A Streetcar Named Desire - 1951

 In a haze of barely getting any sleep,  super strong coffee that made me feel a bit insane,  and bizarre emotional state I turned on and watched Streetcar in the very early morning a few days ago. 

Marlon Brando and Vivian Leigh star in this extremely well known film directed by Elia Kazan, based on the play by Tennessee Williams. This movie was a smash success, got Leigh an Oscar,  and has been annulled into history,  but have ya actually seen it?

First of all, Brando is so fucking good in this it's a crime that he didn't get an Oscar. He is palpably unpredictable, with a easy charisma that only is mirrored by his offensive character and dialed up reactions. One moment Brando is oozing out sexuality and charm,  the next he's bristly, dangerous,  and explosive. He is doing a ton of acting business,  eating food,  hunching over,  interacting with the background. It's incredible. 

Then,  I'll merge Vivian Leigh and the overall plot/ end. Tennessee Williams had a sister with mental issues,  and the fact is women historically have been declared insane for no reason,  but the acting here is so over the top and theatrical,  and the end so trite and predictable that it's hard to not subtract points for it. Leigh is hard to watch,  she gets mildly better by the end,  but it is an impossible thing to perform overall I'd estimate,  and she isn't great in it. She's declared insane and carted off,  and that's so much a product of its time it's laughable. 

But there's a ton here that is easy to like, and I did like it,  and I would say watch it for Brando absolutely. 4.5 stars

Pharaoh's Curse - 1957

 Only off by one year when I guessed!!!

Pharaoh's Curse was one of the suggestions after I finished Spider Baby, so yea.  Why not.

There's a book I've been wanting to leaf through called Egyptmania Goes to the Movies.  I am a little bit obsessed with Egyptian lore in films, and I love the mummy stuff, the tomb stuff, the stuffy guys in almost suits getting ropes and lowering themselves into caverns...I adore this type of movie.

This is a prime example of that sorta thing, also a prime example because it is 66 minutes long, you won't remember a single character name, its harmless fluff with some awesome sequences, and it is a classic fucking CLASSIC Hollywood movie.

Early on, a captain leading an expedition starts hitting on a married woman who he is taking out the the pyramids.  She is definitely interested, and turns out she is only on the expedition to break up with her hubby anyways.  She breaks up with him about the same time he has discovered a way into the tomb, and a sarcophagus is opened, and thus they have the curse on them all.  A creepy woman appears and guys start getting picked off.

I couldn't tell you exactly why I like this movie and this genre, but it does it for me, and I would say this is right in the mix with the rest of them.  I'll give it 3.5 stars!

Spider Baby - 1967

 Cruising through podcasts, getting inspired to watch a werewolf movie specifically, but I hear this recommended as well and then I go start the movie several minutes later.

Spider Baby was a small budget black and white horror movie that came out several years after it was filmed in 1964, and marks a later era film for star Lon Cheney Jr.  Lon plays the uncle of two demented young girls and one full on insane boy.  Sid Haig plays the boy in an early role for him.

The story begins with the delivery of a letter to Lon Cheney's family.  The mailman is killed when one of the girls lures him into the window of the house and the other girl stabs him with a knife.  This has clearly happened before, and Lon emotes a bit of disappointment and disapproval, but more bad news comes when the letter reveals that some of their distant family is to arrive that day.

When the family arrives, the characters are more revealed.  One of the girls is obsessed with spiders and basically considers herself to be one, her killing game akin to trapping a bug in a spiders web.  The other girl is a bit more sane than that, but not by far, and Sid Haig is just a complete insane weirdo who is also a bit butal and/or blood hungry.  We go from there as the family meets, and the characters get roped into each others lives.

It's a very strange movie, and it's for sure a forerunner to what I feel would become the groundwork for some of the psychological horror present in a filmmaker like Rob Zombie's work.  This was a prime hunting ground for like 2002-era horror movies where the characters are not just evil but also twisted, and their twisted obsessions were explored as almost equal to their destructive desires.  I'm sorta glad that trype of horror is gone, but yeah this was definitely an early foray into it.

This being an early exploration, it does manage to unsettle a bit.  The sheer perversity of these characters gets under the skin a bit, and tiny moments speak volumes.  There's also quite a high body count, and the movie moves quickly, and overall I would say this was quite a head of it's time.  I think this is a great horror movie perfect for those who want to explore the genre, and I give this 4 stars.

FeardotCom - 2002

 Originally intended for Zalman King?  The director of Blue Sunshine?  Damn, why could that have not worked out?

FeardotCom has been an oft referenced film on this blog, one of which I have always wanted to see.  I love this little subgenre, niche, whatever you want to call it, where a new technology comes out and that is the focus of the terror.  I mean, is not Slenderman a somewhat recent, somewhat example of this?  Social media used as the source of the scares.  

