bizarre music playing to accompany them.  Ants scurrying, worms, snakes, beetles, whatever the case may be.  The best was when a ranger comes across a vulture eating a dead body.  Inter-cutting his anguished face, the body the vulture was feasting on, the vulture itself, again and again, with strange music blasting, and with a scree of noise building....  It was glorious.

I needed a tone shift drastically.  Maybe I'll take a two or three month break from the 70's set.  Cause you know what?  I actually had a GOOD TIME last night.  This movie was pretty good, but it wasn't just that.  Relaxing, not watching some forced 70's comedy or something, seeing horror and 80's, and something linear, I honestly could give this movie 5 stars just based on the night I had last night.  I didn't even drink!  No beer at all, I haven't really been doing the weed thing in a very long time, and I had a tremendous time watching this.

Speaking objectively, it was actually a good movie.  It was well paced, it was only an hour 17 minutes so it wasn't overly long.  It saved the monster to the end, the characters were like-able and the story made sense.  The kills were not shown for the most part, but good when they happened.  The whole thing was good.  It was a great average slasher.  It even left it open for a sequel!  Which, in another dimension, maybe this had the dozen or so sequels that other, lesser horror tropes had.  Why it's not better known is beyond me.  4 stars.

Frantic - 1988

I've only been updating the blog with movies from the boxsets lately.  There are multiple reasons for this.  Please see my review of Against a Crooked Sky for some insight as to why this might be.  Also, what I didn't mention is that I've been writing a lot of other things recently.  This actually dates back to early last year, when I started writing my first movie script.

I wrote two full movie scripts, and I wrote about 6 partial scripts.  I wrote my "show" which has two complete scripts for 30 minute shows.  I also wrote a script of Workaholics to enter a contest.  All this writing drains me bro.  I can't write nonstop for "work" and then also write for fun on a movie blog.

Buuuuuuut, here I am reviewing a well known Polanski movie.  What can I say?  Life is confusing like that.  I'm also going to try and write a script for Bob's Burgers in the next two weeks.  Although I'm sure it's probably stressful and shitty to work in television, someone's gotta do it right?

Frantic is a great title and a great movie, directed by Roman Polanski, the OG child molester we hate to admit that we love.  Harrison Ford, John Mahoney, Dominique Pinon, and others star in the fast paced and well plotted 1988 flick.

Early on, about say 15 minutes in, Harrison Ford's wife has mixed up her suitcase with another that looks like it at the airport.  She receives a call while Ford is in the shower, and she goes out to meet the people who supposedly have her real suitcase.  She is promptly kidnapped.  Then the rest of the movie, right up until the hour forty or so minute mark, is all Harrison Ford tracking her down to get her back. 

The tension is great, the soundtrack great.  The acting, obviously great.  Harrison Ford reminds me a bit of Daniel Day Lewis, I realize, maybe that's why I like him.    There's a bunch of things to like about this movie.  But in the season of nitpicking on a movie reviews blog, let's talk about what's NOT great a tiny bit.

First of all, the kidnappers basically never make any attempt to contact Ford's doctor character Richard Walker.  They turn out to be after a miniature electronic thingy hidden in a Statue of Liberty souvenir.  Well, why don't they EVER try to get it from Walker?  They could have called him about 15 minutes after they kidnapped the wife, and just made the trade.  Second of all, Walked finds a matchbox in the suitcase.  It happens to have the name and phone number of the guy he needs to contact.  Why?  Because movie magic.  In real life, it would have been some useless phone number, perhaps to a pizza delivery restaurant.  Third, the female that's tossed in as eye candy for the audience and temptation for Ford is just ridiculous.  A druggie punk, who stays with Ford just "cause" basically, it's not done particularly well.  Also, it's good and all, but I still think 2 hours total was maybe a little long.  Surely about 15 minutes of the filler could have been cut....

It's a good movie, it's fun to watch, and it's quintessential for a Ford enthusiast like myself.  4 stars.

