Tunnels - 1989

Huh, what?  I can't fuckin find this movie.  Oh, is this not it's name?  I guess I should title the blog entry "Criminal Act - 1989".   But I'm not going to, so here we go.  This one's unknown as fuck.  The actual movie Criminal Act stops getting mentioned after 5 links, there's no Wikipedia, and I get absolutely zero other movie review links in the search. Nice.

It was 24 minutes into Tunnels when I exclaimed "god this is dumb". And that was right before the scene where a midget was watching over people in a basement jail.  It was about half an hour later, an hour in when I thought...  Wait...  What the fuck am I watching?  Now, mind you, I had legitimately forgotten.  I sat there, drunk on beer and whiskey, and I was absolutely clueless as to what this movie was, what had happened so far, and even when I had started the flick.

For a movie called, well, I thought it was called Tunnels....  For a movie called Tunnels, there's barely any fucking tunnels in it.  For something about rats, there's barely any rats.  Given this movies original name, Criminal Act??  There's like no fucking criminal acts taking place.  God, this one was really fucking awful.  Of all these thoughts I'm expressing to you here, that's the takeaway.  This one was legitimately, really awful.

Aaaand, since this is already a sporadic unorthodox review, let me just, quite literally, paste in someone else's words here because this review is genuinely funny.  Swiped from Amazon.

"As a lifting/carrying flick aficionado, Criminal Act is one of my favorite examples of the genre. In this film there are no less than fourteen scenes of lifting, with around half of those evolving into a full on carry. It's amazing stuff, and, with the lovely Catherine Bach getting the most carrying time, it's easy on the eyes as well. While it's not quite in league with classics such as The Big Hit (featuring Mark Wahlberg lifting/carrying a tiny Asian girl on several occasions) or Pierre de Jardonet's little-seen 1968 classic "Je vais vous porter à la maison" (perhaps the Holy Grail of lifting/carrying cinema), Criminal Act will more than satisfy those looking for maximum lift with their carry."

I love people sometimes. 

I'm not going to go back to IMDb to review what was the actual plot of this movie.  Basically, some female reporters decide to investigate the rat problem in their city, and it leads them underground to some tunnels, and in the meantime some terrible actors do other things, and some sort of vague conspiracy or criminal act is eventually uncovered, I don't fuckin know.  Who cares.

This movie begs you, pleads you to turn it off.  It gets on it's fuckin knees and says it'll suck your dick if you fast forward that fucker.  It asks you to wander away in search of perhaps clothes to fold, a wall to clean, a sheet to iron.  It makes you hate it.  John Saxon is in it, and that's cool, and it made me think of his role in Enter the Dragon, but besides that, it fucking SUCKED.  I give it zero stars.

Night of the Demons - 1988

Hey y'all.  I moved.  You heard me right.  You might be wondering (but you're probably not) why the reviews have slipped a bit.  I'm talking quantity, not quality, of course.  Haha, homie, my quality never slips up son.  I only do the premium.  And in this moving, of course, I just have not had the time to watch a movie at all.

However, I stop unpacking, cleaning, I stop doing all that shit at 10pm every night.  I'm in bed by like 10:15, and then I watched Night of the Demons in two sittings, so we're not talking a one-sitter, which is always ideal.  Hey, newsflash here:  LIFE isn't always ideal.

Night of the Demons, not to be confused with Night of the Demon, is a somewhat well known cult classic 80's horror.  It's got B-Scream-Queen Linnea Quigley, it's got a great look and original music, it's quick paced, practical effects, zombies, boundary-breaking ideas about who lives and who dies, and all in all sets standards higher again for what people imagine when they think 80's horror.  Night of the Demons looks like it for sure would've spawned a huge following, and I'm quite surprised to see that director Kevin Tenney didn't go on to direct dozens of horror movies.  He has a bit of films he's done, and a lot are somewhat well known, but frankly I'm astonished he didn't get more fame.

Simply put, this movie is about a group of friends that go to an old house, where they perform a seance and release demons.  The house is not haunted, they say, it's infested.  Haunting means that people lived there.  Infested means demons just so happened to hang out there.  It's a interesting twist I guess, and soon enough the demons infest the friends staying in the house, controlling them.  At first the humans just act weird, but soon enough they're turning fully evil and demonic, and coming after their buddies with deadly intent.

