They Call it Murder - 1971

What a name.  They call it murder.  Could it be any more over the top?  It's so serial.  In fact, I had a thought especially towards the end when everything is wrapping up, that this movie seriously reminded me of old radio shows that I used to listen to.  I don't know if I ever said on here before, I used to listen to and enjoy radio mystery shows, especially Broadway Is My Beat and Philip Marlowe.

Mostly, this is an average whodunnit mystery cop flick.  There was not a lot of other factors going for it.  But it did well with the actors and with the style.  The main detective is human and also inspirational.  He's easy to like and we know he'll get his man, but it takes him a while to get there.  The hardest part is keeping who's who straight, and when the crime actually gets laid out for us, I had to admit I didn't quite "get" what happened.  However, the film does offer nice little split screen action shots of parts happening to illustrate his narration.

In this way, this felt like a classic mystery to me.  You've got all the normal steps to set it up.  In the beginning, there is a body sunk to the bottom of a pool.  Detective Doug Selby arrives on the scene to a group of suspects, each one insisting on their innocence.  The cast is diverse and intense, featuring only the second appearance of Leslie Nielsen on this blog, Jim Hutton, Ed Asner and Jessica Walter.

I took this murder mystery off the Swinging 70's boxset, and I have to say it did keep me interested in some ways.  The acting, the plot, the twists and turns are decently done.  I did guess correctly at some of the ways the plot would eventually go, small spoilers I guess, it follows a simple logic:  the known actors are probably the ones involved in the plot.

There were parts that were hard to follow, and there was a bit of plot convenience.  The spun tales in these mystery films always seem so far fetched, people go through such crazy schemes for relatively nothing.  I subscribe to the idea that fact is more interesting than fiction though, and I am sure that complex as this film may be, the real life schemes people come up with are equally or more crazy.

I think I liked this?  It's hard to say.  It's not my usual foray, and it's nothing I'd recommend, nothing I'd watch again.  But it reminded me of those radio shows which I did like, and it felt like something that was...well written.  Which obviously is necessary, and it makes sense given this was based on a book.  I hope at the same time there's not a ton of these on the set, cause this is a bit of chore to work through.  I give it 3 stars.

Witchboard - 1986

Am I still doing my 1986 marathon?  I guess I'm not, huh?  I started a 1976 marathon, I started watching a bunch of boxsets, I stopped writing in this blog as much, a lot of things have happened.  My life is quite complicated.  Lots of half finished projects.

My blog research shows me my 1986 marathon actually ended pretty much in 2016.  I suppose I only did it around my 30th birthday.  Ultimately, 1986 is a not-too-obscure year for me to marathon films from.  I also sound way nerdier and weirder when I tell people I am marathoning 1976 movies, and that I'm going to essentially be doing so until I turn 40 in 2026.  It's been almost a year since I saw The Wraith, the last 1986 movie reviewed in this blog.

I had my friend Jason over last night.  He was depressed and anxious, and having girl issues.  We went to Burger King, drank many a beer, and I put on Witchboard in the background.  Overall, I paid more attention than him, and I'm deciding it was enough attention to warrant a blog entry about it.  A movie like this really doesn't deserve much more attention than the meager amount I was willing to give it, after all.

In the beginning of Witchboard, a group of friends are at a party and eventually they bust out the ol' Ouija board and decide to conjure some ghosts.  The main girl gets infested by a ghost, and the rest of the flick you can pretty much guess at.  It's friends and unknowing female host running around, ghost icing people, Ouija scenes that give vague answers and then promptly end in a jump scare that is not scary, and some good old fashioned dull dialogue.

The kills were meh to terrible.  I do like watching movies with someone who loves bad horror, cause we watched the last death in the movie like 4 times. Clearly it was one of the terrible deaths.  Which gives this some culty drinky smoky type appeal, but there's faster paced, more effects films out there for you and your stonified friends.  Even other films by the same director, such as Night of the Demons.

It wasn't that bad, it wasn't that good, 1.5 stars is about right.