Wacky Taxi - 1972

I wish you could all hear the frustrated, defeated sigh I just let out before I started this review of Wacky Taxi.  Really dude?  You're going to name your movie Wacky Taxi?  Alternate name, Pepper and His Wacky Taxi.  Nope, not any better.

My thought as I watched this, and that I want to convey the most is: what the hell did the script for Wacky Taxi look like?  I'm willing to bet it looked a little like this:

Lady Patron:  Can you take me downtown?
Taxi Driver:  Sure lady, hop in.
(driving montage, over which is heard random incoherent mumbling by the taxi driver, the lady patron, and other people who are not pictured.  Also, previous conversations from the movie play in the background during the montage, for no apparent reason)

I mean what the fuck, seriously?  In dialogue scenes, the driver rattles on and on while no one is listening.  Half his sentences are partial thoughts, interrupted, meaningless, really just the types of things someone would be thinking.  A lot of "Uh, I'll put that here, what's with this luggage, go to the airport, hop in the cab, yeah I can make change for a $20, 60 cents please, how do I get downtown..." and so on.  Randomly a fare person will start speaking too "Hey driver...what's with the traffic....how much to...can you take me....say what is this?" and so on.

Incomprehensible would thus be a good term for this movie entirely but especially the dialogue.  The plot is simple I guess, I'll take that back.  Some dude named Pepper has five kids, and he decides to support them by quitting his job, investing his money in a run down old Cadillac, and starting a taxi business.  It's a success I guess, and we follow him as he drives around, talks, and does nothing.

Minor plot turns happen, the taxi is stolen at one point.  Pepper tries to recruit people to make a taxi business.  Pepper gets in trouble for operating a taxi without a permit.  But nothing means anything, no problem is presented as an actual roadblock, and everything hums along like nothing as this supposed "comedy" plays on for almost 90 minutes.

Is it funny?  Come on, do you need to ask?  I'd be very hard pressed to take a guess at what was even supposed to be a little bit  funny.  Nothing is anything!  Nothing adds to anything, nothing goes anywhere, nothing is ever said or done or expressed.  There's not a pratfall, not a shtick, not a gimmick or an accent to be heard.  It's all just random, unclear, and off-putting.  No.  There is no goddamn comedy.  It's about as funny as a hole in your shoe on a day when it's raining.

I'm going to predict, with just a bit of aggitation and perhaps too much determination, that no movie in this set will make me laugh.  The 70's was a great time in comedy too!  Monty Python, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Cheech and Chong, Peter Sellers, John Waters...  But this, ugh, this just hurts.

What saves it from zero stars, I guess, is the fact it's not....hm....unwatchable.  It's linear, the characters are defined.  It wasn't like it was hard to follow.  God, why am I giving this any stars?  I just considered giving it zero.  I was going to give it one.  You know what?  Half a star.

Death Scream - 1971

Also known more usually as The Deadly Trap.

Am I going insane?  I could have sworn the DVD write-up on this movie said it had Raul Julia in it.  I put this movie in for one reason.  Raul Julia.  Then the movie starts and the credits say Faye Dunaway, Frank Langella, and I'm like, wow nice cast.  I figure Raul Julia isn't one of the main actors.  A bit part.  A small role.  But nope.  He wasn't in it at all.

Deadly Trap versus Death Scream.  What I'm trying to do is think about which name fit the movie better.  And I think it's a draw.  It's a draw where neither of them fit very well.  Plus the synopsis, the synopsis with the name added on top makes it sound great.  Like a 70's action movie.  The synopsis you ask?

"Jill is surprised and angry when her computer-genius boyfriend decides to quit his job in a big company for unclear reasons. But when her children disappear mysteriously and seem to have been kidnapped, she wants to know more, and discovers that she may be caught in a DEADLY TRAP..."      -IMDb.

What that plot doesn't say, wow, that's going to be a LONG ass list.  You see, I wasn't drunk, I wasn't distracted, I wasn't angry and half paying attention.  I actually WATCHED this movie.  I sat there, eyes open, jaw set, and I watched this entire movie.  And I'll tell ya, this plot synopsis doesn't cover half the nonsense in this one.

