Orca: The Killer Whale - 1977

Also known as just "Orca".

I just picked something at random from the library when I was there last.  This is pretty normal for me.  I saw this, and I was in the mood for trashy fun (which is pretty normal for me) and I picked it up expecting something really bad: we're talking no budget, Italian and dubbed, badly paced, and with a whole lot of dialogue filler.

Let's just say that with Orca I was pleasantly surprised!  I went into this, and first it was the cast.  Charlotte Rampling and Bo Derek give a tough competition for which one is looking more beautiful (although for me, it's Rampling any day).  Will Sampson, Robert Carradine, and Richard Harris also star.  What a great cast!

Then it's the titular Orca.  Intercutting from footage of two real orcas and some animatronics built for the movie, they made the creatures in this look goddamn amazing!  I was stunned at how good they looked, and also how much we saw them.  As one will probably know if they've done any research at all, in Jaws we hardly saw the shark.  When we did see the shark, it was mostly near the end, and let's be honest - it didn't look all that great.  The orca in this movie looked so real that animal rights activists were rallying against the filmmakers when the saw the thing being transported.  Of course, in closeups and especially the recurring ones of the orca's eye, it doesn't look too hot though.

Tightly paced, good dialogue, and creating a genuine feeling of suspension, this movie had a lot going for it.  One thing I realized when I was watching it was simply this....get ready to kill me....       I have never really thought that Jaws deserved all the praise it got.  I've never been a "Jaws" guy.  It's fine.  It has a great balance of character development and tension, but I've always felt there was too much time with the guys and not enough with the shark.  When I was watching this, I tried to think about what it was about Jaws I didn't care for, and why, for me, this would be a better film.

I think it all comes down to horror, thriller, and aesthetic feel.  Jaws is a great character story with a shark in it.  This is a shark story that has decent characters in it, but it is first and foremost a horror film.  It goes for the gruesome more, and for me that's what I want.  As far as actors go, I'd say these two movies are very close, although I do like Roy Scheider a lot.  When it comes to music, the epic John Williams is actually quite well met by Ennio Morricone.  What can I say, they didn't skimp on this one, and it's a very worthy "copycat".

Sometimes the B grade movies everyone forgets about or assumes are shitty are quite good.  I was going to write a review of Luigi Cozzi's Contamination.  I didn't feel like it, but it's the same thing.  People might think it's just a cheesy Alien rip off, but it too is amazing and a lot of fun.  I give Orca a great 4 star rating.

Demon Warrior - 1988

Jofer Jeff is my man.  I assume he's a man.  Isn't it odd that most people into this dumbass cult movie/80's slashers/what-have-you are men?  Mentioning that, if I have any readers at all, check out my new postings on female-led review site Morbidly Beautiful!  I got myself a review column there and my review of The Prey is up now!

Demon Warrior was one I dialed up because it was especially short, and one of the ones in Jofer's list that I hadn't seen.  I've seen a lot of these keep in mind, so I got around to Native American slashers that I haven't seen, and Demon Warrior is one of them.  There's not a lot of Native American horror movies out there in general, so this is pretty cool.  However, the movie...ugh.

Demon Warrior starred pretty much no one and was directed by a guy who only has three IMDb movies to his name.  It's beyond low budget, incredibly cheap looking, and basically scraping.  I've used this term before, and this one fits the term to a T.  I wonder where that term comes from.  Google quickly tells me it's a golf term.  Okay, I get it.

Basically some people go to some land, there's a guy on it who's part Native American and he's concerned cause 10 years ago his father died while trying to get the land situation solved, cause turns out every once in a while a Native American demon comes popping out and kills people.  The demon is in a cool mask and outfit, which makes for easily the best part of the movie.

The kills are bland, there's not a lot of blood of effect.  There is one scalping which was okay.  The pacing is pretty whatever.  The whole film is pretty whatever.  For being less than 90 minutes it still goes by slow as molasses, and in the end I remember saying aloud, "this movie is just not that good".  Also, I paused it at least three times to check and see how much of the film was left.

It's okay, but for sure it's for die hard fans only.

Creepozoids - 1987

As for David Copperfield, I actually had a similar experience to that as The Gun and the Pulpit, where I saw it and simply forgot to review it.  As for this one, Creepozoids, this was actually in my mini marathon last night along with next review, Demon Warrior.

