The Sugarland Express - 1974

 So I was listening to some podcast and someone described this movie as Speilberg's first film, and I was like, fuck it.  In film class I had seen Duel, and Jaws was right after, so here we go.

The Sugarland Express was part of a selection of 4 movies I sold to my girlfriend as "bizarre romance" in a themed week we're having.  They're all offbeat, perhaps not even romance at the core, but that has to be involved and central in the theme.  

The plot of this is based on a true story, a Badlands/Bonnie and Clyde mold of a bad guy bad girl team who go out in a car and cause major havoc running from the law.  This reminded me a lot of Bonnie and Clyde, which I have just watched recently and I loved.  Thematically similar of course, they are both about rebel couples that took to the road and took to violence as their solution to life, and the difficult and heartbreaking end that brought them to.

In The Sugarland Express, Goldie Hawn stars as Lou, and in the beginning she goes to her husband in jail and sets up the film to him:  she is going to possibly lose her son, and so she wants to break her husband Clovis out and get their boy.  They get Clovis out in a simple maneuver and then they're on the road.  When they're pulled over for a simple traffic reason, they freak out and hit the gas and now the entire state is after them as the crimes stack up and the tensions rise, especially after they kidnap young police officer Max.

The great thing about this film, and the enduring reason for Jaws and the enduring reason for Speilberg's majesty with films is the characters.  They're so well written, subtle, and likeable.  The villains, the cops, the oddball status of everyone, the effort here to find something we as an audience can latch onto is tremendous.  When it wants to be scary and tense it is, when it wants to be funny it is, when it wants us to care, we do.  The feeling was the same in Jaws, when we have to spend so long with the characters cause the shark is not around, we have to like these guys.  

The Sugarland Express does not look or feel it's age either.  I'd definitely have guessed 70's because of the cars, but I'd have definitely guessed late 70s or early 80s because of how this feels.

5 stars.

Idaho Transfer - 1973

 Okay, I wouldn't normally do this but I am 11 minutes in and I want to point out several ridiculous things in this movie:

1. A dentist has a poster for the movie Frankenstein on his wall, right where the patients would look at it. 

2. A woman eating unpeels a banana, rips off part of it in her hand and eats it (gross) followed by a glug of Coke from a glass, followed by a bite of red Jello.  Is this their dinner?!

3.  The next day in the car ride her friend casually admits to getting raped recently, to ABSOLUTELY ZERO reaction from her friend.

4. Our plucky heroines pick up some self-identified "gypsies" and the soundtrack plays some hokey ass "Traveling Man" song for them. How do I know it's for them?  It stops as soon as they're gone.

5.  This line:  Girl 1:  "Lock the door, and take off your clothes."  Girl 2: "Sounds familiar."

This movie has a very crazy beginning, and then it sorta changes up.  Two girls are driving along having the above encounters, then they go to some facility, go into a special room, and one of them shows the other how the machine works.  What does the machine do?  Well, it takes them into the future.  The future is a desolate wasteland which was filmed in southeast Idaho.  Ladies and gentlemen, I propose I watch all the movies with Idaho in the title, starting here.  

Peter Fonda directed this movie, strangely.  This was his follow up four years after the hugely monumental Easy Rider.  He made it because it scared him, made him nervous and suspicious.  The movie mostly takes place in the future the girls travel to, the year 2027, and man, some shit has gotta change in order for us to look like this.  At the rate things are going though it could happen amiright?

The film has no expository dump, and everything takes its sweet time to be told and expressed.  I wondered for a long time just what was happening, and at the end there are still plenty of unanswered questions.  That is certainly the intent, and it completely fulfills that aspect of intrigue.  Filmed extremely simply, using nonactors and no real sets for the majority, with plot progression happening through dialogue.

Welcome back to the thing I love in film, minimalism, and in this movie it mostly works.  There's like 3 major plot holes, and the end is another wtf situation entirely, but I believe I would get more watching this a second time.  Man, the 70's was just the best decade for experimentation in film.  I am sticking to that.  

This film does a whole lot of things right.  The majority.  Weird atmosphere and curiosity does this movie huge favors, and I was downright enraptured as it got towards the end.  I am going to spoil one thing here and say, I do not understand at all how these people have access to a fucking time machine to go back into the past and they don't just all go back there and stay...  the future looks like it fucking sucks and especially with the end, they have every reason to leave.  

Idaho Transfer is a weird one, a movie that should have a cult following, and one I'd like to watch again.  I'll give it 4 stars!

End of the World - 1977

 Oof.  This was a tough one.

You know its bad when you finish a movie, go on the IMDb or Wikipedia and read the plot and think to yourself "was that what this movie is about?"  Sometimes with the longer plot outlines, you're sorta like, "yeah I vaguely remember that idea or this moment," but then the how and why of it you're like fucking shrug city.

I do remember Christopher Lee as a dependable villain, the evil father Pergado who is leading a convent of nuns and is maybe hiding something.  Perhaps one of the reasons I don't remember much of this movie is because in the first hour, fucking nothing happens.  This is Setup: The Movie.  That's this one's alternate title.  

They had a lot to lead up to also, cause spoiler alert in the end Christopher Lee turns into a weird fish looking alien and the entire world explodes!  Badass!

This movie was remarkably boring, however, and I cannot give it more than 1.5 stars.

Down - 2001

 Most of the way through Down, I checked to see if this was Naomi Watts first movie. It's not. So she had no excuse. 

Down was a remake of Dick Maas's Dutch horror thriller The Shaft, redone by him for American release I guess. They got American stars and made it in English and set the film in NY and bam, Down is ready for us Americans. 

Down is the sort of movie that probably didn't translate much to the cultural differences. I mean, I have no idea what the original movie was like, nor do I know if this remake was popular over there in the Netherlands where it was filmed. All I'm really guessing is something didn't work, cuz this movie didn't. 

It's first of all the dubbing. I don't know why it's dubbed but it is, and the voices are very comical. Then it's the trite characters and silk thin ideas. This movie is on the ever present graph chart that is "so bad it's good' but at the time it came out I can see it just being bad. 

The Millennium Tower is a 100-something story building in NY, with 70 elevators. It's stuck by a lot of lightning one night and from that point on the elevators come alive. Not all of them, confusingly, and not all the time. But they do. And they start to kill people. The elevator tech gets called in and now it's up to him and plucky reporter Naomi Watts to figure out what's going wrong.

There was a line in this movie, Naomi Watts says at one point "Manhattan used to be Native American land, maybe the building is on a Indian burial ground?!" I was thinking, the moment I actually get paid money to say something that stupid and cliche in a film, I'd fucking celebrate. Isn't this every actors dream?

