Wanted: Babysitter - 1975

Also known as just The Babysitter, Scar Tissue, and The Raw Edge.

Rene Clement is a semi well known French director, having made such films as Is Paris Burning and  Forbidden Games.  He has won 15 awards according to IMDb, and was prolific in the 40 years he was active in cinema.  He was previously mentioned on this blog with The Deadly Trap.  Every director has to have a final project, a last film ever, and Wanted: Babysitter was the last film he ever made.

Wanted is a black and white drama "thriller" which was, to cut it short a bit, a fucking chore to get through.  This starts and I'm immediately hooked by tons of unnecessary nudity and weirdness, but it slows down very quick, and then ponders on.  The primary feel of this movie was a unevenness, balancing out long scenes with completely expressionless actors, to brutal violence and sexuality.  However, it's the expressionless nothing that ends up winning out, and the movie was not that great.

Maria Schneider plays Michelle, a babysitter to little kid Boots.  Vic, the kidnapper, is going to hold Boots hostage for a bunch of money because the boys father owns a successful store and has cash I guess.  There's plenty of scenes of Boots and Michelle together, in a house where they're kept hostage, talking and thinking about escape.  Eventually, they get a note tied to a dog and this gets the kidnapper to kill the dogs owner, sort of outing the operation and getting the cops involved.

This movie was:  slow, hard to follow, had very bland acting, and was confusingly shot and edited as well.  Honestly, I couldn't tell you about half of these plot points in detail, and I completely lost track of what happened as the end finally came.  This one is almost two hours long, and oh boy does it feel like it.

There are some mildly interesting moments that happen, and Boots and Michelle are made to be intelligent, which is nice, but fuuuuck, this movie kills all those good parts with lots and lots and lots of hard to follow, unintelligible choices.  Also, for 1975 this movie looks godawful.  Did they shoot this on like, vintage 1940's filmstock?  The film looks horrible!  What's more, IMDb claims this is in color!  It is most definitely not in color on my boxset!?  Yes, two minutes worth of research shows this was indeed in color....so I can't take that into account with my review.  Holy shit, this boxset fucking sucks!  Give me the color version!!!!  I don't hate black and white but damn!

They were trying to capitalize on the recent success of actress Maria Schneider, only a couple years away from Last Tango in Paris and same year as The Passenger.  But her role in this is so completely wooden and unexplained that it only makes one wonder why she was in any movies, ever.  They tried desperately to market this, just look at these different posters:

I mean, the movie on the left is a straightup slasher flick poster.  Right is a druggie nudie exploitation.  And then this actual movie is neither!  They really led audiences astray here.  I give it 1.5, mostly for the interesting parts, and a few nude scenes.

Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter - 1984

I'm doing this for my own sake, a little bit.  Much like the entire reason this blog exists in the first place, I'm doing this so that I can for once and for all have all these ridiculous horror sequels down, on paper, and laid out with plotlines so that I can remember "Oh that's the one where that happened!"  This is so that when I try to think Tommy Jarvis, for example, I can then say, okay, that was Friday part 4!

This is also an easy early on fun pick to the franchise.  Part 3 was pretty good, for sure, and this one feels perhaps like a bit more of a slower development, focused more on character than that one was.  What we have is a family living by the lake, with Corey Feldman as Tommy Jarvis, living with his mom and older sister.  They have an empty house next to theirs, which a group of teens rent out, coming to the lake on vacation just like they always do.

Jason had been killed off in Friday 3, getting a machete to the head and then hung.  Well, he hops right out of his bed in the hospital and kills a bunch of the hospital staff, then heads out to the lake.  A thought that occurred to me then and now is, could this possibly not be Crystal Lake?  Obviously all the bodies were taken by ambulance to the hospital, and maybe therefore Jason just went to the closest body of water he could find, and this isn't Crystal Lake?  I think it's likely.

The body count is a lot higher as well.  Just the fact we have a beginning at the hospital where he starts killing gives Jason automatically another like 5-6 bodies.  Then he randomly kills a few people on the way to the lake, then he gets to the lake and the bodies start piling up.  It's got a fair bit of good deaths, and I was interested in how much more aggressive and angry this Jason seems, he runs quite a bit, unusual for a horror film, and he seems very angry at times.  Pretty nifty.

Of course, they wanted to kill of Jason.  They called it the Final Chapter, and they were going to kill off Jason.  Spoilers.  They decided to do it, though, in an odd way.  They have Tommy Jarvis and his older sister fighting against Jason, trying to escape him.  Tommy gets inspired by a picture of child Jason and shaves his head to look like kid Jason, pretends to be kid Jason, and dupes real Jason into getting confused.  Then they attack Jason with the machete.  Jason's head gets impaled eventually by Tommy.  Jason's finger twitches and Tommy chops at Jason mercilessly, much to his sister's horror.  It's heavily implied Tommy will become a killer as the movie ends and he gives us an odd look. So, they decided to end Friday the 13th by having a new killer?  Seems a bit weird.

Another thing to mention is that Crispin Glover stars as Jimmy Mortimer, one of the teens at the house across from Tommy.  It's like 8 people, a bunch of sexually active pot smoking idiots, but then there's Jimmy, who almost single-handedly gives the movie an entire different spin.  His character is a delightfully weird, wonky outsider, attractive and nice, but super socially awkward, and makes one wonder, if they can write a character like this so perfectly, why can't movies do that now?  Part of the answer is the actor.  Crispin Glover helped to grow his character, came up with Jimmy's trademark dance, and sewed a whole new life into the character.  Jimmy is awesome.

This one is good.  Effects are great, and there's some genuinely cringing death scenes that are awesome, such as the final death scene of Jason, and some of the teens deaths.  Also, this one takes some turns.  It kills off a virgin girl character, it kills off a major character off-screen, has some interesting play with challenging the "slasher norms" in these ways.  So, I give it a 4.5 on the 80's slasher scale.

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare - 1991

Alright.  I went from about 2 purchases on my Amazon account, ever, to fucking 4 more with this series.  But they were $1 each, so it's pretty well worth it.  I mean, come on.  And thus I finish the Nightmare on Elm Street entire series of films.