Creepozoids quite literally has the same plot as Rats: Night of Terror.  In Rats I said:  "It's the year 225 AB (After the Bomb) and the destroyed world split into two groups: those underground and those above ground. Some people from above ground discover one of the underground bases, and despite their superior technology and innovation, somehow they're all dead. In the meantime, seems to be a whole lot of rats scurrying around."  With Creepozoids, the year is instead 1998, and the rats in this case are giant.  Otherwise, exactly the same.

Linnea Quigley, a future porn star, and three men are the outsiders in this case who stumble upon the secret base.  They're a ragtag group of buddies who are trying to escape the hostile environment on Earth now that 6 years have passed since the bomb.  In the base, they find clues that there was some secret research going on, and they find a couple of bodies.  The hacker Jesse soon enough encounters some black slime while crawling through ducts, and it all points to some giant monsters that're looming around in the base with them.

This is exactly like Rats, and much like that, it's fun enough for a cult night.  It's quick paced, the actors are decent, there's nudity and lots of bra-less women.  Linnea Quigley is a B movie queen from the 80's and this is I think her third time mentioned on this blog?  The movie plays out like one wants it to, with plenty of effects, terrible or great.  It has interesting music, weird acting from the men especially, and it features a great end sequence with a killer baby.  How can you go wrong?

I wanted some trashy fun, this fits the bill.  I'll give it 3.5 stars.

David Copperfield - 1970

I really, really tried here.  I watched 40 or so minutes where I was actually paying attention.  I watched another 30 minutes where I was both watching it and doing stuff.  I was about 20 minutes from the end, I think when I had the raging battle going in my mind, and the thought that ended up winning out was:  just turn this the fuck off.

David Copperfield is a Charles Dickens novel.  Based upon a young man's journey into maturity, it has flashbacks of his life as well as showing him in the current present.  He's got a lot of drama to share, and it will for sure test your patience as you watch British people say British things and dress in old timey cravats and blouses.

This movie apparently had Richard Attenborough, Ron Moody and Laurence Olivier, although I'm sure these were all cameos in either flashbacks or modern day.  Mostly it's Robin Phillips as the main character David, and he's fine with the role, but it's just not that interesting.  Something like an epic novel of over 600 pages has been condensed here for a two hour made-for-TV movie, and it's just not that good?  Or I just didn't care?  Maybe both of these are the truth.

I couldn't do it, and I don't intend to finish it.  The final nail on the coffin came when I realized, I haven't been paying attention and so therefore I would need to rewatch this all again.  There's just no way.  There is literally no way that I'd sit through that again.  I wouldn't care if it was actually a really good movie, and part of me is willing to believe it is good.  It probably has the same appeal as something like Jane Eyre, but honestly, nah.  Just nah.

Rating skipped.

The Gun and the Pulpit - 1974

I completely forgot I even saw this movie.  I was at work here, watching the film Mausoleum from 1983 (as one is apt to do) when I recognized the actor Marjoe Gortner, who is in both films.  I had a sudden thought - I never reviewed The Gun and the Pulpit!  Shit!

So here I am, it's about three or more days later, and I'm going to do my best to remember this western entry from my 1970's boxset.  I'm also breaking in my new keyboard, which so far is a bit weird, but I might get used to it.  The Gun and the Pulpit is another 70's made for TV thing, and also again, something which was going to be the pilot for a potential series.  And much like Good Against Evil, maybe I'll talk about what the show would've probably looked like.

In the beginning of Gun and Pulpit, criminal and rascal Ernie Parsons (Gortner) is going to be hung for killing someone.  He's innocent of this particular crime, and when a young girl comes to vouch for him, Ernie escapes.  He finds a dead preacher, dons the outfit, and sees the preacher was heading for a nearby town.  Ernie goes in his place to find the town under siege from the big bossman Mr. Ross, who has a whole consort of local hotshots who are doing his dirty work.  Now it's up to Ernie to confront Mr. Ross and get the town back into gear and stand up for itself again.

The cast is wide and packed with known performers.  Taking front and center, Marjoe Gortner plays a extremely confident main character in Ernie.  Slim Pickens plays a friend who knows his true identity.  David Huddleston is Mr. Ross, and Estelle Parsons and Geoffrey Lewis fill out some other roles in the film.  The acting here is on point, and so is the setting of Arizona pretty much as... Arizona.

The whole of this movie is that one will come away from it feeling fine.  Again, being only 75 minutes long it goes by fast, and there's not a lot of opportunity for things to get bad.  There is some awful dialogue written in though, and Ernie is a major creep to the barely 18 year old girl Sally Underwood.  When she tells him she's 18 he gives her a solid look up and down and mumbles out "You sure are."  Ugh.  Gross fuck.

