The New Adventures of Heidi - 1978

I had not thought of the 70's boxset in a while, and I was feeling weird last night.  Depressed, tired, a bit anxious and weird.  I didn't know what to do, and fuck knows that I did not want to watch Twin Peaks some more, or play my computer game.  So I slammed in The New Adventures of Heidi.

Heidi is apparently some sort of franchise about a young girl living with her grandfather in the Swiss Alps, and it's got a whole series of books and movies and plays and musicals based on it, and much like some of those, this movie has songs in it.  Calling it a musical might be a stretch, because the songs are few, pretty short,with a lot of sing-talking present.

Absolutely not my usual thing, a family and kid-friendly 70's musical, but I did somehow not hate this!  I couldn't tell you why.  Of all the moods I could have been in, there was some level of vulnerability which I had that made me more susceptible to the childlike plot and all around happy feeling the movie instills in the viewer.  Also, acting was pretty good if I do say so myself.

Heidi is living in the mountains with her grandfather, they have no running water or electricity, they just chill out and as the song later acknowledges, with his age gaining, it's a "who's really take of care of who" scenario.  Heidi loves him deeply, and with her parents gone, he's all she has.  So when he begins to go blind, and realizes he has to give her up, it's bad news.  He goes missing, Heidi goes to stay with a friend in New York who has her own problems with a perpetually absent father and a missing mother figure of her own.  She's got infinite money, but not enough to buy happiness.

The movie is a lesson on the fragility of life, the need for family bonds, and how one can over-complicate their lives, taking away the focus from the things that really matter.  The girl with everything simply wants love and not the whole rigamorale, the girl with nothing is happy but envious of the luxury the other girl takes for granted.  In that way it's pretty good observation on the human condition, where we often take for granted what he have, focusing instead on what we don't, and we get caught up with convincing ourselves we're not happy.

The singing parts were slightly irritating, but fine.  The acting was pretty much fine, the rest was about as you expect.  Nothing too bad, nothing too outstanding in this entry.  I will say for what it was I enjoyed it, and I honestly think if I had watched it at a different point in my life I wouldn't have liked it as much.  So, in this case it comes out winning.  It's for sure not the type of thing on a blog called "Grindhouse Review" but let's be honest, I've strayed far FAR away from the simple reviews that a title like that would imply.

I give this....  Oh man.  I simply have no idea.  4 stars seems incredibly high.  3, very low.  3.5 seems not quite right.  Hmm... what the hell.  Enjoy, Heidi.

The Unseen - 1980

I saw the trailer for this film a long time ago, and I truly don't think I ever researched it at all, just added it to my list blindly.  The trailer is fucking phenomenal, but if I had done five minutes worth of research, maybe I would've found the poster, and rethought my initial thought.  Now, I'm going to ask for about 4 minutes of your time, because I seriously want you to compare trailer versus poster here.  First the trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnsJYQ6T-0k

And now the poster:

Um, how much more comical and farcical could this poster be?!

All's I'm saying is, these are two very different movies.  The trailer is downright creepy.  This is a case where, not only is the poster totally different from the movie, the trailer and the poster are BOTH better than the actual movie, and in fact it even has a better heating duct grate than the movie!  I mean, just watch the trailer.  That grate is creepy as fuck.  I wonder where I could buy one of those for my house...

The Unseen was a film I got really excited about, and I'll admit I had my hopes up.  I expected a sort of weird 70's style slow burn horror flick.  Instead this is a bizarre mashup between badly paced 70's flick and post Texas Chainsaw extreme shock horror.  The shock horror doesn't work, the slow talky parts don't work.  The acting is perhaps the only fun part, as Sydney Lassick hams it up big time with his cartoonish expressions and voice.  Also, Bond girl Barbara Bach is fine as the heroine.

It's not what I expected at all, but that aside, I feel like it was satisfying.  It's a lot more in the vein of the recent 80's horror slashers I'd been watching, so I'll take that for what it is, but essentially, I'm not going to give it high marks as one of those either, because it's a bit slow and bland, with the ending too jampacked.  Also....not made super clear what The Unseen was all about.  Spoilers here, once it's made clear there's a mutant guy in the basement, he's immediately put in a sympathetic light and Sydney Lassick is made to be evil, yet it's clear Lassick didn't kill two of the girls, so were there two killers then?  The Unseen?  Seems like it should've been named The Unsure.  I'll give it 2.5 stars.

