The Conversation - 1973

The awkwardly titled Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (from now on I'm just going to call it "Vice") began what I'm going to call "my actually good 70's marathon" I had the last few days, which also included The Conversation, which I feel like writing about.  I also revisited Back to the Future III and then II, because hell, life has no rules.

Vice is a much more in tune movie-wise with the premise of this blog, however the reason I am not writing about it, is this:  It's thematically and stylistically similar to Lucio Fulci's The Black Cat, it's a Edgar Allen Poe short story, it's a giallo, filmed by Sergio Martino, and if that doesn't tell you it's a very average 4 star movie, I don't know what would.  Doesn't need a review in other words.

Instead, I feel like giving a big applauding clap to The Conversation.  I watched this last night, in the mood for a character piece.  I had seen The Conversation in film study in high school- I remember so many of those movies still.  It is amazing, because when you are tuned in to movies the way I am, when that's your focus, when you're a cinefile, you just get a memory for these things.  I saw this movie about 16 years ago, and I still remembered it being amazing and different, and upon rewatch I found I hadn't even liked it enough.

Gene Hackman stars in The Conversation.  He spins out a character who is a mid 40's detective.  This is a bit of a throwback character, the detective, and director Francis Ford Coppola does a fantastic job of giving this character and indeed this whole idea a retro, but necessary feel.  He is a man from a different era, holding on by sheer wile and smarts.  Any other man in his shoes would have been swept up by the changing times, but he's the best of the best, and he taps a conversation in the beginning of the film.  Shot in a intriguing, slow building way, we see the genius of Hackman's character Harry Caul's eavesdropping methods, and we record a couple's conversation.

As Harry deconstructs the conversation, we learn more about him.  Harry begins to have an obsession with the conversation as he slowly reveals to us his desperation, his loneliness, his inner struggle, and the nature of himself.  Throughout the film, we see many examples of the ways he is different from others.  He dresses a bit off, always wearing an opaque raincoat and large glasses.  He's a person whose career has taken over his life, and he lives a high tension, suspicious lifestyle.

This is a movie where the pacing is everything.  This is masterful filmmaking because it's a movie where it is long, at about 2 hours, not much happens, and it doesn't move quickly, yet it never once feels uninteresting or overstaying.  It keeps you intrigued, whether in the character, in the plot, in the side characters, or simply to see how it will all turn out.  The reveals at the end are not too rushed, they're not too clunky, and they are simple and apparent.  This is the type of film which likes to knock at it's main character, wringing them out again and again, and in the end I really wondered what was next for poor ol' Harry Caul.

Nominated for multiple Academy Awards, it was passed up in favor of The Godfather Part II.  Which is fine I guess, since it was still Coppola, but where was the win for Gene Hackman?  This is a type of acting which you just don't see anymore.  His character is bubbling out everything imaginable at all times.  He's charismatic yet withdrawn, a master yet fragile, he's scared and paranoid but always in control, he's dynamic as all get out, and it's such a minimally verbal part as well.  He isn't quiet, but not outspoken, he's both everything and nothing, and it's a work of absolute genius.

This is a well known great movie, on many top lists, and it's obvious why.

Revenge of the Virgins - 1959

Nudie Cuties.  This is a genre, this is a thing, this is commonly seen for people of a different era and a different age.  I reviewed Naked Witch, which was 1961 and I thought therefore an early Nudie Cutie feature, but I found an even earlier, better looking one in this, Revenge of the Virgins!

I wonder what the focus of this shot is???

Revenge of the Virgins, well shit, I don't even know how I stumbled onto this on Amazon.  I think I was looking at Larry Buchanan or something and this shit popped up.  

This is really different from many nudie films in that it's not taking place at a nudist camp.  I guess I should've dwelled on that with Naked Witch too, is that a lot of these films had nudity as a plot point, and therefore it was "explained" and/or "justified".  In Naked Witch and Revenge of the Virgins, it's not a plot point and therefore just an additional part of the movie.  I honestly don't remember the nudity in this film ever being mentioned by anyone.  Of course, we see a topless girl about a minute into the movie, so it's understood that "this is happening", but still you'd think later someone would mention this fact about the women.  

This brings us to the plot.  Edward D. Wood, the infamous man himself, wrote this movie.  When I say "wrote" I mean, probably, it was a quick jot down on a napkin:  "what if topless women hunted people?"  I mean really, there is no fuckin' plot here.  It's simply that a tribe of topless Indians are fighting cowboys, and for whatever reason the Indians are led by a white woman who they kidnapped when she was young.  There's gold the cowboys are after, and bam, done, that's it.