Return of the Family Man - 1989

What happened to South Africa?  South Africa, in the 80's, was a upcoming film location, it seemed.  Suddenly in the 80's, flicks were popping up filmed in Australia and Canada and South Africa and more.  Google shows me some of the known South African movies recently.  District 9...yeah.  Okay.  I guess it's not that unknown of.

Well, anyways, back to the subject at hand.  Return of the Family Man is filmed in South Africa and they spend the whole movie quietly pretending it's America.  Which is pretty awesome, I might mention.  I love how, in older movies like this, they just casually pretend it's America.  Obviously trying to succeed in America by doing this, but now they'd do the opposite.  Emphasize it's South Africa in order to succeed.

Return of the Family Man has a couple of groups of people coming together at a junked out house in the semi middle of nowhere, tricked there by some resort thing they bought into.  Okay, it's original enough, I'll go with it.  Meanwhile, a bus transporting criminals is derailed when serial killer "The Family Man" kills the guards and escapes.  He begins his journey home, home ends up being the same house where the group of people is staying.

It's a simple enough story, and it works with the subject matter.  The killer is given enough screen time to be interesting, and he's well acted enough for it to not be a total mistake.  Some parts and the some of the pacing is a bit wonky, but all in all, nothing goes off the rails.  The kills are pretty decent too.  It's not super memorable, it's not out to hurt anyone, but it could have easily been worse.

Return of the Family Man was forgettable, but fine, ultimately.  Nothing much to say.  2.5 stars.

Open House - 1987

Jofer Jeff saved me again on a night where I wanted an inconsequential, by the numbers blah as fuck horror film.  And this is so damn unknown and uninteresting I can hardly find anything about it online.  So, win!

Adrienne Barbeau is in this?  Wow!  We start the movie with an extremely subpar, soft core porn type feel.  Idiotic 80's women are being murdered as they tour open houses in some vague suburban town somewhere.  Yes, that is in fact the entire plot of this movie.  It's pretty great, really.  In the meantime, there is a local radio show that's a suicide prevention Life Line type call in thing, and they're receiving occasionally weird calls from maybe the killer.

It's got some interesting deaths, it has some terrible acting, it has lots of bizarre clunky writing factors that go into it, and suffice to say it's NOT GOOD.  Pacing was weird, acting is hit and miss, the killer at the end was kind of a dumb sequence.  Yeah, I dunno.  And yeah, we're keeping a short review this time.  I gotta pay attention to Amityville 3D which is on right now.  1 star.

Get Christie Love! - 1974

I popped this movie in about three times.  I didn't pay too much attention for any of those three times.  But that's as much as this is going to get, and I feel like I gleaned enough from it to write a pretty reliable review.  Returning to the much loved 1970's boxset here.

Get Christie Love! is a TV special based on a TV series turned movie.  This was the early 70's, and black hero and heroine films were making it big on the market with such films as Shaft, Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song, Big Bird Cage, Coffy, etc.  This was a attempt to have black people being the focus of both comedy and action, as both an experiment in progression and exploitation, but ultimately won out on the progressive side.

Sparked by this, many things jumped on the blaxploitation bandwagon, and tried to cash in on the craze.  Get Christie was a light made for TV version of a cash in.  It did what it could without being able to get a high a rating obviously.  The blaxploitation in the theaters would normally be action packed, have some nudity, and would have lotsa use of bad language.  Get Christie had to settle for less than this, and yes, it does feel that way as well.

A really likable main actress Teresa Graves plays Christie Love.  Christie is a funny, charming, charismatic young black woman working for the police department.  She's tough, good at talking the talk and walking the walk.  The series was only the second TV show to have a black female lead character, and in that way it will always be seen as progressive.  

All this aside, is it a great movie?  Hm.  Meh.  It's okay.  There's nothing "wrong" with it per say.  It's averagely interesting.  It's got a drug trade, it's got some action scenes, it's got a few chuckles.  It was probably better in the 70's.  It's pretty much what you expect from a 70's TV show.  It was successful as a show, but was soon canceled as Teresa Graves quit acting.