Eyes Wide Shut - 1999

I am going to take a guess here about my history with Stanley Kubrick.  I seriously don't remember at this point.  I have no fucking clue when I saw what, exactly.  I know that I bought 2001 and Clockwork Orange in the year 2001 or 2002.  I know this cause I have these weird boxsets that  included a 70mm (or 45mm for Clockwork) film frame, the CD Soundtrack, and a booklet.  So I probably had seen them around the late 90's because I knew who Stanley Kubrick was when Eyes was coming out.

I'm going to go out on a small limb and say...there's a chance that Eyes Wide Shut may have been the first movie by Kubrick I saw.  When I was this age, 13 or so, I was beginning to get really into film, and I might have recognized that this was a movie veteran, well known, and that this was his new film.  Since I don't specifically remember seeing 2001 or Clockwork the first time, there is a very small chance I rented this when it was a new release and watched it, and it made me interested to his other movies.... just a possible situation.   Not guaranteed.

Eyes Wide Shut will forever be remembered I think for three unfortunate things.  Number one, Stanley Kubrick's last movie.  Number two, the sex club part of the movie.  Number three, it was Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as a couple at the time, and they were having their first big film together, and they broke up soon afterwards.  All these things have tainted the legacy of the film, but what is the movie besides these things?  I hadn't seen it since the very early 2000's and I revisited it cause it's on Netflix.

First of all, it's not a great movie.  Let me just start with that.  You can't really expect every single thing the man touches to be gold, and the plot of this just doesn't bring loads to the table.  What you have here is perhaps a fantastical and surreal vision of the falling apart of a married couple.

Nicole Kidman, as Alice early in the film admits to husband Tom Cruise, as Bill that she had fantasies about a man she saw randomly.  In his pain and anger, he goes out into the night and eventually finds his friend and pianist Nick Nightingale at a club.  He sticks around and they talk, Nick mentions he's going to another gig, that he has to be blindfolded for it, and there's a mystery to it.  Pushed on by curiosity, Bill decides to attend the event, which is the big sex club scene about an hour into the movie.  When he's discovered as someone not wanted there, he gets targeted and eventually threatened, then kicked out.

Aside from that 20 or so minutes of the movie, the rest is all pretty much based in reality.  Bill is trying to cope with his distraught feelings after the admission of his wife, and in the meantime he's a busy doctor, begins to have suspicions and fear after the threats made at him in the club, especially when a woman he was talking to there ends up dead.  But, spoilers here, the best part of the movie is the ambiguity it leaves as to the whole affair.  The woman?  A drug addict prostitute who possibly killed herself.  The man following Bill?  A tail his friend put on him to make sure Bill was safe and didn't endanger the sex cult.  Eventually, his life returns to normalcy, he confesses all to his wife Alice, and though he has nothing really to confess to, it's all symbolic of how much he was willing to go through because of the admission she made earlier.  And she forgives him, although I guess in a way it's her just acknowledging the true nature of what happened in the relationship.

Well acted, certainly well shot, with tremendous feelings of tension at time, and a lot of bizarre qualities to it, one still has to admit this movie felt unfocused.  There's a lot of unnecessary parts to the film, and there's a lot of unclear motivation from Bill about what he's doing and why.  When he goes to a prostitute in the beginning it makes sense.  The sex cult makes sense.  Revisiting the prostitute later and bringing her a gift, didn't make sense.  Getting interested in a shopkeepers daughter, didn't make sense.  Not to mention there's basically no need for any of the hospital scenes, for a lot in the beginning, and some other small things.

As a last film, since you can't really count A.I., this is a fairly weak end to the Kubrick legend.  It is his look at relationships, I guess, and has some nice imagery and certainly will stick with you.  But like I said, unfortunately, the brazen and twisted scenes at the sex club are the only things one will end up taking away from the film, and that actually has very little to do with the film in the end, and was more metaphoric in existence in the first place.  It ends as it began, two rich white people who hit a minor bump in the road just keep on going, and we're left to assume everything is fine, and this was a brief diversion in the flawless lives of two beautiful, pretty much perfect peoples lives...

It's not an easy film to stick up for, and I kind of doubt I'll be in a rush to see it again.  The sex party did remind me a lot of the kink scene I go to sometimes, but other than that, it held no real value for me.  I give it 3 stars, mostly for the technically well made factors.

On The Beach - 1959

Alright, so I'm getting to some Netflix DVDs that have been on my list for a long ass time, and I had something I don't quite remember for like 4 weeks and just returned it to get On The Beach.  I sat, I put it on, I forgot how old it was and was surprised it was black and white, and I was...  entertained!  How nice, am I right?