The movie is pretty ridiculous and I'm not sure if it was trying to be or not. I feel like it wasn't, but that still makes it fun. I'll give it 2.5

The Day the Sky Exploded - 1958

 This Nightmare Worlds boxset had a classic black and white sci fi movie on it I had thought about seeing several times?  What luck!

I had heard of and looked for The Day the Sky Exploded, I'm particularly remembering one time somewhere between 2-4 years ago I remember typing it into Google and being astonished it was nowhere for free except YouTube.  Guy, I am not going to usually choose to watch something on YouTube, unless the exact right conditions exist.  

This is a pretty much straight down the barrel standard example of a 50s sci fi leaning thriller.  It does have a bit less on the effects side than some, but it also has the character parts and the it has enough going on to qualify.

Early in the film, an astronaut who just launched off to the moon is having difficulty, and coming back to Earth.  The astonaut John launches his warheads as a way to get rid of some of the weight on his ship, and those warheads blow up a moving comet or something, which then sends thousands of asteroids hurtling towards Earth.  Now, its looking like humanity is going to have to think hard and fast about how to avoid a fiery death.

Sky Exploded is not a bad film, it's just a bit "whatever".  The standards of the dramatic characters, as well as most of the movie happening through dialogue is expected, so I can't mark it down too much there.  I think what it comes down to is the payoff doesn't happen so much, and maybe I had very high expectations.  It's not like this is a collossal failure, it just kinda ends in a meh.

I'll give 3 stars.

All The Kind Strangers - 1974

 I watched this before the boxset, and it is unknown why I didn't write a review. This was when I was marathoning movies on Tubi, basically two months ago?

Stacy Keach stars as a man who, early on, has his truck die in the middle of nowhere and finds a house of all children. The kids take a liking to him and it seems they have no adults, that is until Stacy meets the "mother", Samantha Eggar.  It is slowly revealed these kids have kidnapped her, and intend to do the same with Keach, asking the two of them to play as their parents. 

Slow and methodical, this is a thriller of a minimal aspect, but super cool. Strangers has solid acting all around, and a genuine creepy feeling to it. I did not know what would happen next, and definitely did not know where it would end. 

This was the movie of the week on ABC on November 12, 1974. I wonder if anyone who saw it then has rewatched it recently?

This flick isn't radical, it's just extremely solid, well made, and it does intrigue. If this was remade, it would work. It's dark and deceitful, and it has a nihilism about it I appreciated. 

It ain't like the best movie ever, but I did thoroughly enjoy it. 4 stars. 

The Nightmare Never Ends - 1980

 1980??!  I had previously looked this movie up, as I was watching, and had therefore SEEN THE YEAR of it, but just now in writing this review I STILL GUESSED 1971.  This feels that old and looks that shitty.

Also known as "Cataclysm" and "Satan's Supper"

This is, to go back to my first paragraph, the type of movie you need to Google while you watch it.  We have the opportunity to do that now, and it's certainly a mixed blessing.  We therefore can answer questions while we watch the flick, instead of needing to wait for the dumb thing to either explain itself or not.  I'm not sorry I averted my eyes while this thing played to Google it and figure wtf was going on with it.

Passed between three different directors, chopped to all hell, this movie was basically the orphan child no one wanted or cared about.  Cameron Mitchell plays a detective investigating the death of a woman which apparently has something to do with Nazis.  Meanwhile, some woman apparently in a B story is having weird dreams and this turns into something, what exactly I could not tell you.

This movie is incredibly hard to follow.  Maybe I need to rewatch it, that's a certainty actually, but I'm not fucking going to.  This was incredibly boring and tedious, and it felt like most of the time simply NOTHING happened.  

If I had to describe the average scene in this movie, it would go something like this:  "A blurry, out of shape weird guy walks around a building, tries a door, it doesn't work.  He wanders around.  He sees a mystery man we never get back to.  He goes to his car.  He drives around.  Cut to the woman character talking to her husband.  Nothing happens.  Cut back to the guy in the car.  He's still driving.  I dunno where to."

There's probably a version of this that makes sense, but I doubt even that is a good movie.

Werewolf Woman - 1976

 When a movie starts with a curvy naked woman dancing in a fire ring at night, it can go nowhere but up.

Werewolf Woman, after reading the Wikipedia article, says it was supposedly made as a real movie. I don't know if I really believe it. I clocked the fourth nude scene (minimally) at minute 24, and that was only a few minutes before the bizarre lesbian rape scene. 

I mean, this is thick oozing sleaze, this is sleaze you can taste. You can hear the oily boozing weirdo next to you as you watch this. He's chain smoking and masturbating over his pants. He says something weird about her legs and slaps you on the back with the same hand that was just on his dick. 

I don't know why this was called Werewolf Woman either. I'm 90% sure no one was a werewolf. The main woman seems to be vaguely "cursed" and even then, exactly the how of it? Who knows. Instead, our main woman wanders around, she fucks people, other people fuck, random violence happens. How about Wandering Woman as a more accurate title?

This movie is about as high on the nonsense-ometer as it is on the sleaze-ometer, and I actually watched most of it twice, cause I wasn't paying a lot of attention.  This is a good midnight movie type thing, a good one to watch when you're in your early 20s, horny and craving violence.  For me, it's still fun as heck, but perhaps I enjoy it a tad less.  I'll give it 3 stars though, still.

The Alpha Incident - 1978

 If you had told me that MST3K director Bill Rebane, known for The Giant Spider Invasion and Monster a Go-Go, had one movie that I might slightly enjoy, there's a chance I would not have believed you.

It's true, and I didn't love this movie or anything, but The Alpha Incident is at least halfway decent, and I'm frankly impressed, because Monster a Go-Go is simply one of the worst movies, not even a good MST episode, just so boring and pointless.  Let's get into it shall we?

The Alpha Incident is a late 70s minimal conspiracy thriller, a mystery a bit, and something which I do normally like:  dialogue based, extremely minimal, and built around the suspicions and threats of characters.

Early into the film, Ralph Meeker as Charlie is in a small town at the train station which is transporting unknown cargo, and gets informed of some sort of microorganism outbreak there.  He is a military guy I think, and he is given the order to hold the people of the town in place, since they need to be quarantined.  What happens next is the long, tense, character and dialogue driven part as the 5 people interact in a small variety of sets and places, and we learn more or less about the situation depending on what happens.

The thing about this movie, is that pretty clearly to keep a story like this propelled, it needs one heck of a good script.  Not just anyone talking is interesting.  This movie was not quite well written enough to be as gripping as it could have been, and they didn't have enough for the characters to do in order to drive the tension up.  The five of them are hungry and tired, yet the tensions don't rise beyond a basic level, and the characters instead read as overall bored.