Night of the Demons is one of these that nary needs much in the way of a review.  Not only because it's well known, but because it's one where everything is simply awesome.  Whether it's the acting, the pacing, the nudity, the effects, the sets, the design, the camerawork, the comedy... Somehow, all the cylinders fired just right, and given it's just Tenney's second film, it's a tremendous achievement.

This is one to show people.  This is one to tell people about.  It's one to cherish, possibly own.  I think I've seen it before, but it's been a long time, and honestly, I could watch it again right now.  It's sort of the poster child for 80's horror comedy.  Mostly horror, just how you want it, with slices of wry comedy and dark twistedness to it.  5 stars.

The Day of the Triffids - 1962

I'll say that as I was inputting this movie title just now, I was struck that somehow when I'd watched it last night, the entire concept of "when the movie was made" had pretty much escaped my thinking.  I was not entirely off when I guessed the year (I guessed 1968).  I was drunk, slamming down some ridiculous sub-par malt liquor and chillin in my apartment.

This is the type of stuff that gives you a harsh headache the next morning.  And the beer shits.

The Day of the Triffids is a movie which we've all probably heard of, maybe some have seen it, and I'm sure some have not.  This is a movie where, I have seen it before, but my memories of it were distant, and if memory serves me right, I saw it on TV, with commercials and everything.  Where and when and why this happened, who the hell knows.  Weird, random ass memories.

I was thinking when I watched this, given this came out before Night of the Living Dead, and obviously before such movies as Signs and 28 Days Later, just how influential this movie actually was.  This is a overlooked influence, I think because of the silly premise, however when you look at some of the ideas they had here, it's clear that this was still a major influence on later films.

Plotwise, Bill Masen is going to have his eyes uncovered in the morning after an accident.  There's a meteor shower that night that everyone's looking forward to, and he's gonna miss it due to his blindness.  He wakes up in the morning only to discover that no one is there to take his bandages off.  He gets up, takes them off himself, and discovers that everyone who watched the meteor shower last night is now blind. Not only that, but giant living plants are now roaming around, killing people!

It's got some silly ideas and schlock value to it, yes.  It's clear that they wanted it to be taken seriously, and honestly it's not like the idea is THAT silly.  It's just you know, walking trees do look sorta dumb.  I wish that an extra in the film had said "Entmoot" as an easter egg.

This is one of those movies I'd say is almost essential to a classic horror weirdo's library.  It's just so much a product of it's time, and does look good for it's day.  They got a stunning amount of atmosphere and bizarre-ness right on, and handled the dynamics of a silly villain pretty well.  Do a double feature with The Night of the Lepus.

Howling II: ... Your Sister is a Werewolf - 1985

We're gettin' towards the moment in this blog where I'll review The Howling.  The Howling, as explained in my review of The Manitou, was on a VHS I had as a child.  I'm going to say age 10 or so I first saw these two films.  It may have conceivably been as early as age 7 though.  I know cause I lived in the house where I saw it from age 7-14.  Until now, it was the longest I'd ever lived in one house.

The Howling was a film that terrified the shit out of me when I was that age.  I loved the mashup of extreme dark horror, bizarre dark and trippy sequences, some known actors and some unknown, nudity (as I got a bit older) and the dark, twisted way the movie ends.  When I do review the first film, major spoiler warning for my review, it's gettin' fuckin' 5 stars.

But wtf happened to the series?  I knew from relatively early on that the film had sequels, and I don't think I ever saw them when I was younger.  Way back in the early days of the blog here I reviewed Howling 3:  The Marsupials.  I wasn't rating movies at this point, but in retrospect, especially if you look at Howling 2 vs Howling 3, Marsupials was way better at capturing the bizarre and trippy feeling of the first one.  Though not nearly as dark, Marsupials had a bizarre, alternate feeling to it, and I give it a 4 star rating in retrospect.

Howling 2, I mean what the FUCK happened here?  I get the plot.  The plot makes sense, sort of.  (Major spoilers ahead) In the end of The Howling, Dee Wallace's character Karen turns into a werewolf.  In this, it's revealed she was then killed.  In Howling 2,  her brother Ben is investigating her death after Christopher Lee approaches him and tells him "Your sister is a werewolf."  This investigation leads him to a bizarre town infested by tons of werewolves that're celebrating the birthday of werewolf mega-queen Stirba.

But they really turned up the cheese-ometer a lot in this film, including having scenes at a night club where they force veteran actor and all around respected icon Christopher Lee to wear dumbass 80's glasses, they surround him with extras in bad costumes, and pump out 80's jams.

