Hack-O-Lantern - 1988

The sublimely titled Hack-O-Lantern is the type of movie one might put on while doing other things.  Yes.  This is the type of movie that you have to agree doesn't have "mass appeal" even though it has kills and nudity and a guy in a mask....  This has B-grade written all over it's face.

This is the type of movie where I'm literally having difficulty remembering any details about the plot.  It's a slasher, and details are not big to begin with, but I mean I am sitting here wondering, was there a love story, side stories, anything?!  ANYTHING?!  But no, I don't think so.  I think it was simply:  girls getting hunted by guy in a stupid mask (see above), some nudity, and people wondering who is doing the killing.

It's a very black and white plot for a very by the numbers slasher.  One thing I didn't like is that the killer is at times depicted as superhuman, such as having super strength in the above pictured scene - he kills that woman by first squeezing her to death with her dress ties in the back.  Also, spoiler alert, but later when it's revealed who the killer it is, it also sort of implies there may have been multiple killers, which I just never like.  I like the classic "one guy" approach.

Hm.  I don't have much to say here.  I watched it at work, getting paid.  I give it a 2.

The Monster - 1975

Also known as:  I Don't Want to be Born, Sharon's Baby, Son of Satan, Evil Baby, It Lives Within Her, The Devil Within Her, It's Growing Inside Her, and The Baby.  Holy shit dude.

What do you name your devil baby movie anyways?  Do you settle on calling it The Monster?  I love how Amazon and IMDb sometimes call a movie completely different things.  Also, I do wonder why?  If the rights to playing the movie spell out that it should be titled The Monster, then shouldn't IMDb change their sheet to say that too?  Does any of this matter?  Am I the only one who gives a shit?  Yes.  The answer, is yes.

Another thing...while we're on the title.  Sharon's Baby is a fine name and all, but who the fuck is Sharon?  The main character in this is named Lucy...you know, the woman...with the baby....Sharon's baby?  Lucy's baby?  I'm done.  There is no one named Sharon in this movie, and the closest you get is a side character named Sheila.

What you DO have, instead of a Sharon, is a woman named Lucy who used to work as a stripper and has a shady past.  Her and her new husband Gino are expecting a baby, and there are complications with the birth.  Donald Pleasence is the doctor who exclaims "This one doesn't want to be born."  Once the baby is out, it grows faster than normal and is dangerous from day one.  Mixed in with all this is Lucy's flashback to a dwarf she used to dance with who came on to her one night, she denied him, and he cursed her.  Hence, the baby is possessed etc etc.

There's a few good moments of unintentional comedy, there's some cool deaths, there's some random scenes of nudity.  In other words, this has the ingredients.  This is fast moving enough, wacky enough, has Donald Pleasence in it, and these all add up to an enjoyably bad movie.  They also put a ton of weird sound effects around the baby, so at times the baby is apparently a semi truck dragging pots and pans with a siren going on in the background.

It's a subpar send up of Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist.  If those had a nude stripper that also liked dwarfs.  Put this on the list of movies I've seen with evil midgets, and similarly, the whole "unexplained midget" thing.  I'm not saying you always have to explain your midget.  But this is a trope in movies, and it's one that I see pop up a ton.

Circus of Horrors - 1960

Recently, I was watching The Great Escape with my roommate.  We smoked some weed, drank some beer and whiskey, and watched the classic WWII film.  It was fine and all, probably a good example of a 4 star war (star wars?  what?) film, but one which I doubt I would recommend to people.  It did feel aged.  She knew it from her past, what can I say?

The Great Escape had Donald Pleasence in it, and I was reminded just how great he is as an actor.  I took to Amazon and added every movie of his I hadn't seen to my queue.  First one down, Circus of Horrors.  A movie where it's more an extended cameo by Donald "Pleasence to Watch" Pleasence.  DP is a alcoholic father with a dwindling circus business and a facially deformed daughter.  Plastic surgeon Doctor Rossiter finds the two of them and says he will fix Pleasence's daughter.  

