Savage Streets - 1984

Linda Blair makes a triumphant return to this site, in a classic 80's rape-and-revenge thriller which is also the only movie to have both Linda Blair and Linnea Quigley.  So set your eyes to maximum wideness because you know that means nudity galore.

Seriously, it's not that much.  There isn't a lot in the beginning, but eventually when there's the girls shower scene, well, this movie makes up for it.  We are talking about 30 fully nude women, many many breasts, many asses.  Full on pubic hair is in this movie multiple times, and Linda Blair even goes topless later for a more intimate, mature nude scene.

So it's a basic rape and revenge movie.  Linnea Quigley plays a young deaf mute woman, and this gang of thugs decides to rape and beat her.  It's initiation time see, and the newest gangmember has to prove his stuff by participating in this whole thing.  Linnea Quigley plays the part well, and the scene is pretty harsh, and Linda Blair as the sister is outraged.  Later, the chief gang leader Jake crosses the line by killing Linda Blair's friend, and Linda learns of this, and is now out for revenge.  So actually I guess this is a rape, murder and revenge thriller.

Savage Streets marks a true 80's movie.  Excessive sexuality, ridiculous stars and over acting, and all for what, a basic plot?  It's obvious when this movie came out.  Not in a negative way really, I'm just saying it's pretty insane the difference between this and something earlier or something later.

It's probably in the "unessential" side of things, but it's fun for the nudity, for the actors, and for a quick background type movie.  I will give it....2 stars.

The Shout - 1978

What the fuck am I watching these days?  What is the deal?  And how do all these movies even exist?  Man, I can't wait for this synopsis.

Rachel and Anthony Fielding are married, just average folks living their lives.  Anthony is a musician, and I guess and pretty avant garde one at that, because he only seems to be recording weird noises.  Bugs, wind, tin cans, etc.  Rachel is your average underdeveloped unemployed wife character, but it's also Susannah York who we just saw in Images, so that was pretty cool.

Soon enough they encounter a man, Charles Crossley, and he befriends and begins to stay with the two of them.  He spent some time with Aborigines and I think some time in a mental institution where Tim Curry works, but anyways, eventually tells Anthony that he has the ability to yell in such a way - to shout - and kill people from this. He also has other abilities, and uses them to start to seduce Rachel and to screw with Anthony's life.

This movie was, obviously, pretty fucking weird.  It ranks up there with the weirder 70's art house movies I've watched and my primary thought was, "why haven't I heard of this or seen it already?"  Also, "how in the world of fuck did this movie get made?!"  Honestly, it's got John Hurt,  Susannah York, Alan Bates, and Tim Curry.  It's not a huge budget, but excellently shot, and super weird.

It's mostly a slow burn drama with a lot of talking, but not in a bad way, and not so slow you want to shoot yourself.  It has a weird otherness to it, it has that unclear ambiguity and dreamlike quality.  The sequence of events leading up to the titular shout is really cool, and filmed way out in the beach.  There's a lot of odd memorable parts of this, even though I don't know what to think of it now.  It was definitely an oddball, and I will give it 3 stars.

Highway 61 - 1991

I was walking through West Oakland a few weeks ago when I found the gold mine.  The gold mine, for me, is anything that people leave at their curb.  Finding free shit is one of my biggest joys, and I indulged greatly, sifting through the discarded goods.  I found an entire box of VHS and of course took the entire thing.  And in that box was a VHS of Highway 61.

I watched this movie with my friend Matt.  We were a bit drunk, a bit out of it, and we had just watched a Tales from the Crypt VHS (also in the box I found).  We decided "lets watch something good" and put this on without knowing what it was....  and we were both very surprised.

Highway 61 is a Canadian comedy film, sort of a romantic comedy, if your idea of romance is askew and your sense of comedy is dark.  The film was independently produced, and although all the people involved have many IMDb credits, I hadn't heard of or seen any of them ever before.

Don McKellar plays Pokey, a very nondescript barber who discovers a body in a bathtub in his back yard.  Soon enough a girl named Jackie shows up and claims that the dead man is her brother.  She wants to take him to New Orleans to be buried, but has no way of getting there.  An attraction exists between the two of them, and soon enough Pokey agrees to drive her there.  In the meantime, a guy proclaiming himself to be Satan is hot on their trail to claim the dead man's soul.