Freddy's Dead.  Are they giving you a spoiler?  Or is it not a spoiler because Freddy has been "dead" for the entire series, hence why he is coming in people's dreams?  I'm not sure about the idea here, but I'm taking it as a spoiler and spoiler warning, Freddy dies in this movie.  Supposedly, forever.  And if we think about it, the next film New Nightmare didn't exactly bring him back in a traditional way.  It was kind of an "idea" of Freddy.  Is Freddy vs Jason canon?  Ah, fuck this argument.  You get it.

Wikipedia tells me " Peter Jackson also wrote a screenplay, but it was not used; his screenplay was about how Freddy had become seen as such of a low threat that teenagers were now taking sleeping pills just so they could mess with him."  Holy shit this is a great idea!  It's meta, it's brilliant.  I'm sure they didn't use it cause it's "making fun of / laughing at" the franchise.  But come ON!

This movie was not a good entry to the series.  What you have is a extremely bland 90's horror comedy, but with neither horror or comedy that is fun.  It's all extremely low brow, it feels been there done that, and the worst thing is that it feels like it's not even trying.  First of all, there's not a lot of deaths in the film.  The deaths are also sort of dumb, the first one is this incredibly long thing with a deaf kid that Freddy tortures with extreme sound.  Neat idea, but way too long, and in the end it goes for comedy?  With having the guys head explode?  WHAT?

Basically there's a group of kids who go to this small town of Springwood.  There are no kids there, the last one having escaped.  The last kid gets mixed up with some kids...ugh I don't remember.  They all go back to fucking Springwood, where overacting and pathetic comedy runs rampant.  Meanwhile, this girl Maggie discovers she is actually the daughter of Freddy, and he won't kill her.  So they try to use this to their advantage.

At one point, some doctor played by Yaphet Kotto casually says, "I can control my dreams."  At another Breckin Meyer randomly says "I can pull you into my dream" and I'm just like WHAT?  These are powers that earlier in the franchise are made entire movies out of.  You can't just randomly have your no one characters have huge franchise-defining powers at the drop of a hat.  And they just randomly know they have those powers as well?!  Ugh.

Even the makeup sucked.  They went from gruesome and disgusting in 3-4 to like just-sort-of weird red in this one.  I mean at some point the franchise had to take a down turn I guess, and I suppose by entry 6 we were overdue.  So this leads to my series overall view which is:  pretty great! Honestly:
1. Classic movie, great scares, great effects, great actors, hugely entertaining.
2. Good follow up, solid, some classic scenes, and established a bit of a lore.
3. Solid film, felt like they actually cared, good effects, kills, and a good idea.
4. They were starting to really have good ideas about how to "fight" Freddy, a truly brilliant way to turn the franchise.  A bit of the "beginning of the end" here as it gets a bit more cheesy and 80's feel.
5. Still good, but a bit more fluff and feels like they aren't sure what to do next in the story.
6. Just pure shit.
7.  Interesting, witty, clever commentary, but yeah not like a true Freddy movie per-say.
Freddy vs. Jason:  again, interesting, but is this even canon?  Or was it just a random (albeit well done) cash grab and fan service?
The series overall can have 4 stars.  This entry can have 1.5.

Fair Play - 1972

Wow, christ did this one suck.  I mean really.  However, this is some interesting stuff and perhaps lends clarity to why it was bad.  This was directed by the guy who turned in the nearly incomprehensible Night Fright, James Sullivan.  James Sullivan was also involved in Larry Buchanan's budgetless flick Curse of the Swamp Creature AND Sullivan was the editor on the MST3K favorite Manos: The Hands of Fate!  This guy worked on some total SHIT films!

Fair Play is long, stuffy, boring, and completely worthless.  I am willing to give basically anything about 45 minutes to an hour to get started with it's plot.  I'm willing to sit and be patient, to wait and let the film happen.  I've sat through some movies with barely there plots, with nothing that "happens" or that have a glacial plot movement.  This one, I couldn't.  This one, I tried to fight it, but I ended up fast forwarding a few times.

This movie completely has not entertainment value!  NOTHING fucking happens!  IMDb claims "A young man heads west to visit his uncle F.O. in a town named Fairplay. There a bit of friction between town locals."And I suppose that's true, but that's the thinnest outline of all time first off, and second off this movie is an hour and a half!  More needs to happen.

I was trying to stay awake and I opened my discount store "Emoji Movie Themed" pretzels:

 

This is the sort of shit you find at Grocery Outlet.  I mean, they're still pretzels.  They taste the same.  $1 for the whole big bag, it's a good deal, bruh.

Using my Emoji pretzels, I give this a unique rating of:

That's the frowning Emoji in case you can't tell.  Yeah, these look terrible.

War of the Robots - 1978

First of all, this is the first time I've ever had two entries on the blog about the same movie.  Rewatching doesn't count of course.  Here is the link to my previous review, done in the infancy of this blog, and before I was giving ratings to the movie.  Side note, what the fuck was the point of reviewing it if I didn't give it a rating???!

In case you're too lazy to click that or something, and because I think it's pretty genius, I'm going to copy my idea of Star Wars to here.  Basically, right here I'm saying how Star Wars would look to someone who didn't know what was going on and only described by some memorable characters and effects:

"So you got this dude and he has these weird metal robots that speak all weird, and he's in this desert but then these white suited guys come after him and he finds this old guy who decides to take him to some planet, and there's this pilot guy with a giant furry ape-type-thing as a friend that only he can understand and they fly away and barely escape. Then there's this huge spaceship and there's this girl on it, and she's good and the bad guys are trying to get information out of her. One of the bad guys is dressed all in black and has some bizarre breathing apparatus on, and he can hurt people without touching them, and eventually the good guys get to the ship and there's fights with these glowing swords and the hero old guy dies...except he actually only sort of disappeared. And they rescue the girl, and fight these huge monsters, and eventually escape and then they come back, in spaceships, and they blow up the huge spaceship."

Genius.  On my first review I saw this as a Star Wars clone/ripoff, and it makes me wonder if I paid attention at ALL, and also if I saw perhaps a different movie.  Sure, this has a lot of blatant rip off things present in it and it 100% stole them from Star Wars.  However, this one is different in many ways as well.

The beginning is completely original-ish.  Captain John Boyd is kidnapped by a bald golden-colored alien.  Alien (who's name I forget) wants John to help him, and at first there's some conflict.  There's a ton of posh looking robot men that the gold bald alien are fighting, and John Boyd is gonna help the aliens fight the robots.  Of course it takes about 45-55 minutes for all this to happen, and in the meantime it's all really boring dialogue and nothing much happening.  