Christopher Lee later apologized to Joe Dante, who directed the first Howling, for ever being in this film.  (no, like, he actually did, for real)

The plot idea is fine, bu the execution of this movie is just super wtf weird.  I think the most surprising part of it all, it's the same director as The Howling 3, Phillipe Mora.  This movie feels more like the sort of one-off director who had no clue, and possibly a history directing MTV music videos.  It's really, just bad.  

In the end, this movie is for sure so bad it's good, and it is not one you're going to want to turn off.  Constant nudity, wacky hijinks, terrible acting from some of the lead cast (I'm looking at you, Reb Brown of MST3K fame) and thoroughly ridiculous, laughable concepts.  During the end credits, they replay some stupid scenes from the movie as credits role.  They replay a scene where the werewolf queen exposes her breasts at least 5 times.  And that gives this 3 stars.

Climax - 2018

1. When I was 16, I worked at an independent theater in Santa Rosa, California.  I had wanted my first real job to be something I actually believed in and thought was cool.  The Rialto Cinemas Lakeside showed movies that were independently produced, foreign films, and had an annual Jewish Film Series as well as an LGBT Film Series.  And one day, the poster for Irreversible showed up in our lobby, displaying another possible film that would come our way.  I was immediately intrigued.  And although we never played the film, I searched it out and saw it on my own, and immediately fell in love with Gaspar Noe's inimitable style.

I now have this poster hanging on my wall.

Climax marks Noe's newest film.  It is also the smallest gap he's had between feature films, at only three years.  Climax stars Sofia Boutella (Star Trek Beyond) and Noe's trademark inexperienced actors in the story of a dance troupe.  I went to go see this film at the Alamo Drafthouse last night with a friend.  When we picked up his girlfriend afterwards, she asked us, "What was the movie about?"  We could only laugh, and exclaim, "A dance troupe?"

Noe is, for me, the modern king of the ultimate nightmare.  Early in the film, there's an expertly put together choreographed dance, all done in one long take.  The troupe is mostly young dancers, inexperienced and looking for their big break.  As they relax from the choreography, the camera drifts from spot to spot, following everyone and no one, in Noe's style that was most present in Enter the Void.  The dance, the jokes the group starts telling, the friendliness of the scenes all invite us in, and establish a normalcy which we'll soon enough take a vast departure from.  Because at this dance rehearsal, someone has laced the sangria with some bad acid.  

When this acid starts kicking in, the extremes that Gaspar Noe takes the audience to range drastically.  What the movie devolves to takes us in exploration of anything and everything which could be considered torturous, psychologically damaging, and taboo.  If you're familiar with Noe's other works, you'll know what to expect.  He has no off switch, nothing is off limits, and with all that said, he will have moments of break away.  Moments where touching, thoughtful, and personal moments happen.  With just us as the witnesses, he's presenting us the whole story, and thus his philosophy.  The horror and the disgust of life is only matched with it's extreme beauty.

Every version of hell is present in this movie.  If hell for you is desire, being ignored, physical assault, self harm, racism, suicide, incest, your child, responsibility, love, if hell for you is nothing, it's all present.  A lot of times while the worst of the worst is happening, there's still someone somewhere in the background, just dancing away and having a grand old time.  It's a constant reminder for us:  Not only a reminder of where this film came from and the simplicity once present, but a reminder that for everyone hell is indeed different.  Some people could rise above the idea of hell and simply dance.

Gaspar Noe once again floods his film with truly excellent music, cinematography, great acting, interesting lighting and fantastic sets and minimalism.  He drifts around, leaving some huge spectacle behind to take us into an intimate room, seemingly ignoring the more interesting other scenes going on.  "It felt like a documentary" my friend said later, "it feels like we're there, as the cameraman, never a part of the conversations, not drinking the sangria, and unfortunately doing nothing to help out in the end madness".  This film has a utter sense of helplessness, a complete feeling of eerie detachment and deep, impending doom.

Is it horror?  Is it anything?  This film felt genre-less.  At first I was delighted by the dance and comedy.  Truly hilarious moments happen.  Then later, as the disgust and the sickening events happen, I felt sick and terrified.  This movie, much like the works of David Lynch, has a way of knowing exactly where the audience doesn't want to go, and then taking us right there.  So if you're a fan of independent cinema, something different, something artistic and truly horrific not just in feel but in idea, then check out Climax.