My friend asked me at some point what I was watching recently, and I told him On The Beach.  I was about halfway through the movie.  He asked, "Should I add it to my Q?"  After all, I had described the film as it reads:  some post-apocalyptic thriller in Australia.  It does sound fucking cool.  But what was my response to his question?  "I don't know, it depends how much you like talky black and white character dramas.  It's well shot and has some great acting, but overall it's a bit long."

And honestly, I could just leave the review at that, but let's muster something here....

An American submarine comes up around Australia.  The crew disembarks and talks to the locals, and learns that while they've been underwater, the bomb went off and most of the Earth's population has died of radiation.  The radiation is slowly spreading all over the world, so it seems that in time it will infect Australia as well.  They pick up on a signal being sent from somewhere in America about 45 minutes in, and decide to go investigate.

And it's, like I said earlier, very well done in parts.  Gregory Peck, Anthony Perkins, Fred Astaire, Ava Gardner, it has the great cast one could fall in love with.  Filmed in gorgeous back and white with sometimes amazing shots.  The acting, sometimes it's just there and is fine, but sometimes its amazing and nuanced and makes the film wonderful.

With something so bleak, I wondered where the movie would go.  When they board the submarine and take off for America, there is a sense of palpable tension to the film.  They get to America, San Francisco, and they need to investigate where the signal is coming from.  Some spoilers present here.  They end up finding the signal is being sent by a coke bottle caught in a window drape.  They leave America and head back.  Back home, soon the first of their Australian people has the radiation sickness.  They then discover they're all going to die, and so they all make choices.  Stay and die in Australia, or get on the boat, and head towards the mainland?  And eventually, well everyone dies.  Which for 1959, was pretty fucking dark.  This is a very dark, very bleak movie.

Spoilers over.  Considering the plot, this movie should be recommended to anyone who enjoys these types of films.  There were some odd choices made, however, and some minor things I didn't like.  The American guy is so strikingly "good guy".  Anthony Perkins wife is ridiculously fragile and has some vague mental thing that's never explained.  There's endless dialogue at times, while at other times no one ever expresses more than slight concern that the whole world has died in the beginning of the movie.

In the end, it's a great mix between classic 50's dialogue heavy, and chilling dark view of the future and what humanity would seem very likely to do in the case of true hopelessness.  I think it's up there in terms of the more "realistic" end of the world films, and if nothing else, I think it totally nails it on some of the character turns.  I give it....  I guess 4.5.

The River Niger - 1976

Sweeeeeet.  I saw this movie, and when it ended last night, I could've sworn it said copyright 1970.  I was impressed for it to have been made in 1970, but instead it's 1976 and I get to continue my 1976 marathon.  Motherfucker, I will watch at least 76 movies from 1976.  That' my new stated goal.  76 movies from 1976, tracked and in this blog.  And I am at.... 19.  I am not going to count 1976 movies I've seen separate from this blog.  I'm sure in TOTAL I have seen a lot more, probably about 50ish or something.  I'm talking about ever in my life.

So I am already a quarter of my way through to 76 movies, given I am 19 out of 76.  Wow, that's seriously weird, 19 is exactly one fourth of 76.  Super cool.  With knowledge of 18 other movies from the same year, I will have to say in retrospect this movie felt a little older.  However, it was also a change, given that this is a straight drama.

The Swinging 70s boxset has led me to some strange and odd circumstances.  I've watched films that I would normally not watch at all.  I've stepped out of genre, I've gone into romance, drama, biopic, and comedy.  There have been a few of the strange or weird, there may even be a few horror or thriller types to come.  But the reason I thought this would be fun is that it's gonna be such a mixed bag in watching this boxset.

The River Niger is a family drama piece.  Roger Ebert reviewed it, and I have to agree with his thought that it felt soap-opera in it's scope.  It's a operatic family drama in that it crams a lot of things into one flick, with a lot of issues touched on, brought up, dialogued, and some are heartfelt whereas others exist just to exist and make the rest seem more dramatic.

James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett Jr, and others lead a well acted story of a father figure, John, whose son is due home from the war soon.  John's son Jeff was in the air force, and comes home with a bit of hostility to him.  John is an alcoholic, Jeff didn't like the air force and washed out, John's wife has cancer, John goes missing for a short time, Jeff's bride gets hit on by some local gangs, there's a drug war going on....it's a load of problems heaped onto the flick to dramatize it all up.

Obviously the strengths here are many.  James Earl Jones turns in a fantastic dynamic performance of a pained and free-spirited man.  He's a poet and a painter, a philosopher and a father.  He loves his wife, he lives his life, and just wants everyone to be happy.  Various other characters are given enough to deepen their characters, and everything plugs along until the inevitable conclusion that slightly misfires as to what the end meaning truly was.