I would not recommend it unless your primary interest is the blaxploitation and 70's type films.  I give it 2 stars.

Friday the 13th Part 3 - 1982

Getting home last night, I was again confronted with the recent phenomenon of desiring to watch a classic slasher.  I wanted the whole shebang.  I wanted death count, masked killer, the look and feel and essence of the 80's, and I specifically wanted it in the form of a Friday the 13th movie.

A while back on this blog, I randomly watched and reviewed Friday the 13th Part VI and Jason Goes to Hell and the Friday reboot.  I also did watch Jason takes Manhattan, which I did not review.  Some of these I watched because I simply hadn't seen them in a long time.  Some I watched because I had never seen them before at all.  Yes, dear reader, I had never seen Manhattan or Hell before the last few years.  I know.  Crucify me.

Friday the 13th Part 3 was the first to gimmick the franchise.  In this one, it was filmed in 3D and also it way ups the stakes in showing that Jason is un-killable and will survive just about anything you can do to him.  It invented the now classic look to Jason as well.  It joins him with the hockey mask and the machete, whereas in previous Friday part 2, he had a bag over his head and used a large variety of weapons.

Part 3 isn't as bad as one might think.  It's plot certainly is bad though, and HOW many times have we fucking seen this?!  Recite it with me here:  Several Friends Go Out To The Woods To a Remote House / Camping Trip.  Ugggggghhhghghghghghg.  I GET IT.

To continue my brief breakdown of horror I started in Iced I was thinking about masks a lot as I watched this.  I think I can take a shot at exactly why killers wear masks and why we're afraid of them.  We are all afraid of the instincts within us.  We're afraid of the animal impulse, the desire for blood or for vengeance, to overpower someone with rape or death or control.  We know from history we're entirely capable.  Humans having been acting in animalistic ways towards other humans for years.  And a mask is symbolic of someone making the choice to abandon their humanity.  Whatever mask it is, it's inhuman.  It's embracive of the instinct, it's embracing the animal, the desire we have within all of us.  Especially in movies like this and in Halloween where, as soon as the mask is partially removed, the killer stops everything and struggles to get it back on.  Masks are essential for them to survive.  To keep on being who they are.  Because to show their face is to admit their humanity.  So for the love of fucking god, in the next goddamn Star Wars film, have Kylo Ren put his goddamn mask back on!

The deaths are plenty and they are done well.  Creative to standard, there's a lot of them, and most of them are spread out within the last 40 minutes of the film.  Jason has a lot of screen time, and for a few parts of the film we actually follow him instead of the dumb blond or the hunky beefcake he's going to kill.  The characters are all averagely annoying, not very well written, and the dialogue is either non-existent or terrible.  There is supposed to be nudity, but the YouTube video I watched had it blurred out...?  The fuck?

So that's your "Horror Movie Breakdown" there, rating the normal things one would look for in a horror film.  It has mostly successes though, things in the "plus column" so it stands out as above average.  The 3D effects that would have been used, I didn't get to witness since I'm watching it in 2D, but let me sum it up in one word:  Gimmicky.  Unnecessary.  Stupid.  Okay, more that one word, but all three do apply.

Still though, it's a fun sequel, I can see why they made another, and it helped define Jason for years as the killer we picture when we hear Friday the 13th.  3.5 stars...?  Hmmm....  4 stars.

Blood Frenzy - 1987

We have been down this road before.  This is the tried and true "porn director makes a real movie" trope.  I wonder if porn directors are still trying this nowadays?  This was one of  13 projects listed for director Hal Freeman for 1987, check the whole list here:

 1987Best of Caught from Behind (Video) 

 1987Caught from Behind 7 

 1987Earthquake Survival (Documentary) 

 1987Erotic Dreams (Video) 

 1987Games Couples Play 

 1987Loose Morals 

 1987Love Notes (Video) 

 1987Restless Passion 

 1987Star Cuts 61: Keisha (Video short) 

 1987Sweet Nothings 

 1987The Million Dollar Screw (Video) 

 1987Young and Innocent 

 1987Blood Frenzy 

Now, IMDb does state that Earthquake Survival is an hour long "how to survive" documentary hosted by Shelley Duvall, but aside from that we have quite a bit of porn. Was he trying to branch out? Who knows.