Conceivably, much like in Concrete Cowboys, Ernie would wander from town to town, getting mixed up in whatever was going on.  He still wears the cloth of a preacher in the end, so he'd use that guise to basically: flirt with more young girls, shoot more baddies, rebuild destitute communities, and even the odds against the ills of the world at large.  Sure.  Sounds fine.

Don't have much else to say.  It's innocent enough, and it works out fine.  I'll give it 2.5 stars.

Mister Scarface - 1976

Italian made films from the 50-80's spanned a wide array of genres.  I had never heard the term poliziottesco before, and that's what this is exactly.  Wikipedia, if you don't want to click the link, defines it as a subgenre of crime and action films emerging in the late 60's.

Mister Scarface is one of these, and it stars Jack Palance, Al Cliver, and Henry Baer.  Palance is Manzari or "Scarface", and he's not as interesting as Al Pacino.  Not that its the same character.  Cmon dog it's a fucking joke, sort of.  Blarg.

So to again quote Wikipedia cause I'm not particularly feeling like writing, the plot is:  "Tony is a mob loan collector who is unsatisfied with his position in life, and constantly dreams of living it rich in Brazil with his brother. To make some quick cash, Tony joins the forces of organized crime, making his way up the ladder. Together with Napoli, another mob enforcer, Tony hatches a plan to con mob boss Manzari (Palance) out of a fortune, but Manzari isn't about to let that happen."

It goes about as you expect.  If you predicted this is a somewhat slow paced film, but with somewhat decent performances and a somewhat fun ending, you got three for three correct!  It's not my favorite film on the set, nor is it even worth much more effort than the minimum amount you're getting out of this pathetic attempt at a review.  I watched it at work, thus meaning the best part of the film is that I got paid to watch it.

I'll give it two stars.

The Swiss Conspiracy - 1976

Ah, thriller genre films.  Thriller films with a decent cast, also!  Thrillers had a flash in the 70s, with a lot of the good intrigue and spy action films coming out around then.  Clearly influenced by things like Bond and it's imitators, right bam into my 1976 marathon comes The Swiss Conspiracy starring David Janssen.

David Janssen had previously been seen on Warhead starring David Janssen.  I found that film to be fun but generic, and this one will follow that straight down the line.  The Swiss Conspiracy and Warhead have another thing in common, which is that one of the coolest things about them is the place they were filmed.  Shitty films, sure, but this one was filmed around Zurich, and shots like the last one showcase the beauty of Switzerland.

John Ireland, John Saxon, Ray Milland, and directed by Jack Arnold, this movie is loaded with names.  And again, it's not a bad movie.  It's just that it's got a few flaws which in concert make for a film one wouldn't want to watch much.
Flaw one:  most of those actors are in cameo practically, and not in the film much.
Flaw two:  there's a lot of talking about the conspiracy, and in the end, a lot of it was totally unnecessary, given the way it comes out.
Flaw three:  Do I not like David Janssen?  Is he boring as fuck?  He's not a interesting actor.

There's more, but suffice to say, it's just a meh of a movie.  It has it's moments, usually with the beautiful Senta Berger or with the scenery.  I didn't pay the strictest attention, as well, I'm willing to be honest about this.  Do I intent to go back and see what I missed?  No.

Jory - 1973

I had a mini marathon of the 70's set to begin the new year, and first it was Jory!  I'm trying to get enthused about this review and it ain't happening so let's get to the nitty gritty eh?

Jory is a 15 year old kid, played by Robby Benson, who we had previously seen on the boxset in The Death of Richie.  In that movie, he could certainly act, even if he did go a tiny bit overboard sometimes, but I might attribute that to them making a film about drugs when they had no idea what they were talking about.

In the beginning of Jory, Jory and his father are in a bar, and the father is killed for playing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on the piano.  Quite a reason to be killed huh?  Anyways, Jory is sad, and eventually drifts to another father figure, this one too is eventually killed.  Jory can handle a gun, and this gets him noticed by an older ranch hand, and hired on to protect a girl about his age.  There's outlaws around though, and soon this situation is threatened as well.

It's a coming of age story, and although it's not on IMDb nor Wikipedia, Google says it was supposed to take place in Santa Rosa, California.  Santa Rosa is where I spent most of my life growing up, and despite the fact that when I lived there it was some bland outlier to the greater bay area, in this film it looks pretty cool.