Soon enough, Doctor Rossiter cures the girl, and Pleasence, in a fit of happiness, says he'd gladly split ownership of the circus with Rossiter.  Later that night, Pleasence is attacked by his pet bear while the doc stands there and does nothing, and hence the circus is his.  

This movie has a ton of unanswered questions.  Also, there is hardly a "bad guy" in it.  Rossiter being the only candidate, you'd peg him for the baddie immediately, however he is not evil.  He did not cause the bear attack, he didn't fuck up any of the surgeries on purpose, etc.  Later on, he inherits the circus and becomes the manager, and in fact saves the circus and revitalizes it.  He finds people who are deformed, fixes them up, and recruits them for the circus, but it's always shown or at least implied this was a agreed upon situation.

It leads us to my overall takeaway with the film, which is that it felt broadly unfocused and almost pointless.  As a genre I'd be hard pressed to call it anything besides straight drama, with a horror edge to it.  There's some cool blood I guess occasionally but overall it's very mellow, and very little really happens in the movie.  There are some minor cool things along the way, such as a death by throwing knife and some real lions....  but uh, you know.

In all this isn't like "a bad movie".  I guess my hazy memory makes me feel like it was sorta boring, but it is also 1960 and it's Hammer.  So I should give it a break.  I'd recommend it mostly for completionists though, not much to the casual viewers.

Bone - 1972

I guessed later 70's.  Hm. I'm going to blame it on the fact that I have been watching less movies lately.  There, now I don't feel bad.

Yaphet Kotto, Andrew Duggan and  Joyce Van Patten star in Bone.  Simply titled, this is Larry Cohen's first film, and Cohen is a director I'm beginning to realize is someone I should by all rights love.  I mean, my intro to him was It's Alive, which is perhaps the most accessible, but for me the least likable of his work.  I'm also not a fan of the supposed "blaxploitation" genre, and some of his work was in that form...  let's face it, the guy had a career mostly in exploitation, and it's generally not top of my list in terms of what I wanna see.

We all have our genres that interest us, and for me it was always the offbeat, ambiguous, or strange feeling flicks.  Of course, I am drawn in by dynamic and interesting actors, and that's what kept me in Bone for the whole film.  Yaphet Kotto turns in an amazing performance, turning what could have been a straight blaxploitation into a legitimate social commentary.

Plot wise, Bill and Bernadette are a regular couple who get their home broken into by Yaphet Kotto as Bone.  Bone is a on-edge virile man, and he threatens to rape Bernadette unless Bill go out and get him money.  Bill goes out, only to realize he was sort of unhappy in the marriage anyways, and this is further cemented when a woman at the bank flirts with him and he considers going home with her.  Meanwhile, Bone and Bernadette get their drink on, and realize they aren't as natural enemies as they may have thought, and that there may be a natural attraction there.

This is the type of film to take blaxploitation and turn it a bit on it's side.  That's why I stuck with it.  It paints the white people as fucked up, even more so than the supposed "bad guy black guy" that comes barging into their lives.  There is no reason why the black guy should always be the villain anyways, and this movie focuses in a lot more on the faults in both Bill and Bernadette.  However, the character of Bone is certainly still a ridiculous racist stereotype at times.  Hey, it's a product of it's time, what can one really do?  I guess?

If I'd started with this, I'd still be interested in the rest of Cohen's work.  The comedy still works, the tone is mysterious and interesting, the actors are good or at least good enough, and the pace is really nice.  It's different then most exploitation, it's clever....etc....

The ending of this movie is strong, and leaves some interesting questions and commentary.  I liked this!  Not for everyone sure, but a good "entry point" into Cohen, social commentary, and blaxploitation.

Damn, why is this rating so common right now?  It's weird.  This is definitely not a 4 star movie.  It leaves a lot to be desired in some departments.  Three seems low, like "right above average".  3 seems low, 4 seems high, so again, we have a fucking 3.5 man.  Oh well.