Blood Frenzy plays out and follows the cliched name it has.  It is a horror slasher, sort of continuing my recent line of horror slashers.  The Prey and Iced and hopefully more are coming soon, as I need a dramatic tone shift from the 70's boxset every once in a while.  

YouTube users go through and create entire playlists of terrible slashers.  I'm watching a bunch from this user Jofer Jeff and pretty much just watching anything that I haven't seen before, which is most of them.  I also watched The Night Brings Charlie, Silent Madness, and I watched 1992's Winterbeast, still contemplating if Winterbeast should have a review.  I'll settle for a mini review here:  Terribly awesome, so bad it's fantastic with terrible effects and acting, great Ray Harryhausen type claymation, awesome monsters, great cult night weed smoky movie with nonsensical plot.  4 stars.

Blood Frenzy was similar in the way that it's terribly acted, minimal, filmed in the desert with a small cast.  They're supposedly all mental patients and thus get asked to act, which was a mistake cause most of them cannot.  The kills are average, the pacing is okay, the scare factor is zilch, and nothing really interesting happens the whole movie.  When the best part of your entire movie is the hint and beginning of a lesbian sex scene...yeah your movie sucks.

It's fun though, it could be worse, and it has the cheesiness factor that you can enjoy for drinking and watching with buddies.  I give it a B movie 2 stars.

Mr. Sycamore - 1975

Returning from a bit of a break, I watched Mr. Sycamore last night.  This is the movie on the boxset which I would have to say I was the most excited about.  I remember leafing through the boxset's booklet early on when I got the set, reading through the different movies synopsis.

Mr. Sycamore, I was going to try to find the exact wording and I couldn't, had a very short synopsis.  It basically said that the main character John became obsessed with the idea of becoming a tree, so he goes into his backyard and "plants himself" and awaits the metamorphosis.

And yeah, that is what happens.  No, it's not all that happens though.  In fact, I had a eerie feeling pretty early on, because by minute 20 or so, John has already made up his mind and he was already in the backyard.  It was then I knew, some dumb crap will probably happen to throw all this shit for a loop, cause otherwise this movie would barely make 30 minutes.

And it does.  I will say, this movie never went full on bad, but it has many unnecessary and extraneous moments.  There's a whole bit of "comedy" about the mental hospital coming for John with a straight jacket.  There's a "groovy" surreal bit where he watches a woman ride a horse.  But most interestingly, and perhaps even well done, was a bit of a deep dive into the relationship between John and his wife Jane, who generic names aside, have what appears to be a very deep and loving relationship.  We can see the true depth of feelings Jane has for John as he gets more and more into the tree idea, which would obviously point to future marital problems.

This being 1975, I was genuinely curious to see how this movie would end.  A big part of me suspected he would actually turn into a tree.  After all, the movie had already stepped into surreal territory once, and obviously it wasn't going to end with the main character going to the hospital, killing himself, or waking up.  Spoiler warning, in the end John does turn into a tree.  His wife comes and touches his leaves.  Pan out.  Credits.  Okay...?

In the end, I wasn't sure exactly if I liked this or not.  I will categorize it as something that if you watch it when you're young it would probably stick with you.  It reminds me a bit of all the bizarre weird shit I saw on the other boxset.  The movie with the whale song dude.  The weird movie with the aliens.  Alien Prey.  By the way it's been a full year since I finished Sci Fi Invasion and reviewed it!  My god time flies.

Maybe this movie could have actually been on that set...?  It felt thematically similar wherein it has an interesting premise, but for some reason it's hard to follow, and it leaves you with a general feeling of "wait...what?"  It has an ambiguity about it and I won't lie, it's an ambiguity I am growing to really appreciate.  For some reason, these movies have stayed with me.  I guess it's the perfect amount of bizarre feel, unanswered questions, strange but likable characters, and at times parts of the film that were actually quite good.  The acting, the way the characters interact, it's actually really good in a lot of these films.  It feels heartfelt.