Given how unattainable the prospect of movies like this is though, this is at least a valiant attempt, and there were awesome segments.  The end is a bit predictable, but overall I liked this more than I should have.

I have not yet announced that I'm watching these on DVD, a very special DVD, because this is movie 2 after Alien Contamination with my new boxset Nightmare Worlds!  Rejoice everyone, because I've watched a bunch of these already and this should be a painless set, but also, two movies that are at least pretty good so far!  This can have 2 stars.  Maybe 2.5.

Alien Contamination - 1980

 Also known as:  Contamination, Toxic Spawn, Larvae, Aliendrome, and Contamination: Alien on Earth.

Luigi Cozzi is a well known Italian schlock hero basically, and he's been seen on this blog multiple times.  I also got this movie confused many times with Shocking Dark, which was a another Alien ripoff out of Italy in 1989.  Shocking Dark was a much more entertaining version of this, but this is fun too.

Basically, in this there was a former astronaut who reported seeing Alien-style eggs, no one believed him, and he was disbanded.  Now, a ship pulls up to a harbor chock full of Alien-style eggs and Colonel Stella Holmes is on the case.  The eggs emit a strange ghostly sound, and seem to partially control you?  It's unclear.  It's also unclear if there are aliens in the eggs or not, but what is clear is that they pose a threat and Stella is going against them.

Also continuing another thing I've been doing, is that I read this was labeled as a Video Nasty when it came out, a label I truly do not understand especially if I saw the original cut.  There's no nudity and very little gore in this movie, by today's standards it might actually be a PG-13 movie practically.

The movie varies wildly with its pacing.  I will say, I had a couple of stout beers and watched this, and I paid attention as much as one could, but I couldn't quite track what was happening.  There's a lot of dialogue and there's endless scenes in this movie, and I tuned it out eventually.  

I got back into it by the time the "alien queen" shows up at the end, and that's a hilarious and awesome effect.  Overall, it is hit and miss, but I enjoyed it thoroughly and I would recommend it as a soft intro to the sort of ripoff Italian stuff you might not know existed.

The Hollywood Strangler - 1979

 I opted to just "keep the train rollin" last night with Ray Dennis Steckler. 

The director of MST3K classic The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies turns in another near incomprehensible "movie" this time something involving two serial killers operating at the same time in Los Angeles. 

I had a cool idea last night, a new term for movies like this. Movies which were made completely without actors, sets, costumes, plots, and were likely strung together on a $75 budget and filmed in the directors backyard. I'm going to call these "Sub Z" meaning below Z Grade. 

There's a sexist male photographer who strangles the women who he shoots. Then there's a female serial killer who sees homeless people and follows them, killing them once they're drunk and helpless. Cut back to the man killing someone, cut back to the woman, etc etc etc. Then the two meet and the film ends. 

I put this on hoping for skeezy 70s sexual hijinks, and yes there's nudity in here, but it's not as tit heavy as the others I've been watching. In fact, there is nothing in this, and it's devoid of almost every single thing which defines what a movie is. 

It opens a weird discussion for me, the concept of what is a movie and what is a film, and the difference being the medium used as experimentation. This is shot without sound, without a script, without even an idea. Doesn't that inherently define it as experimental? I don't know. Maybe. 

Whatever it is, it's not good, but it does bear some bizarre interest factor simply for being so goddamn strange. I'll give it... Geez. A 2?

Message Parlor Murders! - 1975

 I've been in the mood for what amounts to as 70s theatrical porn, with this and the prison film. 

I couldn't say exactly what it is. Its a collection of things about them really. Any film which is absolutely indicative of a time, anything which is completely alien to cinemas now, I'm really fascinated with. 

Surely of all film genres, this ranks high in the list of things that won't make a comeback.  It's interesting the recurring themes and styles that have resurgence, I mean let's not forget that friggin The Artist won an Academy Award for best picture. 

This won't get reignited I feel, and it's audience is gone. The audience for super sleazy skeezed out sex killer movies is now probably part of some incel group online, not watching overly long, terribly shot zero budget jerk off films. I guess I'm alone in watching these.

Essentially it's an excuse to have nude boobs that get covered in blood, and to have maybe one "laugh".  You don't watch this for the plot. At least Playboy did have real articles!

Pink Floyd - The Wall - 1982

 I think of Pink Floyd sometimes as "the other band" I remember from my youth, the primary of course was The Beatles, these being the bands I heard around my house a lot.

When I went into this movie as a teen or so, I had heard the radio hits of Pink Floyd and some of the back catalogue, but I was no means a fan and I was not seeing the movie because of them.  I heard it was weird, artistic, probably disturbing.  See my previous post today Brazil for an explanation of how I found movies back in the day.

Pink Floyd The Wall revisits the themes present in the album The Wall, the 1980 album.  Those themes are basically:  coming of age, loss of innocence, drug addiction, violence, women, mothers, loss of father, loss of parents, and authoritarian influence stemming from unfocused rage basically.  These themes are visited in the film in what is basically a long music video of the character Pink suffering a drug overdose wherein he thinks about his childhood and reflects on his current pysche and being a musician.

Pink Floyd The Wall is heavily image-ridden, with animation and multi other expressionistic art mediums used to illustrate (literally, get it? Because of the animation.  Okay) the film's point.  There's a lot of anger here, there's a lot of loss and frustration.  There's equally a lot of beauty, and all of those are present in the movie.  

I really loved it when I originally saw it in my teens.  I think now on a rewatch, that it's possible, indeed likely that I had simply never seen anything like this before.  Not to say this is not a good movie or a fun watch.  It's clear this is heavily infuenced by war and politics, and overall, I think it is really well shot and interesting, but it didn't resonate with me in the same way it did when I first saw it.

Basically when it ended I said aloud (because I had been considering it before the rewatch) "Yeah, I could donate that."

I'll give it a 4 though, cause it is a good movie and a precursor to music videos, and has some horrifically memorable sequences.

Brazil - 1985

 It's funny, strange, bizarre, surreal, in general, to find the things that your friends and significant other love, and witness them yourself with that person.  Me - A History:

I used to do lots of research on weird movies.  Using the internet, film dudes, blogs, people with weird taste who I actually knew, I remember putting together lists and having files saved all over the place.  This type of thing would become emblematic for me, and would continue basically until the age 33 when I moved here, and in a lot of ways being here in Idaho where I am now, I'm slowly shifting my focus away from movies (fucking finally, btw).

Brazil was one of the movies that I know was on the list.  It had that weirdness of being Terry Gilliam, but also the necessary darkness to appease the weirdo artistic type that I was/am.  I don't think I saw Brazil when I was younger.  If I did, it left no impression.  But I do know that later on in life when I was married, my ex wife loved this movie, loved the actor Jonathan Pryce because of it, and I watched it once with her.