Out of the Dark - 1989

Here's a rare treat.  From me to you.  A time when I am not writing a lot and you get a rare Saturday update on this here blog thing.  Out of the Dark.  From the director of Cyborg 3: The Recycler.

I put this on my Amazon queue cause I was on there, and the dumb cover of a killer clown caught my eye.  Hovering my mouse over, I see that this is not a newer film, the year is 1989, and when I click for more info I get a treat, as Karen Black is in this one.  Well, it don't take much more than that.  Officially added to my queue.  With my short ass attention span these days it also gets bumped into the "watch sooner rather than later" category, because horror, and because Karen Black.

Wikipedia tells me this is an "erotic horror comedy."  Is it?  I certainly see how they could say that, although it was not my thought as I watched it over the last two days.  Starring Karen Lorre as Jo Ann, an upbeat woman who gets employment at a phone-sex call line, where Karen Black is the boss and her co-workers are all similarly young, fun, sweet women.

Soon enough, the calls they're receiving at the place are getting weirder at the same time that the first call girl turns up dead.  The girl was walking her dog, and a dude in a clown mask appears and smacks her with a baseball bat.  We get this and several other kills in the movie, and having the plot of the film overlap with a sex phone line, we also get a bit of nice nudity.

It's all well and good, and for a film where I was expecting very little, it actually entertained more than I was expecting.  They do a good job of having the right amount of characters, the right amount of kills, and the right amount of other things happening to keep the momentum going.  This movie thankfully does not become a game of "waiting for the next kill" like so many other films.

So many of these movies are interchangeable feeling, and this one doesn't specifically stand out.  I will say that a lot of people who are afraid of clowns seem to have put this on lists of "the creepiest clown movies" and I suppose it probably is.  To me, it felt above average, and it also felt late 80's.  It's funny, cause I can really fucking tell dude.  I can tell it's late.  Cause of the specific boundaries it pushes, because it has a level of self-awareness.  Once you know what to look for...  Obvious.  Yo.

Rating.  I am currently waffling between 3.5-4 stars.  I feel like I've given out a ton of 3.5 star ratings recently.  So hell with it, I'll give this a B movie 4 star review.

A Boy and His Dog - 1975

I don't remember why I rented this.  I think it was a sudden feeling of "why the hell haven't I actually sat through this extremely well known sci fi film, when after all I write a goddamn movies blog?!"  And with those thoughts I rented it from the library.  Libraries man, they're coming back.

I've seen this movie before, let's start there.  The whole story is that I've seen this, as a kid, and several times (probably) since then.  But, I remember nothing from it as a kid, and as an adult, my memories are from at least ten years ago, when I put it on and never made it more than half way.  In fact, I think I even tried to watch this once or twice and stopped.  And why?

This is not any more hard to watch than anything else on this blog.  In fact, it's right up my (current) alley, which is to say it's 70's, culty, and written by wonky novelist Harlan Ellison.  To be honest, I'm not sure as to why I never finished this one.  I think I was just not in the right mood those other times.

Admittedly, this movie is all over the place both stylistically and thematically, that and they really seem to have a mission to push away and fuck with their audience, taking their audience into both sexual and disgusting places, taking it all with slabs of black comedy, having dumb elements of humor and fantastic, whimsical parts as well.  This is the type of comedy that was for adults but was equally for kids, as much the type of film the teens would like as would the kids they babysat for.  This type of thing, in other words, again something that's relatively gone now.

In the beginning, we see loner Vic wandering the wasteland with his faithful, telepathic dog companion.  And wait a minute, what?  Already, a few minutes in we have an unexplained telepathic dog.  Moments later, we learn that sex and rape are the main goal for our supposed hero.  Man, are we off to a good start or what?  They roam around presumably raping chicks, but so is everyone else who've been doing this since World War 3, which destroyed everything in 4 days.