First of all, Jill is a extremely untrustworthy narrator.  She is the main character, and is prone to fits of amnesia which are never explained, and have nothing to do with the plot except to serve as a catalyst for some of the things that go wrong.  It's a slow development and it reminded me initially a lot of Footprints on the Moon. You have a main character woman where odd things are happening to her, seemingly pointing towards missing time, missing memories, etc.

Except...this woman isn't half as well written as the woman from Footprints, and they explain the amnesia away and then it promptly never comes back.  Except one part where she has a hard time remembering a phone number later.  Also, Jill has two kids, 8 year old Cathy and 4 year old Patrick.  Half the time that she's hanging out though, she's got Patrick...and where the fuck is Cathy?  That really bugged me.

Eventually, Patrick is indeed kidnapped.  Maybe it's cause she lets him run all over the place chasing his hula-hoop?  Cathy also pretty much vanishes, conveniently left out of the story for the most part.  And what is the story?  Well, to be honest, I have no idea.  It just sort of goes, and I will admit I had no real clue what was happening in this movie.  It's a tough road to walk through to follow the plot, and I can admit I don't really know what happened in the end.

You should check out this dude's awesome 70's movie blog here, I'm a giant fan of this blog, being that I am immersing myself in 70's movies for a LONG time right now.  This particular one, despite the fact I really wanted to like it, and it has various times of creepy atmosphere, only gets 1.5 stars.

Against a Crooked Sky - 1975

I'm going to come right out and admit I wasn't paying a lot of attention during most of Against a Crooked Sky.  Whatever bro, it still fucking counts.

How much of my life have I wasted watching stupid ass movies?  How many endless days of back to back movies and shows and boring nonsense have I committed to this shit?  Way too fucking many.  My life feels like it's going nowhere.  I can't make decisions anymore.  I want everything and nothing.  I want to be alone, I want to be with people, I want to work, I never want to work again.  Is this what it's like to grow older?  Is part of the process literally going insane and never realizing what it is you're after?

People ask me, endlessly, what do you want?  As if what I want will solve things.  I'll tell you:  I just want to not worry.  I just want things to make sense.  I want to feel like something, somewhere, makes sense.  Instead nothing does.  The women in my life, the men, the house, the job, the area, the world.  I belong and I don't.  I love it and I don't.  I've been trying to find my niche for my entire life.  Where the hell do I belong?  Where the hell are there people like me?

What am I.  I don't really know.  Maybe finding one's niche requires the level of self knowledge I don't have yet.  Maybe this is why people commit to something like a sexuality, a interest, a identity.  They see parts of others they want, and they adopt that for themselves.  But I don't.  I just have half interests in things.  Brought down by my crushing hatred of interaction and yet, somehow my desire to interact with people on a super fucking deep, emotional and core level.

What does this have to do with Against a Crooked Sky, an average "cowboys vs Indians" western?  Well, nothing, obviously.  Except I've been outing myself on the kink scene, and while I was watching this I was texting some kinky women, searching events, and trying to track down that cute awkward dude who I kinda wanted to fuck.  Do I "identify" with kink?  Not really.  I am kinky, I am into it, it's not "who I am" though.  But might as well get laid right?  Who knows, maybe that will at least up my confidence or my experience.

This movie is a family friendly cowboy flick, much more in the vein of something which I might've enjoyed versus that one movie The Proud and the Damned.  I remember it had a decent soundtrack, it was shot in Utah and looked great, and the acting was fine.  It's the kid from Where the Red Fern Grows, not that I've seen that one, but he is fine as the main character Sam.  Sam's sister gets kidnapped by Indians, so he gets an old drunk prospector to help him find the girl, leading the drunkard on with promises of gold. 

By the time the end sequence came around, I was burnt out on writing these people, so I paid attention, and I think the end was a great sequence.  It had a eerie darkness to it, and although I should rewatch the whole thing, I don't intend to.  I also started the next movie, a "comedy" called Wacky Taxi, that I dread finishing.  2.5 stars.