This movie was based on a play, which again points to things I normally enjoy.  Dialogue is cryptic yet refreshing, enigmatically pushing forward.  I don't want to sound like I'm hyping this movie too much though, cause it certainly was a bit boring and very difficult to love.  But I did like it, and I do give it 3.5 stars.  Which seems awfully high, but who cares.

The Driver's Seat - 1974

Some actors get a reputation outside of cinema, which affects how they're seen in the public eye, the movies they're cast in, and much more.  This phenomena is not particularly something I care about.  I have always been of the opinion that an actor is an actor.  What they do in their private life doesn't fucking matter.  It has no effect at all on how they act.

I love Daniel Day Lewis.  I tell this to my buddy.  "Dude, Daniel Day Lewis is an asshole," he says.  First of all, how would you know that?  Have you met him?  "Apparently on set Daniel Day Lewis was a major dick to XYZ actor or actress and director."  Obviously if this was Weinstein level bad I'd give a fuck.  But just "being an asshole?"  Who gives a fuck?!  First of all, who knows why he was doing that.  Maybe the actor had it coming.  Second of all, it DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER.  Did it effect Lewis's performance?  Fuck no it didn't, the dude is amazing.

Elizabeth Taylor is an actress like this.  Married like 8 times, bout to fits of weirdness and intensity, she garnered quite a reputation outside of cinemas.  She's a gay icon.  She's controversial.  She has all sorts of legends and cult followings.  Do I give a shit?  Fuck no.  But movies like The Driver's Seat get reputed as legendary because she is acting weird in it, and thus it gets some giant cult following.  Well, okay.  Giant-ish following.  It's not super known.

People do agree with me in their online reviews that this movie induces a general sense of "what the hell?"  It played at Cannes and garnered similar reviews.  It's a movie with an electric feel to it, something you want to watch, but cannot comprehend, and don't know how to interpret.  I watched it with equal parts interest and disgust, love and hate, boredom and intrigue.

Elizabeth Taylor stars as Lise, an eclectic and bizarre, enraged and unexplained character.  She is prone to extremely weird dialogue and actions, doing seemingly incomprehensible things at random.  In the beginning she buys a shirt, then later flips out when she learns it is stain free.  This is by far not out of character for her the way she's written.  This movie was an exercise in having bizarre things for Lise to say and do with nothing to explain or restrain her.

Driver's Seat feels like it was made purely to capitalize on the weirdness factor, which means it's a precursor to the self aware.  Also it was definitely going for the "experimental film" thing.  It even has Andy Warhol in it, in a small role.  Eventually, things do get explained a bit, but not to the point where they make sense.  Just to the point where someone couldn't get mad and say the movie had no plot.

It's not a great film.  It has it's moments of comedy and weirdness and sexuality that shine through, but overall, it just feels like a garbled mess, and it does feel exploitative.  Oh, and surprise surprise, this was a return to the 70's boxset!  I actually went back to it, like a druggie with a bad habit.  I think others would like it way more than I did, but I will still give it 2.5 stars

Guess where two of the stars come from.

Iced - 1988

I texted my new girl, sort of paid attention, ran through a array of different emotional and sexual feelings, and generally "lived" while I watched Iced last night.  I also ate dinner.  Chicken, cauliflower and bell pepper tacos.  Don't judge me.

There's not a lot to talk about with Iced, it's some subpar late 80's horror slasher that I watched solely because it was on some dudes IMDb list of movies from the 80's that were bad.  And well, it was.  It was both from the 80's and it was bad.

Iced is a long shot from the early 80's horror flicks.  This one is a bit more self aware, it is going for a more complete story versus just delivering the scares.  It even has some Scream like self-commentary moments, but they are few and mostly amateurish.  Specifically they make comments about how there "would normally be a killer targeting the hot women, who would be killed while naked, or having sex, or both" and then later on in the movie, the women are killed while you guessed it, being naked, having sex or both.