Re-read that last sentence.  I think the best part of this entire movie is the bizarre level of weirdness that it has and the offbeat, unexpected turns it takes along the way.  There are a ton of super memorable moments in this movie, whether its the graveyard sex scene, the accents of the characters, the zaniness of Satan and his bingo scene, or the undeniable chemistry between the leading characters.  This movie had me at zero expectations.  And it surprised the hell out of me.

Sometimes you go into something and you're pleasantly surprised.  Sometimes you're thrilled.  But sometimes, you're almost changed for life.  This movie, honestly, was awesome.  I feel like it spoke to me in a very different way than anything else I have seen recently.  I absolutely loved it, and so did my friend Matt.  We talked about it for a really long time afterwards.  I give this movie 5 stars.  I might be overselling it but seriously, absolutely loved it.

Fuck it, I'm just going crazy with these.

Monster in the Closet - 1986

Troma is up there in terms of bad movie distributors.  There are bad movie directors, bad movie studios, bad movie actors certainly, but there's not a lot of other companies known solely for distributing these awful flicks.  Of course, I speak primarily of their bad movies, but they had some decent movies in there as well, locked away, hidden, and obscured.

I guess Troma's best known feature is The Toxic Avenger.  One day I should rewatch Toxie.  I saw it in high school and I don't think I've ever seen it since.  I got introduced to Toxic Avenger and to Troma by my friend Ben, and that motherfucker I haven't even seen in like 16 or more years, so you're getting a taste for how long ago I saw Toxie.

Monster in the Closet is one of the movies that Troma did not make, they just distributed.  I think at this time they were distribution only, none of their own stuff?  I have no idea really.  Anyways, Monster in the Closet must've had some money, and I'm guessing it was from the director, who has a ton of credits as a second unit director.  They got Claude Akins, John Carradine and Harry Gibson to be in this movie somehow, and the actual actors help a lot.  Also, a kid Paul Walker is in this?!

Other than that, I am on a miniature roll right now of watching movies set in San Francisco!  And I'm doing this without even meaning to, this and Beyond the Door I had no idea were filmed around here.  This one had an actual scene at the TransAmerica Building, and a scene where it looked like it was probably on Columbus Street.  My old work neighborhood!

Basically the simple premise of this is set in the beginning; somehow a monster can seemingly appear in about any closet anywhere at any time, and kill someone there.  Relatively early, it is seen by the world and verified that yes, people are going to be knowing and believing this is a real monster, and then from there, that it's basically indestructible.  Various methods to kill it are made while in the meantime the main characters lead a group of people that are involved in all this.

This movie was nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be.  It is a horror comedy by intention, and I found a few parts mildly amusing as well.  Near the end, spoiler alert, they decide the only way to stop the monster is to destroy all the closets!  No closets no monster right?  I thought that was a brilliant move and a very funny sequence.  Shit, did I like this?  I guess I did huh.  Goddamn.

It's a bit uneven at times, but overall it's very well done.  It has heart and the monster suit is also great, it's silly but also practical effects and it's even slightly scary.  Shit, I'd be scared if I was a kid.  It works in other words.  I dunno.  I feel bad for giving this four stars, but uh....  I will anyways?

Images - 1972

I'm throwing in the odd "good movie" again here.  I am entitled to do it every once in a while.  And I am not very versed in Robert Altman.  Looking through his movies, I see that I know Gosford Park and Prairie Home Companion from my movie theater job experience.  We played Prairie Home Companion, and I don't believe I saw it.

Robert Altman was nominated for seven Oscars in his life, making him one of the most nominated people in this blog.  He is well known in many film circles and many consider him "one of the greats".  Images also has music by Academy Award winner John Williams, and cinematography by Academy Award winner Vilmos Zsigmond. This movie has all the right people in it, including actor Rene Auberjonois and Susanna York.

Susanna York plays Cathryn, a young newly married woman.  She is clearly delusional from the beginning, and it makes me think early on:  when your main character's crazy from moment one, it makes you wonder how the movie will keep the illusion of reality.  She sees a duplicate of her very early on, walking around, and she begins to see an old lover of hers at about minute 20.

The movie walks a line of having a untrustworthy narrator, and as I often do during movies such as this, I find myself wondering "what is happening in reality?"  I guess that is the intention, and to make you think certain things will happen, or certain things won't.  I am having an interesting time writing the plot to this, because I don't want to give too much away, but here goes, maybe some slight spoiler warnings here....

Susanna is seeing her old lover, Rene appear randomly, and she's seeing a double of her husbands friend (and apparently her old lover) Marcel.  She begins to have conflict with them, wondering why they're there, if they're real, and what to do about it.  Sometimes she will see these doubles instead of whoever she is actually talking to as well.  It's all about as confusing as it sounds, but it's well done enough to make it watchable and not a clusterfuck.