This is one of those movies where you watch it and it has the effect of feeling like the wheels are just spinning.  You're simply watching things happen, with no idea what's really going on, who is who, and why things are happening.  It all looks great, it is fun to see the visuals and stuff, but honestly, no fucking clue.  Clueless.  Towards the end, robots and John Boyd are fighting with ripoff lightsabers, and laser guns are firing left and right, and things are happening, and then all is fine and the movie ends and you turn it off, remarking, "Okay, well that happened."

I had a choice with this one.  Should I skip it and decide that I'd already reviewed it in the blog, and thus keep going with the set, or should I rewatch and review it?  I'm not going to rewatch the other films that are repeat on this set, I believe there is 2 or so.  But, this one was fun to rewatch, and does have a bizarre entertainment quality to it.  Nothing that is worth more than 2.5 stars though.

Concrete Cowboys - 1975

I'm just fucking plunging through these movies right now aren't I?  This month may have the most reviews of any month since the first couple years of this blog!  I should really be capitalizing on this feeling of inspiration by writing something that actually means something...

Concrete Cowboys starts off as a bad western, but I see Tom Selleck there and he's attractive and charming, and I gave it a chance, and soon I got to like this movie.  Tom Selleck plays Will, and he and his friend JD get caught in a bad card game.  They run away, hop a train and head out, unsure of where they're going, seeing where life takes them.

This was the pilot to a TV show that didn't get picked up.  Conceivably, Will and JD would go from place to place, becoming entangled in some story line, fixing it, then getting on their merry little way to whatever was next.  This installment goes exactly in this way, but that's not to say it's unenjoyable or predictable.  Okay, I take that back.  It is a bit predictable.

Will and JD end up staying at a friends apartment when they stop off in Nashville TN. Their friend is a private investigator, and he has them pick up a package for him while he's out of town.  The package gets some baddies on their tail, and also since they're at a private investigators home, some lady comes by looking to hire the investigator.  They're about to turn her away when she gives them a $1000 deposit to locate a missing singer.

The first half of this movie is pretty quick with all the setup.  There's some light comedy, there's some decent acting, they try real hard to keep that primetime audience that might watch the show.  But, it does fall victim to a bit of the "too much" of everything.  Too much twisted plots, too many characters to keep track of, and too much of a complicated idea.

I did like this though, and in the end it's innocent enough.  I could see a show like this being popular in the 70's.  It's pretty much fine as it is now, except that it didn't work out, and instead got adapted to this TV movie.  It's fine.  Meh.

I give this a 2.5

Congratulations, It's a Boy! - 1971

"The Los Angeles Times called it 'forgettable'."  - Wikipedia

Okay, yes, this movie is forgettable. I just thought that was a hilarious one line review of the movie, on Wikipedia.  But this isn't all that bad.  In fact I had a horrid thought after finishing this and starting the next one, Concrete Cowboys.  My thought was:  "Is the 70s boxset growing on me?"  Cause I liked both of these movies!

Did movies used to have more punctuation in the title?  I can't think of any movies that have been coming out recently with as much punctuation as some of these movies.  Christie Love had an exclamation mark.  Help Me had the ellipses. Belles sort of counts as well.  This one doubled up with the comma and the exclamation point.  Wow.  I'm really reaching for things to say here.

Congratulations is the classic story of the rich playboy single man who finds out he has a son he's never known about.  Bill Bixby stars as the charismatic Johnny Gaines, the late 30's single child of a successful business owner.  He's in line to inherit the company, and as for right now he's doing just what he wants- dating aplenty, breaking the hearts of women everywhere, and staying a free bachelor.  His parents are trying to hook him up with his receptionist, but he's having none of that.  That's when kid BJ shows up, claiming he's Johnny's son.

What follows is an interesting enough movie.  In my opinion there was not quite enough proof about the father-ship of BJ, and it's a bit unclear what BJ wants and why he's there.  BJ is 16, owns a gas station, and appears to leave all that to live with his father?  His father doesn't know about BJ's station, and I think rightfully assumes the kid is looking for a handout.  Well, maybe if you told the father the whole story?

The best part of the movie is when Johnny's parents are beginning to wonder what could be wrong with their son.  The father of one of Johnny's dates remarks "maybe he doesn't like girls."  They brush this off, but then later when Johnny is coming towards his parents to introduce BJ, they mistakenly think BJ is Johnny's gay lover.  The comments the father says are fucking hilarious, and I mean that I actually laughed!  

There were a few laughs, and what's more I actually cared about the characters.  They're thin, yes.  But we're seeing perhaps 2-3 days in the initial meet and greet, and even in that time we see a dynamic, natural, and realistic change in both the characters.  Again, minor complaint, the son figure is a bit too straight line, the father a bit too outrageous, but then later they seemingly drop their old selves to adapt without any complication whatsoever.  Eh.  Minor.  What can I say?  It felt pretty genuine and friendly, and at only 75 minutes, concise.  I'll give it...3.5

Las Vegas Lady - 1975

Sigh....  Yup.  This one's gonna be short.

Las Vegas Lady is a 70s boxset entry, one that I'm struggling to remember what the fuck happened, and was surely not a good movie.  This was a crime/comedy/heist film that succeeded only in being none of those three genres really.

The main girl is named Lucky.  Wow guys.  You're really original there!  Lucky and her two friends team up to steal half a million dollars from the Circus Circus casino in Las Vegas, and there ends up being more complication than they expected, and it goes about how you expect from there.

It's a standard entry in the genre, and it did have a few nifty scenes, such as when Lucky is hanging on a rope outside the Circus Circus.  But the acting wasn't great, the movie wasn't great, and I am pretty sure I'm still gonna give it 1.5 stars.

Definitely could've been my mood then or my mood now, but not feeling this one.  I just counted, and this entry brings me halfway through the Swinging 70's boxset!  Nice!  However, what a shitty midway point.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master - 1988

I was gonna skip this review two days in a row, but I did promise it in last my review of Nightmare 3.  So I will compromise and do a short review.

Nightmare 4 took the crown of "most successful" of the Nightmare franchise, but also for me wins the prize of "worst one so far" which would explain why Nightmare 5 was hugely reduced in profits at the box office.