The movie only gets weirder from there folks.  Soon there's a secret underground society in makeup, soon there's forced ejaculation, real dogs fights back when they'd blatantly hurt animals on film, and lots more!  This is one for the books.  And yes, it's definitely uneven.  There's great parts, thrilling and compelling parts.  There's also awfully self-aware, weird and uneven parts.  There's not as much laughs or action or anything as there should've been, and rather we're left "just kinda waiting" longer than anyone ever would want to, but this is still a wacky ride I should've taken before.

A Boy and His Dog is one of those movies that could easily be built up.  When you mention everything taking place, one is ready for a true WTF rollercoaster.  But, if someone went into this with no anticipation, would probably be very pleasantly surprised.  3.5 stars.

Side note:  Just love to track the years where these "futuristic thrillers" take place.  This one is 2024, so we got 5 years to make the world end up this way.  Get on it, guys.

The World's Greatest Sinner - 1962

Bump.

We can't all be Orson Welles.  We can't all create Citizen Kane as our majestic expression of ourselves.  Some of us, if we created something, who knows what the hell it would come out to be.  Who knows just what the message we'd get across would be.

So, actor Timothy Carey went ahead and created the movie he wanted to make.  It wouldn't be the first and certainly not the last time that an actor created a vanity project, and of course with his own financing and his own control, he did an entirely "self-driven" film that had no filters, no other words put in about the story or anything.

The World's Greatest Sinner is an experimental film.  Everything from the ground up feels highly experimental.  The feeling of the film overall is a coked out, infested, bizarre alternative to traditional film.  This movie feels 70's, 80's in it's approach.  It feels a lot more like the film that would come out later, claiming to be "a throwback" but then would have things in it that were obviously modern.  But, this is the authentic real deal, actually made in 1962, and therefore way ahead of it's time.

Timothy Carey plays Clarence "God" Hilliard.  Clarence is a middle manager of no great worth, and decides to give everyone the day off.  He's promptly fired, and that leads him on a self-indulgent journey to declare himself a god and start to preach on the streets about his beliefs.  Driven most likely by his sheer weirdness, God Hilliard begins to attract followers, and in a Life of Brian-esque turn, the least likely person becomes someone of great importance.

I mentioned Citizen Kane in the beginning for multiple reasons.  One of those reasons is that this film feels extremely close to the storyline in some ways.  The proximity to one central person, and his raise to fame, and the fact we know little about him, felt all inspired by Citizen Kane.  The character in both films is not especially likable, but has a certain undeniable charisma that draws people in, and we as the audience are struck with both anticipation and concern about what these people will do once they have the money or the fame which they seek.

The World's Greatest Sinner though takes a detour later down the line.  As God Hilliard gains more power, we see more of the apparent corruption therein.  We see him sacrifice some of the things he used to believe in for power.  And we see, in the end, his own struggle with the title and the power he has given himself.  The ending comes with a bit of an overly ambitious turn of events, and like that, 77 minutes in, it's all over, and you're left to wonder WTF this whole thing was.

In the end, I have no idea if this movie was good or not.  There are surely some well done parts of the film:  some good acting in parts, a cool soundtrack by Frank Zappa, with occasional nice photography, a charismatic and completely insane main character, and even way before it's time sexuality.  Despite all this, it felt broadly unfocused, way underdeveloped, and I even got bored in the later third.  It feels like they weren't quite sure where to take the story, and I think the ending is perhaps the biggest flaw in the story.

This feels like the sort of movie that would have gone forever if someone had just kept giving Timothy Carey money.  I think 1000% that he would have just kept filming, and I also think that if he had done maybe 2-3 things different, this movie would be a huge cult phenomenon not only now, but even then.  This has the seeds of something amazing in it, but somehow it got lost along the way.  The stabs of greatness are all there, but...overall... meh?  I'll give it 3.5.