Intermixed in all this is fantastic, abstract cinematography, creepy music, strange constant allusions to jingling bells and turning wheels, and intense dread.  They nailed a creepy, atmospheric presence to this film.  There is also a really nice choice here to have a highly sexual plot, but to keep the nudity to a near absolute zero, except in one scene where it is done for a horror effect.  This movie was quite expertly made, that much is apparent.

Critics were unsure of it, marketers were baffled, and the movie was basically a bomb.  It's not shocking to see why.  It's a bit confusing, a bit long, and at one point I felt myself wondering, "Is anything going to happen in this movie at all?"  Despite all that, I'm glad to have watched it, and I give it 4, or maybe even 4.5 stars.

What do you think of THIS awful graphic?  Pretty classy huh?

Murder on Flight 502 - 1975

You might ask what I'm doing watching a made for TV movie from the 70's now that the boxset is dead.  I don't know.  I have no explanation for you, but you know what, this one was pretty bad and worthy of the set so put it this way:  I'm reliving my innocent age.

I noticed the cast of this right away.  Farrah Fawcett when she was married to Lee Majors,  Sonny Bono, Walter Pidgeon, Danny Bonaduce and Robert Stack.  I immediately assumed this was good, and it showed a producing credit by Aaron Spelling, so I knew this at least was maybe mildly good.  Yo, get with the names son.  You gotta know your 70's shit.

What we have here is a murder mystery that takes at least 20 minutes to get to the mystery and another 30 to get to the murder.  Honestly, 45 minutes or so in I exclaimed aloud, "Is anyone gonna fucking die in this movie?!"  I was in a moment of pure boredom, and there are a few of those in the movies, however there are also moments of true intrigue and moments or wondering what will happen next.

So it begins and we're on a giant 747 flying from New York to London.  Piloted by Airplane actor and generally typecast no-nonsense Robert Stack, the flight is all business and good business at that.  We have on board a rockstar played by Sonny Bono, Danny Bonaduce as a privileged 13 year old millionaire, Farrah Fawcett as an airline stewardess, Ralph Bellamy as a doctor, and George Maharis as a the only cop, 60,000 feet high over the ocean...

Back at flight control, they receive a note that was supposed to reach them the next day, it states, "as you know, deaths occurred on the flight"  So now everyone is keyed into the supposed deaths that will happen on this flight.  We follow the cop, the doctor, the musician, an old woman, a stewardess, a priest, basically anybody as we wonder "who is the killer"  The movie leads us this way and that, throwing shade on one person then another while we wait (mildly bored) for the first killing to occur.

Like I said, there are moments where I got caught up in it.  It's way too much talking for anyone to really care too much, but they do a good job balancing dialogue with intrigue for the most part.  It tends to drag because it literally saves all the deaths for near the end, when there's no need.  They tried to hard to have a "reason" for all the deaths, and they didn't think about what would keep the audience really interested.  But still, characters are likable and things keep chugging along until everything comes to a typically overdone final few moments.

What do you want for your made for TV movie?  It made me wonder, and I'm gonna google this:  What is considered the BEST made for TV movie?  Duel, being an early Steven Spielberg is immediately in the ranking.  I'm also getting a lot of HBO stuff, which frankly, I don't count.  Anyways.  An interesting question (or is it?)  I give this a 3.

Skinner - 1993

What's this movie about anyways, the tough no-nonsense FBI director from The X-Files?  Skinner, leading the FBI and dealing with Mulder and Scully mostly through dialogue with his superiors?  They are never really seen, maybe a shot of their empty office as he walks by, contemplating what he'll have to do with those envelope pushers?

Skinner is a low budget, independently made thriller film.  Much like the last review on here, it's elevated by a few unique details in there, including the music and performances.  Rikki Lake, Ted Raimi, and Traci Lords all turn in performances designed to sell the piece, and despite some clear overacting from Lords and Raimi, it all somehow works with the material.

The material in this case would be a story of a psychopathic killer who is moving from spot to spot killing women.  And that reminds me of how I was going to originally start this review:

The Silence of the Lambs.  Psycho.  Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Deranged.  Motel Hell.  How many fucking movies have been inspired by real life killer Ed Gein?  It's a lot.  To cut to the answer.