Nightmare 4 has Lisa Wilcox emerging as a girl with ambiguous dream powers.  She meets up with Kristen Parker, who is the character from Nightmare 3, except it's not Patricia Arquette playing her anymore.  Also returning from Nightmare 3 is Kincaid and Joey, who are pretty quickly killed off in this one.  Anyways, Lisa Wilcox and Kristen are going to try to use Lisa's powers to perhaps beat Freddy in the dream realm, and that's pretty much the plot.

I'm not going to have the easiest time trying to describe why this one wasn't as good in my book.  Perhaps it's number one because of the beginning:  different actress playing a part, and quickly killing off the other characters in, quite literally, a shared death!  Then the ambiguity of the powers, and the fact that it takes up until the very final showdown for her powers to truly emerge.  Then the death of Freddy is....well, lame really.

I don't particularly remember much about this installment, even though I watched it right after Nightmare 3.  I'm gonna watch Freddy's Dead:  The Final Nightmare soon, and call it a day.  I have of course seen 1 and 2, I've seen Freddy Versus Jason, and I have no intention of seeing the recent remake.  That just about rounds up this series!  Pretty good, I'd say.  I'll recap it more in Nightmare 6.  This one, hm.  2.5 stars I guess.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors - 1987

In addition to my 70s boxset marathon, I also had a Nightmare marathon.  Look for my upcoming review of Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master.  Also, here is my review for Nightmare 5.

I have to say first off, this was going against Nightmare 5 in my head.  Perhaps because they are sequels and naturally as a movie series they're all going to be judged against one another.  But, I have also always heard that Nightmare 1 and 3 are the "good ones" and that the others aren't as good.  Then, I enjoyed Nightmare 5.  Hence the fucking whatever bullshit, you get what I mean.

Nightmare 3 brings back Heather Langenkamp from the first film, returning as Nancy.  However first we follow Kristen, played by Patricia Arquette.  Kristen is being haunted by Freddy in her dreams, and gets sent off to a psyche ward for a small group of people who are all insomniacs complaining of horrible nightmares when they do sleep.  Nancy is interning at the psyche ward, and eventually they discover the source of all their nightmares is Freddy, who is coming back to claim more souls.  Kristen has the power to pull people into her dreams, and they think they can use this power to team up and beat Freddy at his own game.

The movie is a bit of a slower ride in the beginning, I'll say.  There's a lot of plot and not as much immediate horror thrills, although they are certainly there.  There's a great sequence where they use a claymation Freddy, I liked that a lot.  The little group of insomniacs are a rat pack of fun characters, each one likable and with their own "gimmick" thingy.  They have individual dream strengths they can use against Freddy, which although arguably stupid, are still fun to see.

The deaths are really good too.  There's a genuinely cringe-worthy scene where Freddy pulls out a dude's veins and controls him like a puppet with them.  That one was fucking awesome.  I have to say, at this point (and I noticed this in 5 as well) they sort of stopped following that rule of "what Freddy does to you in the dream happens to you in real life".  It happens sometimes.  But clearly at some points people are being injured or whatever, then they wake up and they're fine.

I didn't like this as much as 5 though.  It was simply a pacing thing.  5 is wall to wall horror violence and insanity.  This is perhaps more of a "movie"  in the development feel, and I'd only say it's a very small point, but I just have that preference I guess.  There is however another cool sequence in a car graveyard that has a claymation Harryhauser-esque skeleton...  Hm.  Maybe I did like this as much as 5.  I can't bring myself to rate this lower that 5.  Fine.  Here, another 4 star Nightmare entry.

The Young Graduates - 1971

Here's a movie that in some ways reminds me of Katherine.  Basically this is Katherine-lite, it's not as interesting, well shot, and it's definitely a lot more of a mess.  Although, this did come before Katherine, so ehh?  I had a bit of a 70's boxset marathon!  Fucking finally.  The Young Graduates rounds it out.

Mindy is a pretty normal 70's high school girl.  She lives with her parents, she's casually dating her guy Bill, and she's got a thing for her teacher Mr. Thompson.  She's 17, and waiting until her 18th birthday to have sex, much to the dismay of Bill.  However on her birthday night, she invites Mr. Thompson out, and the two of them end up having sex at a party.  Thompson becomes infatuated with her, Bill feels cut out, and this prompts Mindy to want to escape from it all, which she does with her friend Gretchen.

The rest of the film, we follow the two girls as they have various travels, problematic or not, on the road.  They don't have much money, but they meet up with people who are sometimes helpful, sometimes out for themselves.  Mindy and Gretchen are trying to get to Big Sur, CA.  Eventually Thompson and Bill and another dude unite and begin to track the girls, following the clues they leave.

Spoilers for the rest of this review.  Beware.  The girls are heading to Big Sur with their hippie friend Pan.  They get a ride with some bikers eventually, and bikers decide to try and rape the girls.  They beat up Pan, and the girls are drugged, but manage to escape.  They ride the bikes to Big Sur, where they find some hippie hangout, but then the cops bust it and arrest the leader, and the girls adventure is then just sort of over?  Huh?!

This movie felt like a big cop out, because like I said, in the end, nothing fucking happens?  This whole thing leads to NOWHERE.  Also, they almost get raped, they get drugged, they get abused, they get their friend beat up, they experiment, and I guess the whole point is to watch the journey and not where the journey goes, but NONE of this effects them at all.  They have a "whatever" disposition that never fades, and even after almost getting raped, they just shrug it off and keep going.

This movie is not trying to say anything bad, or good, it seems about the 70's culture.  For a movie that has a tagline "A report card on the Love Generation," what is the message?  What does the fucking report card say??  Everything is fine, nothing matters, go ahead, but also it's kinda pointless and fruitless?  So what is that like a straight C?  Maybe a C-?

There is some nudity, there is some okay music.  There are plenty of things that are bland and boring, shots of inane things taking place that will make you yell at the stupidity of them, if you're anything like me.  I didn't hate this when I watched it, but my hatred for this has since grown.  It's completely POINTLESS to watch this movie.  Literally nothing happens.