So that was my original opening here.  The idea, the weirdness, of seeing these movies which are meaningful to other people, and then you see it through their lens.  If you're a good partner you also struggle to understand, why does this mean something to them?  Why did Brazil mean something to Rachel?

Brazil is a dystopian sci fi film released in 1985, a year after the notorious book 1984 was set of course.  It's important to note that because I'm sure Brazil was shot in 1984, and thought of in the years leading to 1984.  Sam Lowry is a low level government worker in a crazy, dysfunctional society that nabs te wrong guy in the first few minutes of the movie and ends up torturing and killing him anyway.  This gets Sam involved, Sam is in the meantime someone with recurring highly visual dreams involving a particular woman, a woman who when he sees her in the real world, risks his job, his life, and everything else to pursue her.

Intensely visual, hugely impressive in its scope, Brazil is a sight to behold.  It is a classic, a cult film, and voted as one of the best British films of all time.  There's a good balance off sci fi and comedy, there's some really apparent darkness and eeriness to the film at times, it has a host of talented actors in it, and it has a huge voice.  

If you're sensing a "but" here, there is one...  But, I never quite got what the hubbub was and I felt like it was fine.  Fine, but overrated.  I dunno, it's possible it was built up to me.  I think it gets to a point where I like it, but it feels too long and honestly, its not like the story is hugely strong.  We basically know what's going to happen and there's very little diversion from that.  In that way it feels style over substance, which I guess I like in some things and I like less in others.

I cannot slam it for that though, so I guess I'll still give it a 5.

City of the Vampires - 1993

 I was working yesterday and needed something that I didn't give a crap about.  I found a few 90s horror comedies and turned each one off after like 5 or less minutes, until I gave this one a shot, and it stuck.

City of the Vampires is in an era where yea, a lot of these coming out were awful.  They were schlocky and self aware, they were low budget and shot on VHS, they were beyond amateur.  This one is not hugely different from that idea of 90s flicks.

It's all there, the terrible, Z grade acting, that sounds like they quite literally are an automaton saying words that were programmed into them.  The "action" is boring beyond all thoughts, and ponders from one scene to the next with nary a concern for its audience.  

The reason I stuck with this is the same as what this person on IMDb agrees with me on.  The one review on there:  "The music is worth +1 star. The rest of the film - well, I assume this was somebody's school project."  The music!  The music in this is downright awesome.  This guy took a page right out of John Carpenter's book with a cool, unique, and minimal electronic score.  

Additionally, it doesn't wear its ridiculous self awareness on its sleeves, and there's even a few shots of cool special effects towards the end.  That alone will keep me watching, cuz even when I want shit, I don't want TOTAL SHIT.  I'll give it 2 stars, for what it is.

Helga, She Wolf of Stilberg - 1972

 I can't recall right off which of the Ilsa or other Nazisploitation movies I've seen. Some here, some there. Not tons, I'm not a weirdo. 

This entry isn't strictly Nazi because there aren't any but this is still very much ripping off Ilsa She Wolf of the SS and it's ripping off the popular Women in Prison films up to this point. 

These movies are super low grade misogynist Z types wherein nudity is not only present but featured in virtually every scene, sex is had, beatings are shown, and often lesbianism is hinted at.  The actresses are amateur, the plot is minimal, the language is dubbed, and the desire was to titilate the greasy blue collar men in the audience who drank cheap whiskey while they watched, hands going into their pants. 

Bygone era is what I'm referring to here, and it's a really interesting thing, man, to watch these bizarre 70s exploitation films of all genre. Torturing and raping women in a prison would get so cancelled in this modern day it's not even funny. 

There's also a strangeness to this movie because in a lot of scenes of whipping, beating, slapping, hair pulling, it's clear these actions were really done. These women were actually degraded and abused physically for this movie, and one wonders, was the $100 they got for it worth it? I wonder about the making of these kinds of things. 

All this aside, it's a generally whatever exploitation flick. 3 stars. 

The Vineyard - 1989

 I recall this movie all the way back from the days of video rental stores, cause I have certainly seen the cover for this movie before:

Scotch fixes everything.

The Vineyard is directed by Jomes Hong, starring James Hong.  James Hong is one of those actors who's in absolutely everything, I knew him when I was younger from Wayne's World, but then as I got older I saw him pop up in horror movies and Sci Fi movies.  He has one of those faces that's very unique, and he has a very noticeable presence as well.  

The Vineyard is a relatively tame late 80's horror movie.  Basically, James Hong is capturing young people and torturing them, then planting them in his vineyard and drinking some of the wine after science has been done to it (see pic above) to remain young.  We see his real age twice, like again above, and after he drinks the wine it restores him to his normal looking self.  People come to the vineyard to see what's happening there, and they begin to uncover his secret while in the meantime he is hunting them to remain young.

Something about this was kinda just....I dunno, mild.  Don't expect a lot, that's for sure.  There's nudity, and the effects are pretty good, but something with the mementum left one wanting more, and none of the characters are very interesting.  I just realized there's barely a lead character in this, and its not just because we spend a lot of time with Hong.

Probably super low budget, there's not like there's endless things to complain about, it just sorta is there and then it's not.  I've always wanted to see it, so maybe I had built it up a bit in my head.  I'll give it a 2.5.

Dagon - 2001

 I watched a bunch of Brian Yuzna and Stuart Gordon movies early on in this blog, and I really liked the Re-Animator series and Society and even The Dentist and other stuff they've done.

These two are a good selection of an unknown favorite because while they may not blow any one thing out of the water, they're above average in the low budget lesser-known side of things.  They have a nice comedic timing and great effects, and the movies are minimal in scope so are often more fun than those that overreach.  These guys know what kinda movies they're making, and that's ok.

Dagon is based on HP Lovecraft stuff, which almost instantly makes it contender for best HP adaption, cuz most of them pretty much suck.  I might've read this HP book, or not.  I read a 800-something page collection of his works, and I don't fucking remember.  

In Dagon, a group of young people accidentally comes to a small fishing village when there's stormy water.  Two of them, Paul and Barbara go to shore and Paul goes back to get the others on the boat to find they're no longer there.  Then when he gets back to the village, Barbara is gone, and he's off to look for her.  That night, a crowd of crazy fish people descend on him from everywhere in the village, eager to sacrifice him to their crazy fish god Dagon.

In short, this movie is what you need it to be.  It's fast paced enough, dumb and whatever while not being trite.  The main guy Paul is alone for the vast majority and it well acted enough to pull it off, and there's occassional nudity and other fun stuff to keep you from checking your phone.  

This, like a lot of their stuff is well done B horror, and it need not rewrite the book, just have a great chapter.  I give it a above average 3.5, though for it's ilk it's like a 4.