The point of all of this is that this is another movie inspired by the serial killer and grave robber, and it's the whole "making a suit of human skin" thing in Silence of the Lambs and living with one's dead mother thing that was seen in Psycho.  These are the things Gein did and in Skinner, he's making the suit himself.  He kills prostitutes and takes their skin, while constantly talking to himself about whatever random bullshit happens to be on his mind.

I haven't reviewed a lot of 90's films on this blog and at first I was reminded why.  The immediate feel is so vastly different from what I am used to.  The grungy-ness, the music, the style, the in-your-face feel of this.  The music was what turned me off first, with a breath-sounding overdone song that grates on your a bit.  It's all well and good, in the end, but I forgot how ridiculous (and /or awesome) some of these 90's movies feel.

I fell down a wikipedia rabbit hole just now, sorry.  I'm back.  Anyways, Ted Raimi is hunted by a morphine addicted prostitute played by Traci Lords, while in the meantime Ted forms the first real relationship he's had with his new roommate played by Rikki Lake.  Hooray?

I liked this more than I should've.  It spends far too long with Ted Raimi's serial killer guy, and he overacts a lot, but it's also shitty material and I'm sure it's not all his fault.  I think it's still a fun movie, indicative of the time in which it came out, and it's currently free on Amazon, so...you know.

C.H.U.D. - 1984

The annoying to type movie C.H.U.D. is a classic 1980's horror movie that many have seen and could arguably be said is one of the most known newest additions to my blog.  From now on I'm just gonna be typing CHUD by the way.

What's there to say about this bonafide classic film that hasn't already been said?  I don't know.  I'm actually looking forward to my next review, check out Skinner, coming up next.

CHUD stars John Heard and Daniel Stern, it's also got John Goodman for a tiny scene.  What a handsome dude John Goodman used to be by the way.  It's crazy, he looked a lot like a guy I used to know!  Anyways, the performances help lift this movie up, as well as it actually being competently shot by director Douglas Cheek in his only directorial feature film also helps.

What you have here is a pretty straightforward film.  Early on, in the first like 17 seconds, we know what this movie is about.  A woman on the street is grabbed by some sorta creature out of a sewer system.  We can see the hand of the creature is humanoid, but hugely mutated and gross, and thus we already know what the killers are (and probably how they got down there to begin with).

So with the suspense gone, with the answers there, we are only left to follow the characters as they in the story discover what is what.  This is primarily Daniel Stern as a reporter and Christopher Curry as a cop, with John Heard as a photographer being brought in as well.  Meanwhile, John Heard's wife is pregnant and it seems the creatures are pretty close to where she lives.

One thing I really took away as well from this is just how much only a few elements elevate your horror movie.  Of course, acting is a huge thing.  But also, the music in this is fantastic.  It's creepy, it works just right, and music done by David A. Hughes made sure that he would stick around in the industry for a while and later work on Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

I dunno, bruh, I liked this.  Perhaps a tiny bit overlong and felt pretty obvious where it was going.  Also, the killer creatures in the end?  Fucking awesome.  Well, well done and awesomely real effects.

Beyond the Door - 1974

Hey everybody, let's rip off a film!  You down?  I'm thinking we do a mix of The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby.  Oh wait.  Didn't we just do this with The Monster which came out after this?  Well, it's not like this would be the only one....

Beyond the Door is a pretty cool title for the film I will say.  It's a very well known cult film, it has two unofficial and completely unrelated sequels, it's the whole shebang in other words.  Ovidio G Assonitis is a bit known in the giallo horror scene, being associated with things like Piranha II, Tentacles, and Madhouse.

In this one, it's pregnant woman Jessica and her husband Robert as the expecting couple, and she gets the standard curse put on her, from the devil himself.  She is going to give birth to the antichrist or something, and so we watch as this effects her and as Robert looks about as clueless as all get out.  Eventually this priest guy Dmitri shows up to help, although it seems that his reasons for helping out are sketchy and he may have alternate motives.

This movie being about an hour 45 minutes is the main issue.  The beginning, other parts, some of these are handled very well.  Sometimes it's extremely well handled, sometimes it's tense and cool.  There's good music at times, there's good makeup, there's some trippy sequences that work.  But ugh, come on, for almost two hours this just lags and stretches and makes you question your life

San Francisco is the main setting for this film, which was fun.  I spotted it super early on, with just the shot of a train, and I called it before those later full shots of the Golden Gate Bridge and everything else we're known for here in the bay.  I have to say, it always makes me feel nice to see something actually filmed here.

I have very little to say about it.  It's a fine movie.  It just isn't that great.