FeardotCom stars Stephen Dorff, Natasha McElhone, Jeffrey Combs and Stephen Rea is the story of a ghostly evil website where people go to and witness live kills...  Or something.  Its at least implied that's what they're doing on the website, never definitely shown, and sometimes it just seems as though you click around and then you are doomed to die in 48 hours.  Detectives Dorff and McElhone investigate, and we go from there.

This movie was not the obnoxiously stupid movie I wanted it to be, it got kinda close, but it was too boring and slow.  I wanted a gloriously early 2000s idiot-fest full of awful CGI, jargon talk about the internet, and nu metal.  But this is too plot driven with too many boring investigation scenes.  Again, this reminds me of the middle of the Hellraiser run.  I mean, literally replace the girl on the website with Pinhead and this movie is that.  They never do explain how the girl on the website would know the characters names, but obviously we know Pinhead would know that.

FeardotCom does have the hilarous website of FeardotCom.com in the movie, likely because the actual fear.com was taken.  So it is fucking stupid, and just not fun stupid.  Which means it gets like a 2.

A Murder of Crows / Jennifer 8 - 1998/1992

 Someone please stop me from watching these.  Someone, help!

I love it, to be clear.  I thought about writing a review for the Cuba Gooding Jr movie Murder of Crows, then opted not to.  Then I watched Jennifer 8 which was another serial killer investigate-y movie and thought, surely these two could share a mini review.

A Murder of Crows had Cuba Gooding Jr only a few years after his Oscar for Jerry Maguire, and boy had the man taken a significant down grade in movie quality.  Two years later he's starring with Tom Berenger in a sub par murder mystery movie.  Yikes!

Cuba is a lawyer who grows a conscience and loses the job, only to be left dry of opportunity when he meets an old man who gives him a book he's written.  The book is titled A Murder of Crows, and is about a series of lawyer murders.  Old man dies, Cuba published book, turns out book is based on reality, and now Cuba is framed as the suspect, and is on the run to find the real killer.

Jennifer 8 stars Andy Garcia as a investigator who is on the case when a hand is found at a local garbage dump.  He is sent to interview a possible witness, a blind woman played by Uma Thurman in an early role, and they begin to form a romantic attraction while the case obviously has more bodies turn up and intrigue build.

The things these both have in common is the tropes they follow.  The cop falling for the witness is an obvious trope, and the main character framed for the murders is the other.  They also both have elaborate genius level games the killer follows, and both involve a twist, both involve the killer going after someone close to the main character....I mean damn, they're very much "follow the formula" movies.

Jennifer 8 is better but slower, Murder of Crows is just downright bad.  I give Murder a 1 and Jennifer a 2.5.

Resurrection - 1999

 Let's keep this streak going as long as we can huh?  Loving these dumb 90s-00s thriller horror mystery movies.

Resurrection is directed by Russell Mulcahy and reunites him with Christopher Lambert from Highlander.  This movie was not released in the US, where it came out straight to DVD or VHS or what have you.  This one is more of the same as we've had in plot so lets get to it.

Lambert is a cop and a body turns up missing an arm.  That leads them to another missing an arm, and a guy that looks like the stereotype of Jesus missing his head.  There's a killer out who is trying to reconstruct the body of Jesus Christ, to create some sort of a resurrection before Easter comes.  It's a ridiculous plot for a ridiculous movie.  

The second or third, fourth fifth tier of this movie is palpable in every way.  When we get to a crime scene, the camera work goes all "mega cool" with skewing the image and twisting it around, going to mega slow mo and thrashing hand held shots.  Then super fake way too red blood is sprayed everywhere and torrential rain comes crashing down... its style over substance in every way feasible.

The plot is solved about an hour into the movie, and from there we still have 45 minutes, which is a huge problem, and in the end, its overly convoluted and ridiculously stupid.  Its a completely insane movie which totally fits both the type it is, and the year it came out.  The movie is almost so bad its good, its also almost kinda okay in just  conventional way...but its not, so it gets a 1.5.

Fallen - 1998

 I'm really enjoying this weird run of unknown late 90s thrillers that were either similar to Se7en, and honestly even the Hellraiser movies fit into this category loosely, which is probably why I liked those so much.

Fallen comes up and its 1998, something about copycat killings or deaths that continue.  This instantly makes me think of Copycat, which I liked, so naturally I put on Fallen.  Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, and Elias Koteas star in this strange movie which also reminded me a little bit of the far-in-the-distant-past God Told Me To.  That movie explored "what if that excuse was true?"