Paganini Horror - 1989

 I was going to do Paganini, a different 1989 film starring and written by Klaus Kinski, I got it confused with this movie Paganini Horror, and got about 20 minutes in before I realized my error when I wondered "where the fuck is Kinski in this movie?"

Kinski in part made yesterday's blog post Vampire In Venice so he could get his Paganini biopic made, and he made that in 1989.  I believe I read about Vampire in Venice that Kinski collaborated with Luigi Cozzi on Vampire in Venice a bit, and it seems shared with Cozzi about his Paganini idea.  Cozzi then turned around and made this movie, Paganini Horror, probably at the approval of Kinski...  or maybe just without, I dunno which one is wonkier and funnier.

Paganini Horror is a late 80's, MTV influenced, over top late Cozzi film.  Cozzi is still alive and made a movie in 2020, and I'm interested in looking it up some day soon and seeing what his recent output is like.  This one is extremely indicative of the time, it's flashy and showy and insane, it's dumb and fun, and short of not having any nudity it's overall trash-o-rama.

In the beginning of Paganini Horror, a little girl plays a song by Paganini, then goes and kills her mom.  This piece of music is cursed, and then 80's pop star Sylvia gets it because her bandmate buys it off Donald Pleasense they're gonna play it and open up the horror.

The movie takes a while to setup, and there's not a clear payoff at all, I will say.  There's not a lot of bodies, blood, guts, kills, monsters...there's sorta no thrills or scares in the movie.  In fact, once the song is sung nothing basically happens except a hole in the ground exists which sorta leads to the devil or whatever.  This movie was sorta dumb come to think of it.

I dunno, it has some fun and 80s kitsch.

Vampire in Venice - 1988

 I'm a renounce Klaus Kinski fan, and as I watched this movie with a whiskey in hand this morning I thought to myself:  "Ya know, a person could do a lot worse that watch every Klaus Kinski movie."  Maybe.  Life goals, eh?

Vampire in Venice had a very troubled background, and would certainly get many people cancelled today.  The Kin-ster famously had mental health problems which manifested later in his life, and he was accused of sexually harassing and basically raping a couple women on this set.  In addition to that, he took over the production, refused to do reshoots, took over the lighting setup, and rewrote the film dialogue.  It's worth reading about if you're a fan of that kinda stuff.

Kinski stars as Nosferatu in the sequel to his 1979 film with Werner Herzog.  A group of people are in Nosferatu's realm and uncover the fact their family has been haunted by him for a few generations.  Nosferatu is now seeking death, but he's not going to give up easily.  It is said many times that the only thing which can kill him at this point is being loved by a virgin woman.

The movie works well in certain ways, and meanders along in others.  It doesn't have a strong drive in any way, sorta wafting about between scenes with no sense of progress being made.  In that way it achieves a certain atmosphere of aloof despondence, and honestly that sorta works for this flick.  Balanced by some occassional kills usually by way of brutal looking garden fences, overall I'd say it works, it's just off and or unusual in it's tone.

In short, it's nothing hugely new novel or even all that nifty, it's just another vampire movie, helped by Kinski in his weird enigmatic charisma, and like I said, you could do worse than watch all his movies.

It Follows - 2014

I'd been wanting to rewatch this movie in recent weeks and asked my friend if he wanted to watch it with me.  He expressed no interest, so I rewatched it alone last night.

It Follows has changed the horror scope a bit, and I've heard it referenced as one of the early films that brought on the phase we're in now, which is being commonly accepted as "elevated horror".  This, The Purge, and some others came out, and began a trend which led to Ari Aster and Jordan Peele and few other people, but mainly it seems A24, which is doing a bizarre mix of elevated horror and total shit such as the new Halloween films

It Follows was recommended to me by my wife's coworker, and I remember watching this for the first time in 2015 or 2016 with my wife of the time, saying yeah, sure, that was good.  I get it.  

Then, I promptly forgot about it and didn't give it much mind until the last few months when whatever I was listening to mentioned it.  Now, elevated horror is fine, and I am welcoming it bringing horror into a more mainstream audience sight, but also it's return to slow burn, more psychological and character based horror ideas.  I am not going to trash it, I think it's fine.  Is It Follows elevated?

Yeah, I would say so.  The story is more character focused, following one heroine and delving into her life and character.  It is slow burn, with very few jump scares, and rather having the emphasis be on trope-averting scares, but still some cool genuinely creepy stuff.  

Plotwise, the idea is that our young heroine has sex with a new guy, he ties her up, and warns her that he didn't mean to hurt her, but there is a awful thing he gave her.  There's these creepy people that are coming for you.  Only you can see them.  If they get you, they'll kill you.  And the only thing it seems to be done about this is to have sex with someone else, which passes the curse (or the STD, basically).  

Like I said there's some good stuff in here, some cool moments and tense build.  The main character manages to show proof of what's happening to her to a small group of friends and they try to fight back or evade the curse.  The "followers" after her are a cool, threatening, but subdued idea.  They're all played the right way, and I'm frankly surprised there wasn't a sequel to this in a way.  It would be very easy to redo this.

I'll give it a 4, I think it's a fun new idea, original, and well executed.

Dogs - 1976

 A long time ago in a post I don't remember I talked about wanting to watch animal attack movies, and I name dropped wanting to see this movie.  I never watched it.  Til now.

I put this on during a rather slow day at work and watched animals killing people while I was waiting for something to do.  Friends, this is what I do with my time.

Dogs stars David McCallum, Linda Gray and George Wyner.  Dogs is a couple years after Jaws, and likely about 20th in line to capitalize on the animal attack idea after Jaws, and basically follows a group of peeps in a small town where due to unknown reasons the dogs start to attack and kill people.  

This movie is pretty much whatever.  The Dogs are made to look ok, but you can tell its tricky camera editing and a few highly trained dogs and handlers.  The rest is mild tension and character shit, as random Scottish cop David McCallum dresses in all denim and wanders around this town.  

I mean, it's fine.  Ebert gave it zero stars.  I appreciate that.  But it's not like it's rewriting the book on a bad film, it's just dull and uninspired.  It can at least have a 1.5 though.

Demonia - 1990

 Whatever happened to these crazy giallo Italian flickmakers like Bava, Argento, Castellari, Fulci?  Well, sadly, a lot of them are dead.  What were there later films like?

Demonia is near the end of Fulci's career, I think about 10 years before he died.  I'm not going to google it again, you figure it out.  Fulci had been away from a big hit for a while, and had a few TV made movies around this time, was basically circling the drain of life man.

Demonia is a harkening back to the OG films like this.  It's straight-forward, badly acted, and ridiculous.  The effects are so bad they're good, but really, quite bad.  There are these awful patches that are placed on actors, so it's obvious where the blood's gonna spurt out from.  Then, the film quality is good enough to show how bad the blood and guts look...  it's pretty great.