I will say, the nudity was vast, and considering the age of this, it's pretty impressive how much it showed.  It's way more than half the nudie films I've seen, obviously more than the one grainy shot in Naked Witch.  The quality of this film is better and there's about 7-8 women you'll see topless, so huzzah.  

I was also surprised because besides the boobs, it's not a bad film actually.  The plot is coherent, the actors aren't bad, there's some cool well shot suspense and action scenes, and for whatever reason, the nudity is actually not exploited.  It's not like they try to cover up the breasts, and they also don't try to show them.  They're just there, and that feels genuine and honest.  If we're talking about ethnic nudity, that is the reality of it, and it's only our mentality that sexualizes it.

It's short, it's fine, there's breasts, I give it 3 stars.

Encounters in the Deep -1979

Remember those days when I was watching and reviewing the Sci Fi Invasion boxset?  Remember my elation when I got through the set?  Well, I knew I would miss it, and I did.  I did because as I was watching this movie, Encounters in the Deep, it heavily reminded me of the set.  In a good way.

I also lucked into a thought about the set and what made some of the features there feel weird, confusing, or incomplete.  This movie had the same feel, and I really decided to focus on why that feeling was happening and what was causing it.  I think the thing is that for the most part, nothing in this is explained, and it ends just as the momentum of the plot really picks up.  And it's the same reason why so many people dislike 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In this film, in films on the set, and in 2001, you have a long time where there's an initial build.  Some things happen, some of them related to the plot, and some not.  You have an introduction to the "problem" whether its random black rectangles showing up, or in the case of Encounters, missing people in the Bermuda Triangle.  But then as soon as that idea appears, there's a tone shift as other stories are focused on, there'a lot of dialogue, and there's a distraction away from that plot.  Hal 9000 shows up, or in this case, there's lots of scuba diving scenes, and then in the end when all the resolution should happen there's still many unanswered questions.  People ask, so why did Hal go crazy?  People ask, so what did the aliens want?  And that's the same question one might ask at the end of this.

There are aliens in Encounters, I guess that's a spoiler warning.  There's people disappearing in the Bermuda Triangle, and one of them happens to be a boat captain's daughter.  They all head off to investigate, and discover that the water there has a high amount of plutonium, guessing it's some type of shield or fake environment where aliens could store shit there underwater.  Also, there's random rock formations showing up that shouldn't be there, and creepy radar blips and such happening.

It all adds up to what felt extremely like the Sci Fi set.  It has that uneven weirdness.  Intrigue, and creepy atmosphere, but a slightly incomplete story....  It feels like chapter 1-3 in a 8 or 9 chapter story essentially.  There's for sure scenes that are compelling and amazing, but then there's loads of time spent on unimportant ideas, and enough scuba diving to make you sea sick.  There's a lot of well toned Italian men in skimpy bathing suits, and you'll have to forgive me for getting slightly aroused during this.

I liked this.  It felt so reminiscent of the set, and completely offbeat.  I give it 4 stars.

The Clones of Bruce Lee - 1980

Straight outta Wikipedia:

"The film gathers together several of the many Lee imitators who sprang up after the icon's death (including Bruce Le and Dragon Lee), alongside performers from the real Lee's films and other veterans of the Hong Kong movie industry. It has been called The Mount Rushmore of Bruceploitation films."

This is jumping around hugely from what I've been reviewing lately, but hey, I got no fucking contract to fulfill or whatnot here.  I felt like idle nonsense, and I watched idle nonsense.  Brucesploitation is a subgenre of film I have explored here, and without checking first, I'm going to say it was 2015.  I mean honestly, it's been a while.  It was 2015 or 2016.  And it was...  again, I'm not looking.  Something about a Tiger?  Challenge of the Tiger.  Final answer.  Okay, let's check.

2015, I was right there, but the name I totally got wrong.  Spirit of Bruce Lee from 1973.  Without re-reading that review, I remember it was about the spirit of Bruce Lee inhabiting some guy and getting revenge for something.  And I gave it one star.  Reread the review just now, I also got the plot wrong.  Okay, fuck it I give up.  However, Challenge of the Tiger is another martial arts film I have seen, so I guess I got them confused.

In this one, Bruce Lee is actually dead, but skin cells are taken from him and three clones are made.  These clones are played by Brucesploitation actors Bruce Le, Dragon Lee and Bruce Lai.  They are trained by a cool old guy, and when they're ready, they're sent out to do battle.  They get different assignments, and we primarily follow Bruce Le on his quests.  Eventually, they do battle amongst each other as well, so there's that, if you want it.