I do want to mention, Mindy bangs her teacher Thompson.  Then later they're watching a sex ed video in class and I said aloud "if this movie is about her getting pregnant, I'm going to be really mad".  Later she says to Thompson "I might be pregnant" and that plotline is dangled... But then, it's completely dropped and never mentioned again.  So...  Was she pregnant?  Does it matter?  Does ANYTHING in this fucking movie matter?!  The answer: NO.

Side note, I did the standard amount of research on the director, and I found another one of his movies.  I love the IMDb keywords list here, it's just hilarious:

The Borrowers - 1973

The Borrowers is a franchise much like Heidi, another film on the treasured 70's boxset.  Heidi, it turns out, has more adaptations of it and shit, but this is a somewhat well known of idea here, the little people living underneath the floorboards in a house.

This boxset has taken me all over the fucking place, and here's yet another random thing I'd never volunteer to see but I'm watching anyways, as the completionist I'm trying to be.  This film does have the "originality" thing going for it, as it was the first adaptation of the novel, and even won an Emmy for outstanding achievement of a kid's movie.

Ma and Pa and daughter Arrietty are about 5 inches tall, and live under the floorboards of a house out in the middle of nowhere.  Their existence is a simple one, they "borrow" whatever they need from the residence they live under, and pretty much chill, raising their daughter.  In the house they live in is an old woman, Sophie.  One day her nephew comes to visit, a young boy.  The boy eventually spots Arrietty, and that could mean trouble for their peaceful existence.

Obviously, this is going for the effects. The whole film has a lot of the older style effect to make people look small.  Using rear and front projection, as well as occasional cutting out of one piece of film and putting over another, they manage to make it look passable.  The whole thing features quite a bit of effect, and it would be fair to say it looks decent.  It had to, I mean it's the one thing they had to make look good in the movie.

I won't say I loved this.  It's not really my speed.  Despite the fact it's technically "done well" and nothing is "wrong" with it, it's just sort of there for the most part, and it's not particularly engaging.  A cool idea.  I'd still see the Japanese anime Arrietty, if I ever get around to it.  I guess I'll give it a 2.

Evel Knievel - 1971

 Here is a movie where, if it wasn't for the fact that it's in the 70s box set, I might have guessed it was from the 60s.  Cause it's lookin' pretty old. As a casual fan of stunts and stuff in general, I have heard of Evel Knievel before in my life. I think we all know of him as "someone who existed who did stunts".  This is also my first review written using voice to text on my phone.

Evel Knievel is a part biography, part fiction, part re-creation of the famous stuntman's life.  It's got a little bit of a time play thing going on, jumping forward and backward in the timeline of Knievel's life. It has a voiceover, it has re-creations of stories, and overall it tells a story of a man who pushed himself to extremities in terms of his job. Most things are not dwelled on, just touched on.  We see Evel as he meets his future wife, as he attempts his first paid stunt, and then we pretty much jump to when he's famous and he ends up injuring himself on a stunt. And then the movie pretty much ends. With lots of other random shit thrown in, and some very very untrue fiction parts.

 This phone refuses to except the word stunts. STUNTS. It puts stance, it puts just about anything else.

 Did I like this? Well I'll tell you one thing, I would've actually enjoyed a autobiography of Evel Knievel. That sounds pretty interesting to me? I don't know much about the guy, I would've enjoyed a re-creation of his life. However that was not this. This doesn't really explain much about him, his history, or for that matter where most of this movie takes place.  Too many things are touched on and never gotten back to. We see him meet his wife and take her on a bike ride where he endangers her life and he gets sent to jail, then later they're magically married with no story of what happened between. A lot of the stuff in his life is treated similarly.

Even so, parts of it were intriguing. The acting is good, the archive footage of the real Knievel is fun to watch, and the re-creations of the stunts are done well. It's gotten not a lot else to offer though. If you're not interested in just watching the stunts, this movie probably is not for you.  I'm glad that they included things about him getting injured, and there's even footage of one accident where he was almost killed. To not include this would've made sense, but to make the choice to include it was a good idea.

 It was fine. I don't know. There's not much to say about this one. I doubt I would ever tell anyone that I saw this.  Although I will say it made me interested in the real person. I wonder if there's a real movie that was done about this guy? Or if there ever will be? It seems a little late to do a movie about him now. "In 1974, he failed an attempted canyon jump across Snake River Canyon in the Skycycle X-2, a steam-powered rocket". Uhhhh, I wanna see that!! Speaking of, it's interesting to read that he lived until 2007! You would think that the guy who lives this dangerously would've died earlier.

I guess it's another basic, middle of the road 2-ish star movie.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child - 1989

I put on the Iron Maiden song that was made for this movie, and I started writing my second review for something in the Nightmare on Elm Street series.  See my review of Wes Craven's New Nightmare here.  I jumped from 7 to 5, and I am considering now jumping to 3 and reviewing The Dream Warriors next.  We'll see.

The Nightmare series was not a series I grew up with.  I think I mentioned this in my New Nightmare review.  For some reason, I think it was the quirkiness of the films, Halloween was the series I enjoyed the most.  Those half baked sequels are ones I am incredibly aware of.  Everything from possessed masks in Season of the Witch, to the latter embarrassing cult of the thorn.  I saw all the Friday the 13th movies later, and those intrigued me.  For laughs sake, I saw all the Chucky series.  But it was shortly around that time I began to be drawn towards the more obscure sequel shit, and I never really got around to Nightmare as a franchise.

I am loosely familiar with where the series goes, and as I understand, it got pretty lame at certain points.  I went into this film with no knowledge of it, and I basically rented it because the SF Public Library has little to no Nightmare films available on DVD.  Seriously, what the shit is this:

So...There are 3 copies, and one is on hold.  Yet, I can't request it?  WHY NOT?!

I didn't expect this to be good.  Let's say I expected a less than stellar follow up sequel.  I expected that, 5 films into the franchise, this would be shitty, probably have lame comedy, and would be a disaster of a flick.  And honestly, I was very surprised by just how good and innovative it was!  I was pleasantly surprised by Nightmare 5, and I don't know what the general perception is, but I found this to be a great horror flick.

This is an effects filled, extremely fast paced, awesome looking movie.  Main character Alice Johnson is back from Nightmare 4.  She was the titular Dream Master, and we gather that she bested Freddy and laid him to rest in the previous film.  However now, he's back and what's worse, he seems to be able to invade the world when she's awake as well as asleep.  Turns out she is pregnant and thus Freddy is able to get at her through her infants dreams.  Furthermore, Freddy is trying to turn the infant into the "next Freddy" by feeding it souls of people he kills.