There was two extremely good moments though.  John is a poet, and when he reads his poems, it's a shining moment to the film.  As a lover of poetry, I liked the poems immensely.  There is a sweetness to them, a yearning, and a passionate soul evoked, which James Earl Jones brings out with a silent strength and a resilience we admire.  It's the type of moment where with every flaw a character may have, all is instantly forgiven, and we want to just sit and stare in awe.  This type of thing would normally elevate it an entire star.  Which leaves me with another...2.5?  3?  I guess another 3.  It had other good moments as well.  So a 3.

They Call it Murder - 1971

What a name.  They call it murder.  Could it be any more over the top?  It's so serial.  In fact, I had a thought especially towards the end when everything is wrapping up, that this movie seriously reminded me of old radio shows that I used to listen to.  I don't know if I ever said on here before, I used to listen to and enjoy radio mystery shows, especially Broadway Is My Beat and Philip Marlowe.

Mostly, this is an average whodunnit mystery cop flick.  There was not a lot of other factors going for it.  But it did well with the actors and with the style.  The main detective is human and also inspirational.  He's easy to like and we know he'll get his man, but it takes him a while to get there.  The hardest part is keeping who's who straight, and when the crime actually gets laid out for us, I had to admit I didn't quite "get" what happened.  However, the film does offer nice little split screen action shots of parts happening to illustrate his narration.

In this way, this felt like a classic mystery to me.  You've got all the normal steps to set it up.  In the beginning, there is a body sunk to the bottom of a pool.  Detective Doug Selby arrives on the scene to a group of suspects, each one insisting on their innocence.  The cast is diverse and intense, featuring only the second appearance of Leslie Nielsen on this blog, Jim Hutton, Ed Asner and Jessica Walter.

I took this murder mystery off the Swinging 70's boxset, and I have to say it did keep me interested in some ways.  The acting, the plot, the twists and turns are decently done.  I did guess correctly at some of the ways the plot would eventually go, small spoilers I guess, it follows a simple logic:  the known actors are probably the ones involved in the plot.

There were parts that were hard to follow, and there was a bit of plot convenience.  The spun tales in these mystery films always seem so far fetched, people go through such crazy schemes for relatively nothing.  I subscribe to the idea that fact is more interesting than fiction though, and I am sure that complex as this film may be, the real life schemes people come up with are equally or more crazy.

I think I liked this?  It's hard to say.  It's not my usual foray, and it's nothing I'd recommend, nothing I'd watch again.  But it reminded me of those radio shows which I did like, and it felt like something that was...well written.  Which obviously is necessary, and it makes sense given this was based on a book.  I hope at the same time there's not a ton of these on the set, cause this is a bit of chore to work through.  I give it 3 stars.

Witchboard - 1986

Am I still doing my 1986 marathon?  I guess I'm not, huh?  I started a 1976 marathon, I started watching a bunch of boxsets, I stopped writing in this blog as much, a lot of things have happened.  My life is quite complicated.  Lots of half finished projects.

My blog research shows me my 1986 marathon actually ended pretty much in 2016.  I suppose I only did it around my 30th birthday.  Ultimately, 1986 is a not-too-obscure year for me to marathon films from.  I also sound way nerdier and weirder when I tell people I am marathoning 1976 movies, and that I'm going to essentially be doing so until I turn 40 in 2026.  It's been almost a year since I saw The Wraith, the last 1986 movie reviewed in this blog.

I had my friend Jason over last night.  He was depressed and anxious, and having girl issues.  We went to Burger King, drank many a beer, and I put on Witchboard in the background.  Overall, I paid more attention than him, and I'm deciding it was enough attention to warrant a blog entry about it.  A movie like this really doesn't deserve much more attention than the meager amount I was willing to give it, after all.

In the beginning of Witchboard, a group of friends are at a party and eventually they bust out the ol' Ouija board and decide to conjure some ghosts.  The main girl gets infested by a ghost, and the rest of the flick you can pretty much guess at.  It's friends and unknowing female host running around, ghost icing people, Ouija scenes that give vague answers and then promptly end in a jump scare that is not scary, and some good old fashioned dull dialogue.

The kills were meh to terrible.  I do like watching movies with someone who loves bad horror, cause we watched the last death in the movie like 4 times. Clearly it was one of the terrible deaths.  Which gives this some culty drinky smoky type appeal, but there's faster paced, more effects films out there for you and your stonified friends.  Even other films by the same director, such as Night of the Demons.

It wasn't that bad, it wasn't that good, 1.5 stars is about right.