I have to say, first off, there are actual moments in this where the actors they got do look like Bruce Lee.  They mimic his facial expressions very well, his attitude, his style of carrying himself.  No, it's not just cause all Asian people look the same.  Bolo Yeung is also in this, and the movie also has plenty of nudity!  It's like everything a guy like me needs, all in one convenient spot.

The action gets old though, it's not the style that made Bruce Lee movies fun to watch, but rather the older type of martial arts where nothing seems to ever hurt anyone.  They also are obviously going for gimmick here, and it's shown later too as they fight men made of bronze, and a mad scientist gets ahold of them.  It's kinda dumb, and the action kinda sucks.

I'll give it a decent 3 stars though, cause it is fun to watch.

Black Candles - 1982

Also known as The Sexual Rites of the Devil.

You ever watch something just cause you want to see a bit of deviant sexuality and the sex scenes specifically in these older movies?  My ex-wife once asked me, when she saw my Amazon watch history, "Why did you look up Naked Complex? Why not just watch porn?"  I'll tell you why.  Because nothing is taboo anymore.  Because I can access, any moment of any day, millions of pornographic videos showing me everything imaginable.

When nothing is too risque, nothing is off limits, and nothing is taboo, that creates nothing worth getting excited about.  You wanna see a guy in a horsefly costume get his dick sucked by the fairy grandmother from Cinderella?  Here you go, freako.  As for me, I remember a time, and I was fond of the time when there was not teeming millions of lusty bits just a micro-click away from me, and it was a time when taboo, when erotica, was valid and real.  And yes, you're getting a tiny bit of my anti-porn speech here, but hey, everyone's got their opinion right?

This movie, Black Candles or Sexual Rites of the Devil, or whatever you call it, was a 70's feeling 80's flick with a bit of that old-school feel of taboo hanging on.  Of course, this movie was made also to strictly fight against the idea of taboo, made to push the envelope, and get away with titillating it's audience.  Honestly here, was the word 'titillating' made up just so people could make stupid puns about movies with a lot of breasts?

How many movies begin with a house somewhere in question that for whatever the reason, our main characters are brought to in the beginning?  There's always people there.  There's a funky bunch of people living in this house, and when the main characters encounter them, they give them the benefit of the doubt... but of course, the dwellers are either satanists or witches or the undead or a cult, or something crazy like that.  In this case, the people there are satanists.

Carol and Robert come to the house where Carol's brother used to live until he passed away.  Living there is Fiona and Reverend Huber, and a bunch of unnamed and relatively unseen girls that are part of this cult.  The cult immediately gets to working on seducing Robert, while feeding Carol "herbal teas" which are screwing with her and making her get sick.  The first night at the house, Robert and Carol have sex while Fiona spies on them from a hole in the wall, and thus we get to the real reason why this movie was made...

The whole of this movie is featured on several porn sites.

There's nudity aplenty in this one, and you'll even spot some male nudity unless you blink and miss the split second appearances.  There's even a creepy scene where a woman has sex with a goat, just in case you forgot you were watching something that was originally European and made to both freak it's audience out and push that line we're always talkin' about!

It's a fun movie though, with decent performances.  Sure, it's thin and has a story that's basic as ABC, but it's also got all the elements in place, and does its job.  There's no scares, good or otherwise, but it's going for the "psychological" horror element, not just the shock value.  Uneven?  You betcha, but still enough for a average rating.

Creature from the Haunted Sea - 1961

Roger Corman!  Monsters!  Bubble-eye monsters especially.  If you've wondered where to get your good ol' bubble eye monster fix, this is the one for you.

"Looks fun. You guys seen a fish woman round these parts?"

This is some classic black and white monster movie goodness right here.  It's got all these Corman favorites I have learned to look out for.  What are these, if you're unfamiliar?

1) "strong" female lead - the lady that seemingly is a major character who is strong outwardly, but is actually just hiding behind her outward strength and is in truth just as girly as all women were depicted in the 50's

2) lots of dialogue - sure, it is usually plot dialogue, and one could argue that it's needed, but man is there lots of dialogue and talking.

3) Tomboys - going back to that female thing, there is usually a tomboy in a Corman movie. This girl will wear jeans, plaid colors, and sometimes be called by a nickname like "Princess" because hahahaha, it's FUNNY! They're calling HER princess!!