Along for the ride is Alice's friends, coworkers, and random others who Freddy kills while he tries to get souls.  There's some cool deaths here, some original effects, and plenty to keep even the entry level fan entertained by.  I gather that at this point many fans had left the franchise, and this was also seen as a bad sequel to 3 and 4 where the series was "good".  But shit, if this is bad, I do wonder what is GOOD?  Cause this movie was not bad at all!  Fucking assholes man.  Every movie fan is an asshole.  True story.

I give this movie high marks.  Coming in randomly into the franchise, it stands out.  It didn't have too many attempts at humor, and the 80's-ness was on full display as seen in some of the costumes and in the MTV feeling wackiness that happens at times.  However, that shit was fun to watch, and way better than some bland ass slasher flick.  This is a slasher flick made to appeal to the audience, the audience being young adults.  There's a saying which fits:  "If it's too loud, you're too old".

Disconnected - 1984

Disconnected.  Is this a documentary about how I feel these days?  Is it an hour and a half interview about how emotions, inner turmoil, and constant mixed messages make me feel incredibly disconnected with life?  Cause holy shit that would be prescient.  Brian Eno makes it all better.

Disconnected is in fact a 1984 movie that's a sort of slasher, sort of thriller, sort of talky who knows, definitely amateur flick which I watched on Amazon.  It's got a cool cover on Amazon, one that made me believe it was a When a Stranger Calls / Don't Answer the Phone rip off.

Posters like this lead me to believe I have a genuine 80's fun time slasher on my hand.  And this...  Well, it is 80's, it is part fun time, and I guess it does have one kill in it?  This is the work of a school student as director, an actress with a career of only a few years, and a barely existent budget.  So, you get what you expect from this one.

Alicia is a nice enough girl, working in a video store.  Her store brings in some questionable characters, one of them being Franklin, who is interested in getting to know her.  She's also been getting weird phone calls, sometimes with no one there, sometimes with intense robotic sounds that grind into her and make her feel pain.  Also as if this is not enough, there's been a string of murders going on locally.  Could all these be connected?  Yeah, probably.

This movie does have the things that make one generally like an 80's flick.  It's got deaths, nudity, weird music, eccentric actors, minimalism, and a surreal vision to it.  I am sure it is divisive in it's watchers, and in fact I even found one review where the guy loved it and put it in the same grouping as The Room when it came to cult films.

For me, this is not exactly how I felt.  The film for sure is an interesting experiment.  Randomness is it's primary attribute, and it is essentially good, but for sure it's got a tendency to wander around unfocused, and it gives the feel that it for sure is amateur.  All that aside, for amateur, it is certainly better than one might expect.  I give it 3 stars.

Shotgun - 1989

Throw myself a bit of a change here and watch Shotgun at work.  That was my plan.  Here's a bonus short review for ya.

Shotgun is very much a rip off of Lethal Weapon, combined with the other 80's action flicks of the time.  You pair a white and black cop, make them tough badboys that don't follow the rules, and then have them go against the other officers but bottom line, They Get Results.

Eventually, white cop Jones's sister gets killed by a "beater," a guy who's been hiring local prostitutes pretty much with the idea that he wants to beat the shit out of them.  Jones gets in trouble when he beats up a undercover cop, and gets suspended.  Now he has none of those pesky police rules holding him back, but also no backup if things don't go his way....

It's meh.  The acting is okay.  The budget is extremely minimal.  Visible boom mic, pretty scant in terms of looks, but the nudity, the action, the pacing is all fine.  It's a very short and easy flick.  Probably decent if you're putting something on "in the background." It does have ridiculous music including it's own song "Shotgun Jones" which is pretty tremendous.

I would give it a decent 2 stars.  It's nothing you'll ever think about again.  Probably, without any research being done, the type of thing where SOMEONE involved did either porn or something related to porn.  I'm gonna guess that, legit, and not research.  So here's the 2 stars for that...

The Death of Richie - 1977

Well now.  I truly realized for the first time exactly how much of a mixed bag this 70's boxset was going to be last night.  I mean, let's be honest here.  Katherine was a drama, and it had a bit of what one might call "the feels".  It started me off on a foot of "who knows what's gonna happen here" with the boxset, and that was further cemented last night with Richie.

This movie begins like any other.  Some teens are out partying and doing drugs and driving, they get pulled over, and the cop agrees to let them go, but "they owe him one".  I immediately suspected a crime sort of caper flick.  But instead we follow one of the boys home.  We follow Richie home to his life and his family, his father played by Ben Gazzara.  And from there, we simply watch Richie deteriorate.

You see, not only was this a 70's stab at a drug scare film, this was a true story stab at a drug scare movie.  And honestly, it's pretty fucking dark and sad.  I will readily admit that this film, much like The New Adventures of Heidi, caught me in a mental space where I was perhaps more "open" to it than I would normally be.  I was depressed.  I was tired.  I felt like just getting drunk and passing out, or possibly smoking weed.  And given the slow development, slow burn of this, instead I sat enraptured as the events played out.

Richie is like any typical 70's kid.  He hangs out with his buddies.  He smokes weed. He doesn't get along very well with his dad. His mom is a bit over-sympathetic to him, his brother is younger and just stays out of his way.  He develops an addiction to "reds", red pills that are barbiturates.  When he's on them, he varies between laid out and unresponsive to hyper-charged and agitated.  All the things the family tries seem to work at first, but whatever circumstance happens usually leads Richie back to the drugs.  In the meantime, the relationship with his mother and father gets strained more and more.

What can I say?  Fuck.  It was dark.  Ben Gazzara and the other actors do a really good job.  The kid that played Richie was great.  Oddly enough, the actor went on to be very well known in the voice acting world, even playing the Beast in Beauty and the Beast.  The pacing is good, enough to keep us very interested.  The spiral keeps deepening, and I was very much dreading where the story might go, as we can't see a way for it to end well.