Sex is weird huh?  I was thinking while I was watching this movie, the overarching moral lesson behind a lot of horror movies seems to be that sex is bad.  Is sex bad?  Perhaps we missed the lesson though.  Maybe it has nothing to do with sex.  My second thought is vulnerability.  I think as a species we are extremely aware of when we're vulnerable.  Physically I mean.

Sex is a very vulnerable place to be.  You're concentrating on something which is taking so much of your attention, it's an action which is not associated with your immediate survival, you're naked or undressed, you don't have your weapons or your protection with you.  Perhaps we misinterpret the moral lesson now because we see movies doing things we don't understand.  We see the killer targeting sexually active people because "sex is bad" and not because of the vulnerability factor.  Also, when it's usually the women that are killed?  The reason could more so be that the killer is eliminating our survival as a species.  We know, obviously, that the human race is going to survive an average horror movie.  But it's a microcosm for what we're ultimately afraid of in our roots as a small tribe of hunter/gatherers.  If a predator was targeting our women, we would completely die out, having no way to keep the line going without reproduction.

It's these things that make me adore horror movies.  Horror movies speak to a base primal part of who we are as people.  Provided of course that you look beyond what's immediately apparent and you're willing to dig into the root of the question "why?"  Why we're afraid of another person being the killer, for example.  It's not just cause humans are powerful and smart.  It's because we HAVE to be around other humans to survive.  As a species we're extremely vulnerable when we're alone.  Hence, we join a group, tribe if you will.  What would be worse than finding out that someone you brought into your tribe, that you trusted with your life, is now hunting you?

Iced says none of this because it settles for having a ski-masked killer hunting a group of friends at a ski resort in the mountains.  There's about 4-5 friends, and they get picked off while we get clues as to what happened, who the killer may be, and the history behind why the killer may be killing.  But mostly the focus is on some decent kills, plenty of topless scenes with big ol' titties, and average pacing/dialogue/acting/whatever else we judge these flicks by.

I sound like I liked this movie, which I guess in retrospect I did, kind of.  It was fine.  Nothing too memorable or nothing that stood out.  It worked.  I give it 2.5

Help Me... I'm Possessed - 1976

I like the use of a good ... in a sentence.  For dramatic effect, randomly changing topics, style of writing.  I've probably made use of it countless times.  Yet, I don't think I have once used it in a movie title, and I doubt it's in many other titles.

Help Me... is the story of a classic mad scientist.  In fact, it had many tropes that are time tested.  It has a hunchback, it has exploitation, it has torture scenes, it has half naked women, it even has weird pacing and stuffy actors!  See, all the things one would expect are here, I told ya dawg.

So we have 70's, but conversely this was not on the boxset.  I told you, I'm taking a motherfucking break.  But I am also continuing my 1976 marathon, though I guessed this was a different year when I guessed earlier.  It feels like its been a little while since I saw a 76 film, but reality is it really has not been very long.  Whatever.

Help Me is the story of the mad scientist and his hunchback cohort, living in the desert, doing experiments on a few people in their basement.  There has been a string of killings lately, so a cop comes poking around but the scientist is able to convince him they have nothing to do with the killings.  Then the scientists wife shows up and meets the scientist, his crazy sister, and eventually uncovers the sinister experiments the bro is doing in his basement.

Its... average.  See there?  I used the ...  But yeah, it is quite average.  It should have had nudity, is my primary thought.  It's like an sexploitation in quality, but since it has no skin, it's basically just a worse than average exploitation flick.  Which, honestly, I could take or leave.  It's pretty much nothin', it's blah, it's bland.  Acting is underacting.  Music is under-scoring.  The look is pretty much nothing.  This whole movie left no real impact.  In other words.

There's like a few moments of entertainment, and it might be fun to watch with friends or while drinking.  But it's got many other, better films I'd recommend for such ventures first.  1.5 stars.