Fallen takes on a similar route, because it might be the only movie which explores, "what if the idea of demon possession was real?"  Demon possession as the claim when some real life people kill, as when some people explain it to themselves, aghast that a real person could have committed some heinous act.  They shake their head and wonder what ol' Beezlebub or whatever is up to.

I just fell down a quick IMDb rabbit-hole trying to find more movies like these.  I started this with Oxygen, I watched Bone Collector, and then Hellraisers got me really into this, and recently Suspect Zero and the others have really isolated:  this weird little time and genre was really fun, cuz it was very dark and weird, but also tonally very all over the place, with a ton of experimentation.  Nothing speaks to me as much as vibe movies, too, which most of these very much are.

Plot-wise, Fallen has Elias Koteas get the gas chamber in the beginning, and his essence leaves and hops body to body to continue to fuck with Denzel Washington as Hobbes, the detective who got him captured.  Eventually Denzel uncovers the evidence that Azazel is the name of the demon which was infesting Koteas and is now free, and as unlikely as that idea seems, it eventually gets proven true, and now he's up against a supernatural force.

The movie is definitely a vibe film, and as it goes on it harkens back to classic film noir, especially through the soundtrack.  That move was definitely not one I expected, and the atmosphere in this one is seriously interesting.  It makes this stick out and become cozy, which I guess is the other piece of the puzzle about why these are hitting for me.

Whatever the reason may be, these are great and I'm enjoying them, and I give this 4 stars.

Wicked Stepmother / Deadly Illusion - 1989 / 1987

 I had a Larry Cohen double feature just now, for no other reason than they were both free online and I generally like the guy.  Good thing I didn't start with these two or I might not have watched more of his stuff.

Wicked Stepmother I didn't even finish honestly.  I might later today, depending how much is left, but I also might not.  Nothing is really worse than a bad comedy, and while I have seen worse than this, it's just not interesting or entertaining, and I can't even really follow the plot, mostly cuz I'm completely not paying attention, looking up campsites on my laptop while its on in the background.  Who gives a shit.

In Wicked Stepmother, Bette Davis has her last role as an evil stepmother who marries old guy Sam and changes him into a TV-watching, hair-growing slave.  Better Davis left the movie midway through, so her character also takes the form of a young beautiful woman who charms and plays with the other people in Sam's family, and it kinda just keeps going, seemingly without a real plot or laughs.

In Deadly Illusion, Billy Dee Williams is a private detective who is approached by a man and asked to kill the man's wife for $100,000.  Billy goes to the woman and sleeps with her but does not kill her, and the next day she turns up dead anyways and he is the prime suspect.  Complication builds and builds, and the story takes some twists and turns, and yeah, that's about it.

Both of these feel like pretty second tier B movies, not in a thoroughly bad way, but just in a shrug-worthy way.  I doubt most people would have anything to say about this after watching it besides, "Uh, yea, you know, it was fine."  Wicked Stepmother is outwardly bad, but Deadly Illusion would be a great candidate for my eternal question, "what random ass movie should get a sequel now?"  Deadly Illusion 2: The Illusioon Returns.

I dunno.  I'll give Stepmother 1 star and Illusioon 2.5.

Miracle Mile - 1988

 In the first 10 minutes of this movie I realized I had seen it before, years back in one of my "apocalype films" runs where I was watching a bunch of movies of that type.  I stuck with this and rewatched primarily cause I remembered this movie being really good, and on rewatch I was not disappointed.

We start with a nice location shooting at the LaBrea tar pits, which was walking distance from where I used to live in LA if you wanted a bit of a long walk.  Harry is a schmo-regular-man without a real life, finally finding a girl he likes and arranging a date with her.  They decide to meet at a restaurant at 1am, Harry oversleeps, comes there late, and intercepts a random phone call with a stranger telling him the world is about to end, nukes have been launched, and the apocalype is coming.

What's awesome about this movie is the almost real-time unfolding of what happens next.  We follow Harry as he tries to figure out what's going on, tells people around him, and then decides to try to get to this girl he just met, Julie.  As he involves more people, things get more and more complicated, and as they begin to react, the world gets more and more chaotic.  Soon, a panic has set in and Los Angeles is plunged into a riot.

Miracle Mile is a unknown of, bomb movie which I don't think has been reclaimed by the cult film scene, and it's movies like that that make me love movies and keep searching for more.  This movie hits all the right keys, and thats not even a stupid pun in regards to the excellent score by Tangerine Dream.  Its creepy, fun, adventurous, tense, dark, and comic when it needs to be, and it masters the pacing phenomenally.  The best thing about this is the slow ramp up, and by the end you might very well be on your toes cringing worn out by the stress of this pretty short, low scale movie.

This is the type of thing to seek out, this is the type of thing that freaks like me are doing this whole "movie watching thing" for.  I loved it and I give it 5 stars.