Given this is based on a true story, it makes one question if some things in the film were film flaws, or if that's how they played out in real life.  Many times, the father character has ways to try and make his son stop the drug use, and they pretty much get dropped.  He taps his phone and records drug trades.  He threatens to use drug counseling.  There's others.  Most of these are dropped, and only once does he call the cops, of course it's the one time the son isn't on drugs.  Why not call the cops one of the million other times, when it's clear he's already ON the drugs?

The end is dark.  I made a mistake, where I forgot the title of this movie, and looked at it.  I mean, come on.  The spoiler for the movie is in the TITLE of the film!  How he dies is significantly dark, and only made for a lot of fucked up shit in this family in the future, I'm sure.

So I mean, really, what is there to say?  It was a actually good, actually affecting movie.  And I could only make minor complaints, the truth was I felt a lot for the characters, and it kinda sucks that stuff like this happens.  Life huh?  Thanks movie.  I was already depressed.  Didn't need ya to make it worse.  I give it....  sigh...  I don't know.  5?  4?  4.5?

A Real American Hero - 1978

Buford Pusser.  Not exactly a house hold name, but one might be surprised at the depth of interest in this real life man.  This is a man who, legitimately, has 6 movies and one TV series based around the events of his life.  Why?  Well now that's the question.

What you have here, as told by the title, is a person who many considered a real life hero.  This was a small town sheriff who took it upon himself to bring the criminals to justice, threatening himself and his family, and risking all to end the crimes.  What I find quietly fascinating about this, is the real life person got his wife murdered, brought some criminals to justice, and then was himself later possibly murdered.  That's the fucking reality.  The fantasy is this little friendly TV movie about a person so good, so positive, that person could nary exist.

Do I sound negative?  Well, fuck, I am.  Today sucks.  This all feels pretty lame.  What the fuck am I doing, watching some TV rehash or Walking Tall on the internet?  Fucking promise I made to finish that fucking 70's boxset.

Buuuuut, the movie isn't bad.  It's not what happened in real life.  In this, Buford is a local do-good cop, who decides that he is going to stop this guy who's been making moonshine that has killed some people.  It's gonna be hard to get the guy in though, cause he's got a lot of power behind him, and Buford is just a small town sheriff without many resources.  So just like in real life, he takes it on himself and uses methods "off the book" to get at this criminal.

Brian Dennehy plays the unfortunately named Buford Pusser.  It's a masterful performance.  He's a complex, layered man in this film.  Part stereotypical "good guy," but the movie lets him have a dark edge to him, and is given some real humanity instead of being the catch-all bland good guy.

One thing I have to complain about.  The gang of bad guys, besides one very small scene of terrorizing Pusser on the road, aren't made out to be a real threat it felt like.  They are gonna ambush him in the end, and there's the road scene, but besides that, the film follows Pusser so close that we basically never see them trying to eliminate him.  We spend a ton of time following Pusser and his various good deeds that it's like, we get it, he's the good guy.  And that also means we never think for a second that he'll fail or that anything bad could possibly happen to him.

I felt like the movie did have a certain charm to it though. It felt embracive of it's era.  It also had some small heart-warming scenes of Pusser with his family.  Whether it was the film, or just me, but I had several odd thoughts during the film:
1) Isn't it weird that people used to have to shave with a straight razor?  That's honestly terrifying.  I have, in my lifetime seen the proliferation of the electric beard trimmers and razors.  These inventions and their growing popularity basically gave birth to the "perpetually short tiny beard" also known as "perma-stubble" which I sort of hate, yet one has to admit looks fucking sexy.  There's just no way anyone would have been able to do it back then.  Using scissors to trim it down to 1/4 inch?  Yeah right!  That shit would be damn near impossible.
2) Having kids used to be something everyone did.  I know that's kind of weird, but it's like, in these older movies, you would absolutely never have an older character who WASN'T a family man.  It's sort of amazing to see that difference now.

Anyways.....ummm....  It's fine, it's kind of slow, but it is also a bit charming and innocent.  I give it 3 stars, mostly for Dennehy's acting.

Stunts - 1977

I've been too lackadaisical with my reviews lately, let's face it.  I had a moment where I had a lot of money and I bought a Playstation 3 again, since my last one broke.  Yes, I bought a second Playstation 3 instead of a PS4.  Fuck it.  I have been playing some of the games on there, I have been busy.  In fact, I literally have plans every night this week except Friday.  You see, I'm cool now.

I decided that plans or not, I would watch one 70's boxset movie a night for an entire week.  Make it a theme week and drive through seven of these fuckers.  So, we'll see how this goes.  I am two down, now having watched Stunts.

Stunts plays out as again, a talky dramatic murder mystery much like yesterday's The Redeemer.  This one is a lot more talky and more of a slow film in general than Redeemer.  I will admit, early on in this review right now, I was in and out of falling asleep during the last 20 or so minutes of this.  What can I say? It was pretty fucking slow, and I was tired and very warm.

Stunts.  What a great name.  What's this movie about?  Eh, it's got stunts in it.  Call it Stunts.  You might as well just call your movie Movie.  How about Movie: The Movie.  I'm not going to google that.  I bet it's an actual movie.  I did google it.  It is a movie.  Two, actually.

Stunts isn't that bad, I don't mean to take a dump on it from the beginning.  What Stunts is, and what was pretty popular in the 70's, is an examination of a sub-culture.  Think about it, I guess it started in the 60's more so with Easy Rider.  But then you had an examination of van culture, semi-truck culture, lots more biker culture, drug culture, and with the popularity of Evel Knievel and stuff, an examination of stuntman culture.

Stunts has a stunt go wrong in the beginning of the movie.  A stuntman dangles from a helicopter, trying to attach a rope to himself.  He doesn't, and falls to his death.  The dead man's brother shows up later to investigate the death, but also to himself perform the stunt that killed his brother.  He and his small group of stuntmen get involved in the film being made.  We get some stunts, and then soon more stuntmen start dying.  Clearly something is going on.  Reporter B.J. and main stunt guy Glen are hot on the case, trying to figure it out, while in the meantime performing the stunts the film calls for.

It's pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a stunt-driven drama murder mystery.  If you guessed that it has some easy to digest characters that follow basic character patterns, you're correct!  There's the bottom line business man: the director of the film the stunt guys work on.  There's the lone wolf semi noir hero: Glen played by Robert Forster.  There's the barely developed friends/cohorts he chills with that are likable but forgettable.  The reporter B.J. is the nice and lovely reporter who's obviously gonna fall for our main dude.  Yeah.  It's thin.