4) As little monster scenes as seemingly possible - Yes, please do save the monster for the last 2 minutes and have it only appear like twice in total. NO! We want to see the monster!

5) Ma and Pa - there's a tradition of old-timey-ness in Corman movies. So usually Ma and Pa are there, and usually they are still in love as they were when they got married. Pa sometimes has to hold her shoulders and shake her when she's afraid; but it's the fifties, that's what women were for.

6) The halfwit - my least favorite and surprisingly common character to show up in any movie. This guy is usually unexplained, or just explained as being "slow."

7) Criminals as the stars of the film, or the main characters committing criminal deeds.

Part of the story of the making of this movie is that Corman went to Puerto Rico to film The Last Woman on Earth and Battle of Blood Island.  He had extra footage left over at the end of those shoots, and in true Corman fashion he took the extra footage, and decided to use it with a new movie.  How?  Easy!  Cram the rest into a 5 day shoot and do it for as cheap as possible of course!

 Anthony Carbone  (A Bucket of Blood) is looking to make a boatload of money when he decides to let Caribbean loyalists escape on his boat, kill them, and blame their death on a made up sea monster.  But what if the sea monster was real?  And showed up, in it's ping-pong ball eyed glory to start killing folks?  Well, that's exactly what happens!

It's a lot of dialogue, and it's a lot of nonsensical underwater footage in the meantime.  I did have a thought as I was watching it... what the hell did the underwater cameras of this era look like? Cameras that actually used film, and could go underwater?  The underwater footage is the easy highlight, and the rest is all exactly what you expect, which should be low brow, easy to digest, but blessedly short filmmaking.  It's enough to entertain you, if you're into this sort of thing.

The Incubus - 1982

I had a brief explosion of reviews recently, finished that 70's set, and was very prolific with my writings.  And then I moved, got a roommate, became busier, and shit yo, the reviews be slippin.  It took me about 5 days to get through the Clint Howard 80's vehicle EvilSpeak, and although I do remember it well, I tend to not want to review things that took me so many sits to get through.  But, in all this, I actually did sit all the way through The Incubus last night.

The Incubus feels a bit older than it is.  In my guessing of the year, I guessed 1979.  It has that dialogue, slow burn type of development.  I should have been a bit clued in by the prevalent amount of nudity and just the fact that the plot involves rape should have furthered my predisposition to know it was 80's but hey...  no one's perfect.

I just found out that The Incubus was written by the same guy who wrote another movie I reviewed, X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes.  That's cool!  Although honestly they don't feel similar at all.

This is a good example of just how things did change in the 80's, come to think of it.  I don't think the 70's would have necessarily shied away from a topic such as demons, blood and nudity, but I do find that with graphic discussion of rape, that's where the line would have been drawn.  Of course, such movies as Straw Dogs and Deliverance came out in the 70's, even I Spit on Your Grave and Last House on the Left, however the rape in those is much more for shock value, and that's the difference.  The difference here is the tone, the casual and exploitative feel behind the tool of rape used in this versus the grossness and injustice of the rape in those 70's movies.

The Incubus stars John Cassavetes just a few years before his death.  He is carrying a look and a style similar to prime Al Pacino in this, and his role as doctor Sam Cordell is easily one of the best in the film.  Sam and his daughter Jenny live in a small town where crimes don't really happen.  That's why it's a shock when a girl turns up, so brutally raped that her uterus has been ruptured. Naturally everyone is freaked out.  When more girls turn up shortly thereafter with similar situations, the natural course of the conversation becomes who or what is causing these horrifically brutal rapes?  The only semen found at the scene is mutated and different, casting a whole other lens of mystery and gruesomeness to the rapes.

With nudity, interesting dialogue, good acting, and a tight air of brutality and true mystery to it, this movie was a pretty good one to watch.  I was expecting some low brow exploitation or whodunnit murder mystery.  But they stepped outside the lines and brought in some other genres, and explored a bit outside of their lines.  It's not for everyone, and the graphic nature of it is off-putting at times, but in that it does have a "newness" I wasn't expecting.  It's this type of movie that makes you realize that you had "thought you'd seen it all" only to be surprised you were wrong.

Some later plot turns were unexplained and seemed rushed, and the end puzzle fitting together doesn't completely make sense, but for what it is, it's done well.  We're not left with burning gapes in story or idea, instead some mild complaints and yearning questions.  I could stand to have more movies leave me in the emotionally disturbed void that The Incubus left me in.  And for that it gets...