Plotwise, I mean who knows and who cares.  Some nun demons are brought back from the dead and are after a few people, That's about it.  

I didn't pay strict attention, nor should you.  I'll give it 2 stars.

The Man from Earth - 2007

 I remember discovering this movie about 7 or so years ago by reading about Star Trek authors Harlan Ellison and Jerome Bixby. I clicked on them to see what else they'd made. The Man from Earth? Boring name. 

I rented this on a whim expecting nothing, and was frankly blown away. This movie is extremely minimal, low budget, amateur, and has bad film quality. But what it involves, what is takes you on, now that is where it shines. 

The film evolves through only dialogue. A group of friends are seeing their friend off as he leaves town, going to his house and pestering him with questions about why he is going. He eventually gives and his story starts. 

I explained to my gf who I was watching it with, mild spoiler, the movie is basically: what would it take for someone to convince you they are immortal? This is the plot. The friend has been alive thousands of years, and begins to convince the others of this. 

What's amazing is first and foremost the writing. They address everything you could think of, and many things you couldn't. It's written with knowledge of history, religion, mankind, morality, pain, love, existence and existentialism. It goes into what someone would learn, how memory works, what we hold as valuable. And so much more. 

The Man from Earth is a spectacle not like many others, a film that poses questions and makes bold statements using the medium of minimalism to do so. I wish more like this existed. 5 stars. 

The Devil's Rain - 1975

 I mistyped the year as 2975.  Wouldn't it be cool if in some weird alternate universe, a sequel to this movie was made 1000 years later in 2975?  I know in this world supposedly anything can happen, but I guarantee that will not.

The Devil's Rain is a pretty well known cult movie again.  I'm obviously watching some horror since it's October, one week til Halloween, and no I have not decided yet what to watch on Halloween night.  

William Shatner, Tom Skerritt and Ernest Borgnine star in this accidental Ernest Borgnine double feature I had (with Escape from New York).  The movie is about a group of Satan worshipers that William Shatner infiltrates, I don't remember why.  He has only his religion to help him against the cult, and as he witnesses their Satanic mass and other stuff, he can't help but be pulled into their world.

This movie is well known for starring Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan, and he is in a small role in the movie as well.  The existence of real, modern world Satanists and the troubled "cursed" production made this well known as well, but it was also a bomb and got panned by critics.

The Devil's Rain isn't like, blowing up and changing Satanic movies as we know them or anything.  By this point in 75, some crazier shit had been done, and some crazier shit would be done still.  This is just, ya know, another bump on the log, link in the chain, and it is what it is basically.

I might have watched this before, if I did I didn't remember it, and that's possibly cause it's not very memorable.

Escape from New York - 1981

 I put this on for my girl, who fell asleep about 20 minutes in.  I stuck with it, it had been a few years, and I have to say, what a strange one huh?!

This is a true cult movie, one that has stood the test of time and remains a true enigma as well as a true classic in the realm of films.  Escape from New York, like a lot of Carpenter films, was not a movie I gre up with by any means.  If memory serves me right, I had probably only seen the original Halloween, maybe like Vampires and one other or so by the time I was in my late teens.  It just wasn't in my line of sight for some reason.

Whatever the reasoning may be, the movie Escape from New York is something else.  One thing, my girl as I may have mentioned does not like horror movies, and as I started this, I told her don't worry, it's not horror.  It's not.  But as I kept watching, I started to grapple with the question, what genre is this movie?  The easy and quick answer is action - but is it?  There's action sequences yes, but it's not that actiony.  It is the genre that used to exist and doesn't now, adventure, but even then, it's very minimal in that way as well. 

Escape from New York is essentially a thriller, in many ways.  Again, it's genreless...  But it's about Snake Plisken getting sent to the current anarchy prison state that is New York City, where he is to rescue president Donald Pleasense, who's hamming it up big time as a highly disturbed British United States president.  Love it.

Along the way, Snake fights with some locals, meets locals like Cabbie, Brain, The Duke, and he encounters other obstacles.  Snake is played by an incredibly hot and alluring Kurt Russell, who is a bad guy with a good heart in Snake Plisken.  

The movie is nearly flawless, and I've seen it many times.  There's a lot of cool things about it, but I'm not going to go on and on and on here.  If you're a film guy, you know, so there' not a lot left to say.  I'm just going to voice in and say I agree, it's five stars.

The Mothman Prophecies - 2002

 I was on the phone last night and got the urge to watch this, sort of out of nowhere.  So, I put it on.

I remember this one coming out, in the dismal glut of horror which was the early 2000s.  The Mothman Prophecies looked like a shit show, I think I vaguely remember joking about it with friends, as well as I think I remember and it's quite likely I saw this some time around then, out of curiousity...  I am pretty sure I thought it was dumb and boring, which is also what I thought of it now.

Based on a "true life story" of people who saw some sort of bird-like creature which then got misconstrued to be a Mothman that predicted danger, this is the story of a small town in West Virginia where people begin to be tormented by this Mothman dude.  

Richard Gere stars as a reporter brought there by a mysterious force, two years after the death of his wife, who might have been caused to get in a car crash because of the mothman.  He hits it off with hot police lady Laura Linney as we gets involved in some locals who are seeing the mothman, and it's all trying to be creepy, sometimes succeeding sure, and taking it's sweet time to have anything happen.

There's actually very little to say about this film, because it's overall very middling.  It's too long, and the pace is very slow, but I guess it was going to thriller/mystery/suspense versus straight horror, so that is likely the reason.  With Dicky "Gere's of War" they were probably going for more of the "legit film thing" than some weekend horror flick.  

I supposed some of the jump scares work, and the overall atmosphere succeeds sometimes, but mostly it's just another movie you watch spaced out across two days in your average life.  1 star.

Casualties of War - 1989

 I think I had gotten to the point where I wasn't going to see the rest of the DePalma films, but someone described this as "his passion project" recently, and that edged me into watching it.

Casualties of War is based on a true story, the story of the collective gang rape and murder of a young Vietnamese girl when the US troops were there during the Vietnam war.  The film stars Michael J. Fox as the sole detractor from a group of five army guys who decide to grab this girl, and then later rape and kill her.

Brian DePalma has a unique emblematic style which is perhaps at the forefront of a lot of his work, generally noticeable, and one of his flourishes that people (like me) really like.  They are present in this film, though toned down, and take the format of strange camera stuff usually.  