The stunts are cool, and we see a good variety of them.  I do wish that they either played up the gravity of the seriousness of them, or had a bit of an explanation as to what was going on.  However, on the simple ones like car races and flips and stuff, obviously that's not necessary.

The biggest problem is that at no point does any police, investigation or anything happen.  In the movie and in the film-set, everyone is seemingly content to just let the stuntmen investigate the deaths.  In a biker movie or something, that would make sense.  It's a gang.  They're probably all shady characters.  But on a film set, with dozens of people connected to different parts of Hollywood or accounting or whatever, no that would not fly.  Eh, minor complaint.

By far not something to check out for any huge reason, it's fun enough to keep one watching I guess.  It does have some stunts in it that are fun, and the actors pull it off well.  The examination of a subculture is something I do enjoy in general.  It's an intriguing idea, and it's also fun to sort of get a glimpse into the movie making of the time.  Seeing stuff like the older cameras, the actual destruction of vehicles and stuff, brings me back to why practical effects and older ways of making films were way more hard than movies have it now.  Now ALL this shit would be CG.  Fuck y'all.  I'm gettin old.  Now I can offically say, "back in my day".  I also hate modern music.

I give Stunts....uh....2.5 again?  God.  Lotsa middle of the road movies lately.

The Squeeze - 1978

Also known as The Diamond Thieves and The Rip-Off.

Antonio Margheriti is very well known on the cult scene.  Anyone who directs a film like Cannibal Apocalypse would be.  After all, that film has the best score of all time!  I kid, but the score to that film is fucking amazing, and it's worth seeing the movie just for the haunting theme song.  Like many of the Italian directors of the time, his career took random stabs at various genres.  He dabbled in crime thrillers, spaghetti westerns, comedy, straight action, and even some dramas.

I just spelled "dramas" with a z and considered leaving it. Dramaz. I mention this for no particular reason.

The Squeeze is sort of your crime caper/action flick.  Starring Lee van Cleef as the older, retiring criminal who guess what DOES ONE LAST JOB!  What?  Literally have you EVER heard of this idea happening before?  It's going to go really well right?  No complications?

Well obviously not.  "Cleef-ster" has to steal some diamonds, but then gets double crossed by the guys that hired him.  He escapes with the diamonds to his hotel room, where he plans to lay low for a while.  But he was shot in the escape, and he needs help.  Also, he's being searched for by the guys who hired him.  In the meantime, his neighbor Clarisse sees the blood he left behind, and decides to become involved....

There are some interesting turns towards the end, and long story short, this was decent.  As a crime film, it's got a personal touch and the characters are likable.  "Cleef-arino" spins a very secretive and confident bad guy.  Clarisse is played by Karen Black, who is one of my favorite actresses from the 70's.  Christ.  If you were to tell me at age 23 that later I'd have a favorite 70's actress, I would not have believed you for a minute.

The pacing was pretty great as well.  To be honest, not much really happens in the movie, and there's a lot of downtime in the middle as "The Cleef" is in hiding, the baddies don't know where he is, and Karen Black's not involved yet.  It could seem to sag, but somehow things keep moving, and the whole thing feels well handled.

I'm not going to say it's great by any means.  It's got practically nothing that makes it stand out, besides the actors.  It is instantly interchangeable with any other crime flick, and I seriously doubt I'd recommend it to anyone.  I thought of it a lot like the title.  So completely bland.  They had three, count them three names for this, and each one is as bland and middling as the next.  It's so completely middle of the road that it's almost to the point where I'd subtract a point for just that reason, but that's being too harsh.  Instead, 3 stars.

The Redeemer: Son of Satan - 1978

Here I am watching a movie from the 70's that NOT on my boxset?  What am I, some sort of fiend for punishment?  I must be.  I must be crazy.

The Redeemer: Son of Satan read in the description like one of the many "in between" type of proto-slashers that I have a growing interest in.  This movie came out the same year as Halloween, technically premiering before Halloween, and so therefore I'm going to go ahead and say it's "not a copycat", nor does it feel like it.  Therefore we're forced to accept this as another "before Halloween" slasher flick.

It is however, very different from your usual slasher.  It's holding onto the slower and funkier feeling of the 70's, it's genre fits a lot more into the murder mystery type than films like Halloween and Texas Chainsaw.  This is a murder mystery, thriller, and then horror would be far down the list.  Anyways, once you get past the genre discussion, it's pretty basic.

The plot to this is an old stand by.  No, this isn't "let's go camping by the lake" this is "invite a bunch of people to a house and lock them in, start killing".  If you're planning to get a bunch of people that you plan to kill in one spot, simply write them out an invitation, or promise them money, or make it seem like they "inherited the house" and then get them all there, lock those doors, and brandish your firearms as you please!  Yes, we've seen this before, but it's not done badly here.

Here we have what is boiling down to an incredibly average probably 2.5-3 star movie.  The deaths are fine.  The actors, except for some horrendous overacting on the part of the main villain, are pretty okay.  One of the actresses in this, Jeannetta Arnette even went on to act for a long time, and is still around!  Wow!  Something to write home about!  The villain, or "Redeemer" is horrendously played by "usually uncredited actor" T.G. Finkbinder.  No wonder the guy is normally uncredited.

Some minor complaints:  At several parts, when Redeemer guy is being all evil and overacting, he appears to have another guy with him who's in on it.  They are seen in the same shot:  it's Redeemer guy and then his buddy who's dressed up as a clown.  Clown guy moved and all.  Fine.  There's two killers, sure.  However, later on in the film, clown completely disappears and is never mentioned, and then in the end when plot is revealed, motive established etc, clown doesn't reeeaaaallly fit in?  Hm.  Yeah it's minor.  Also, several of the deaths like especially drowning a girl in a bathroom sink that just happened to randomly be full...? There was barely any water in there.

The director and most of the actors have nothing else on their resume.  This movie is on several "bad" lists, it's also on several "great" lists.  People do hail it as a proto-slasher, which I'd agree with.  It's got the classic body counts and the deaths are a lot more of that style.  The main characters are thin and bland, the killer being more the star.  The end is fine, it dabbles in surrealism and all, which is cool and I miss movies during that.  In the end, like I said, it's a very "middle of the road" film.