The strange camera work in combination with the melodrama of the film makes it seem a bit over the top.  It seems to actually handicap the seriousness of the story...  It's a weird thing, and especially with the actors turning in sorta middling performances at times (especially from Fox, who I don't think is a particularly good actor) the movie actually comes off as sort of amateur and hokey, which I'm sure was not the intended affect given the sunject matter.  I'm sorry n all guys, but I laughed out loud one time during this and it was not desired for me to.

That's the big thing to say about this, the other parts of it are all fine, they work to whatever degree they need to, and things go along as expected.  I'm sure that these events taking place were altogether common, and it's a reminder of the horrors of war, loss of innocence, etc etc.  I'm not ignoring these as unimportant, it's just like, hey I get it alright?

I'll give it a 2.5 I guess, and say it's a fine average dramatic war movie.

Maniac - 1980

Maniac is one of these horror movies with such an indistinguishable title that it's easy to mistake it for others.  But it is different, and it is memorable once you get into it.

I've seen this movie given the year of 1980 or of 1981.  Hell, maybe both are correct.  Right?  Maniac was a video nasty, which we've seen some of in this blog, and a slasher, which we've seen, and horror movie, which obviously is the genesis of this blog.

Maniac is directed by cult film director William Lustig, who went on to do the well known Maniac Cop movie series, and it stars Joe Spinell as the titular homicidal maniac, Frank.  We meet shleppy, sloppy Frank as he bums around and acts all weird.  He's got some sort of mommy issue, and he sleeps with a mannequin in his bed.  He goes around murdering people in this pretty much straight line plot.

The plot is nothing, as I said, what is worth talking about is the bizarre hypnotic level to the film, as well as of course the gruesome, boundary pushing violence.  The MPAA had not really started censoring movies yet, wouldn't until a few more years, so these late 70's early 80's movies were getting away with some pretty gnarly stuff.  This movie features scalpings and a shotgun blast to the head for poor ol' Tom Savini.

Maniac pushed the envelope, and it is good, actually.  The acting is good enough for you to care about serial killer Frank, and the kills are good, and the movie even has a decent atmosphere and a few scares along the way.  Overall, I'd say it's overlooked.  It's one of the more realistic 80's slasher types, and heavily inspired by Gacy, again.  I give it 4 stars.

Friday the 13th - 1980

 I put this on for my girlfriend who adamantly always says when I ask what she wants to watch "Not horror".  Hey, she's dating me?  She's gonna get horror.

Friday the 13th is the original slasher movie that was made after the rocketing success of Halloween, taking the slasher concept to the woods and to the lakeside home of Jason.  Except, as we all know, it's not Jason.  What is it?  Well, it is a slasher and a veritable whodunnit which has lotsa kills, blood and nudity, and amps the Halloween idea up a notch.

Friday the 13th is quite different from Halloween, and anyone who writes this off as an imitation slasher is not giving it enough credit.  The film has a bunch of camp counselors staying at Camp Crystal Lake, getting knocked off one by one as they play around, fuck around, and engage in "being scared".

Everyone has seen this, and if it wasn't for my dwindling review status here I wouldn't write a review for it.  This is an original 80's slash-o-matic with body count, knives, creative kills, and mixed possible suspects.  It was funny, my girlfriend who had not seen it at one point randomly said she thought the killer was Steve Christy, the romance character for Adrienne King's character Alice.

It's hilarious in a way because I know this sort of plays like a whodunnit and I did explain it that way - that could be seen as a holdover from the 70's filmmaking character-driven pieces such as Halloween, explicitely.  But even then, I have seen the movie so many times it never even occurred to me to actually start suspecting people anymore.  We know, definitely, the killer, and we never even think about the other characters doing the killings.

It's a classic film, ya dig, and I would say it's a must for all fans of 80's slashers and horror films.

Side note:  my GF absolutely freaked out at the ending.  Man was that fun. The canoe jump scare?  Fuck yeah.

Troll 2 - 1990

 I put on Troll 2 randomly last night.  It had been a few years.

I think I first saw this in about 2005, 2006 when I was living with my first roommate.  It didn't have the cult following then that it does now, it was just a subpar cheesy horrorish movie that was extremely dumb.  But in that way it was like a lot of others, I guess.  I think I was mildly shocked when it became "well known" later, and I know at some point I did watch the fan documentary about, Best Worst Movie.

Troll 2 is the sequel to Troll, some dumb borderline fantasy thriller adventure almost horror psuedo kids movie, or at least mid teens movie that could have only been made in the 80s because of who it was made for.  Troll was whimsical and magical, but downright destructive in some of the themes, and this movie is similar.  This is a weird ass time for kids movies, but I'll take it over films now that are just kiddy.

Troll 2 is famously poorly acted, with ridiculous lines that sound as unnatural as a 7-Eleven plate of nachos.  The trolls, or really goblins because there are no Trolls in the movie, as short actors in rubber masks, sometimes where you can clearly see they're masks, and sometimes having speaking parts where their lips do not move.  There are camp performances from villains and heroes alike, and really, really ridiculous moments which make it fun.

This is a great group movie to put on and have fun with, and I did have fun last night.   It had likely been over 10 years since I had seen this, and I enjoyed rewatching it.  I'll give it 4 cult flicks outta five.

The Howling: New Moon Rising - 1995

 I started this series way back in the beginning, building towards rewatching The Howling, and now that I did, well shit I might as well finish out the series huh?

Jesus fucking christ though, yikes.  I wasn't ready for how bad this was going to be.  I mean, need I say any more than this:  this is supposed to be a comedy.  I've said it before, I will say it again, there is nothing worse than a bad comedy.  And this one is especially bad.

The writer director Clive Turner apparently worked hard to have this movie connect to the other sequels to The Howling.  Turner had been working on this series since The Howling 3, and here, I mean I have no idea how this connects.  There's in fact very little about this I do know...

This movie stars a bunch of non actors in a non plot having film.  The plot is basically someone comes to town and bodies begin to pile up, and some people think it's a werewolf.  Meanwhile, a bunch of interactions happen, nothing important though, just stuff like relationships and dancing scenes, and stupid crap that looks like a soap opera from TV.  There's also multiple scenes of people sitting around playing music, and the "score" is just random wailing guitars.

Somehow this was not the last in the series, but it should have been.  Hell, this one shouldn't have even existed.

It has minor...repeat MINOR so-bad-it's-good qualities, but it is overall just plain bad.

Hellhounds of Alaska - 1973

 Well I am hungover and working, which means a movie is on in the background.  This one is also knows as: The Bloody Vultures of Alaska.

Doug McClure stars in this German-made adventure flick set in Alaska, where he's the good ol' boy who is protecting some kid when the area is beseiged by robbers after some gold.  It's a thin plot for a made-for-TV feeling movie.

There's nothing to say about this except that it looks like a true antique from a bygone era, which it is I guess so that's no surprise.  It's slow, it's kinda dull, nothing much happens, and there's no intrigue or plot twists to speak of.  Doug McClure is clearly an inspiration for Chuck Norris, and that aside, it's unnoticable.

The Descent - 2005

The Descent.  Remember that one?  The horror movie that hit big in the mid 2000's?  I do.

The Descent was a big hit when it came out.  I remember my friends in the theaters and my movie dudes being into this, talking about it a lot, and this movie made some waves.  From my memory I saw this when it was pretty new on DVD, and I remember being a bit disappointed / thinking it was overrated.  So how will it stand up almost 20 years later?

I watched The Descent with my buddy Matt a couple of nights ago while we sat there kinda drunk and waited to be impressed.  The Descent is a cave-based horror flick, one that is built with clautraphobia as well as creatures as the antagonists, and like I said, big big hit which seeped into popular culture.

That is basically the plot: girls go into a cave, there's baddies in the cave, they all try to survive.  Early on into the movie, they are taking a random cave tour after their friend has a near death experience, and they apparently take a random tunnel which collapses.  Now they are in an alien part of the cave and they are coming closer and closer to some part where there are creatures.

First of all, there's barely even any jump scares in this.  There's maybe like 4.  Which is light, that's all I'm saying.  Then, the rest is just a horror movie, and I guess it's fine.  They stay with the creatures a lot, and it reminds me of Aliens in that way, where we follow the creature when there is no one around which would be seeing it.  

I didn't really know why it was so successful then, I don't really know now?  It's not like it's BAD, it's just sorta like a average whatever horror movie.  I give it a 3.

Roadgames - 1981

 I forgot I watched this until just now when I saw the name Stacy Keach and was like "oh cool another Stacy Keach movie!"  

I miss movies like this.  So much.  This is what I love about 70's movies, when it's done right.  This is a character piece first, everything else second.  We follow truck driver Stacy Keach as Patrick Quid as he drives along, jovial as can be but with a clearly shady past.  He is painted so well in the span of this movie, but it never feels forced or faked.  We learn little in reality, but with nuance in script and acting we are made to infer more.  Which I just love.

We follow Patrick as one day he watches a woman going to a hotel with a man.  He shakes his head and wishes that for himself, goes to sleep, and wakes to witness nothing really extraordinary, black bags left by the trashcan, the man who went into the room watching them... and a dog taking a curious interest in the bags.  

As he drives, a radio broadcast tells of a string of missing women in the area, a serial killer, and pretty soon in mostly dialogue to his dog and a few hitchhikers (Hitch, he calls them) Patrick begins to suspect the man he witnessed is the killer in question.  He picks up Jamie Lee Curtis at the 45 minute mark, and the two of them quickly form an attraction, and when he tells her about his suspect, she joins his strange quest to prove their suspicions.

There are very few characters in the movie, most of the movie takes place in the cab of Patrick's truck cab, and almost everything plot related moves through dialogue.  The minimalism of this film is staggering, and it delivers so well that you'll marvel at the abilities.  I had heard of it for a long time, and I'm glad I finally watched it.  I give it 5 stars.

The Devils - 1971

 Oliver Reed tops a lot of lists for me insofar as crazy, incredible to watch actors who I will watch about anything they are in.  And Vanessa Redgrave is in this and it is directed by Ken Russell!

I'm starting out energetic here for a reason, which is that mainly this movie is very slow, but I'm also going to include the extremity, because it's also extreme.  I don't really know how to encapsulate it really, it's a bit all over the place, and fits in well with Tommy, also directed by Russell, and also a film I didn't exactly love.

What is hard about all of this stuff going on, is that at a certain point I very much wonder:  What exactly is happening?  I know that I may cling too desperately to the concept of "plot" but really....honestly...what the fuck is happening in this movie again?

From the onset we have Oliver Reed as a thoroughly corrupt and repugnant priest who is fucking his nuns and bathing in sin basically.  He is living the very definition of the idea that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  He is brought to a new convent where the nuns all want to fuck him, and he begins to want this too when he meets Madeleine, a nun who wants him all to herself, and he falls in love with her.

This is where I begin to lose track of things basically.  Since he is desired by all the nuns and in love with one, he isn't fucking the others, who get encouraged to express their sexuality in other ways, and slowly fall into depravity and sexuality, getting all hot and bothered in every conceivable way.  But the why of this remains, and in the "real life story" this is based on, I'm going to read more, but basically the priest was accused of witchcraft, and in this he is too, but there is no witchcraft or even suggestions of it...  so... why?

Oliver Reed is his ethereal, otherworldly self, full of enigmatic appeal and energy, completely transfixing in this role.  The other actors are all excellent as well, and the film is certainly different and challenging, I just find it hard to enjoy when it moves so colossally slow.  Once the insanity reaches it's breaking point you still have like 50 minutes left!  

I am maybe nitpicking.  The sexuality in this movie is extreme, and it was censored for like 40 years.  The nun sex is crazy shit, and this borders Salo in terms of boundary pushing.  The whole end is really great actually, and extreme is not a strong enough word.

I'm conflicted on it, but one thing is certain:  the 70s is my favorite era in film, and it's because of movies like this.  This is unlike anything made since, and I wish that this sort of this was still around.  I will give it 4 stars.

The Man with the Golden Gun - 1974

 I mean, it's Bond and I'd likely seen this at least 4 times before, but fuck dude, I still guessed the year and I was still right.  A guy knows when he is good.

This is basically a bump and a recognition that, although it has been said many times, I'm going to be going slower, and the blog may end.  We will see, but I am dating and busy, and I got no time for movies, let alone writing about them.  I always have the want to, but sometimes life takes over, eh?

The Man with the Golden Gun was the introduction of Roger Moore to the role of James Bond, and if you are a Bond guy I will recommend the documentary about George Lazenby on Hulu.  Despite it trying to be funny, it's overall pretty good still and worth seeing.  He seems like he had a pretty damn idyllic life.

Christopher Lee is Scaramanga, a man with a third nipple (!) that is evil and Bond has to get to.  He does this with his usual Bond-isms, that is seducing women, somehow defeating highly trained kung-fu artists, and the like.  This one ranks high on the list of absurd Bond tropes, including a part where he is inches away from Herve Villachez as Micmac killing him.  "Not here" yells the boss.  Guys, just fucking kill him will ya?

The Bond series is a strange one, and as I was explaining to my new gf, the thing I love the most about it is the time stamp that they all have on them, showing something about the time they were made.  This one is borrowing heavily from the popularization of kung fu, it has excellent set pieces in Thailand and such, and even uses a partially sunken boat as a set.  Super, super cool.

I didn't pay the strictest attention, but it's Bond, and it's always a fun time.  3.5 stars.