What to say about this....  Jory is not a unlikable film.  It seems to follow the trend on this boxset with the serious movies actually having decent drama, making you care about some of the characters, and making you feel emphatic towards their realistic storyline.  I don't know what to knock it for, but it's also not going to make anyone love it.  It feels very thought out, and given it's based on a book, makes sense huh?  As the movie ends and the credits roll to someone's song they wrote for the movie, you just end up thinking, 'man, life sure used to suck, huh?'

I'll give it a bit above average.

C.C. and Company - 1970

Joe Namath was a ex-football star who moved into films, like so many who try to change up their career.  C.C. and Company was his second film in a relatively small Hollywood career, and although he's still around, who knows what he's doing now.

C.C. and Company is finally going back to the boxset, the Swinging 70's that's so close to being done it's fucking teasing me.  I think I have about 8 movies left or so, and shit if I can't wait to have it be done with.  How about:  New Years resolution, I'll finish this boxset by the end of February.  Gotta make easy goals people.

So what we have here is a early 70's biker flick, it's got the big ol' chopper bikes and the sideburn sporting, criminal jerks who ride them.  This movie is 100% a product of it's time, and it's the semi-noir story that we'd gotten used to in the 70's as well.  This antihero was a bit complex, perhaps he'd womanize a bit and have a shady past, but we all knew he had a heart of gold, and in the end he'd have done several redeeming actions to make us feel okay being firmly behind him.

Joe Namath stars as C.C. Ryder, which I'm guessing is a fake name, but sure sounds similar to Easy Rider huh?  Weeeiiird.  Regardless he's your average criminal biker who changes his tune when he enters a race against a bike gang to earn the admiration of Ann-Margret as Ann.  It all goes the way you'd expect with the gang coming after him for the prize money of $1000 C.C. won, and in the end the final race to decide who wins the money and the girl, double or nothing.

This is the type of movie you just watch.  You don't participate.  You don't care.  I wrote, when I was watching it, drunk:  "C.C. and Company- this is not a movie that you know what is happening or why it's happening, this is just a movie that you watch and you're aware that you're watching it."  You're aware that you're sitting there, watching a movie, and it does nothing to pull you in or include you in the film.  It's just sort of there, and the entire experience comes away as sort of another "meh" except this one is decidedly more bland than other middling experiences.

They try, and I think that's part of the problem.  They try to sell you on Namath's antics, his antihero vibes.  They give you a spot of Ann-Margret's nudity.  They have cool looking bikes and some mild action-violence.  But all in all, you're checked out, instead wondering basic things like, what exactly is up with Ryder's hair, or why does Ann even like him?  When I google this movie, I do find a lot of different old posters for it, which leads me to think they tried to market the hell out of this thing.  All money that was poorly spent, if you ask me.

I will give it a solid 2 I guess, although I am considering 1.5.  Eh.

Invisible Agent - 1942

Recently I wandered around the library in Chinatown, perusing the whatever selection of DVDs, Blu-Rays and what have you.  I had gotten off work early, as is often the case during these holidays, and I was just killing some time.  I picked up a Universal DVD pack, five Invisible Man features on one boxset.  Win!

It was never my intention to watch all of these films, fuck, I would've been happy not watching ANY of them but simply having the DVD at my house with the option to watch them.  But I was in a weird mood last night, I poured myself an oatmeal stout, and I put on Invisible Agent, chosen at random from the DVD set.

I haven't seen anything old in a really long time.  I realize that I've been marathoning 70's films, I've been slamming down slashers like they're going out of style (and truly, aren't they?) and I've been having fun with recent films.  I haven't gone back to the black and white, or the 40's especially, in a long motherfucking time.  So this was nice to have a quick, fun, simple film, right towards the end of the original "golden age" of horror.

This was the fourth in the Invisible Man series, at this point we had seen the Invisible Man, Invisible Man Returns, the Invisible Woman, and now this.  In this, we have the supposed grandson of the original Invisible Man who is now in hiding, and in the beginning he's tracked down by government agents, trying to get the invisible formula.  We're at war, see, and the Nazis are up to no good.  We need to infiltrate behind enemy lines, and only an invisible man can do it.  Invisible Man Frank Raymond quickly agrees, and barely 15 minutes into the movie he's already invisible and parachuting in over Nazi Germany!

I had a thought as I was walking to work today, that in a way this is the Marvel movie of it's day.  No wonder Universal tried to reboot the classic monster series again!  This is quite literally taking the established character, who'd had a origin movie and maybe a sequel or two, and then you're pitting him against a superpowered villain.  In this case it's Nazis instead of say Thanos, but the construct is pretty much the same.

Invisible Agent is pretty slow, and it relies heavily on gimmick and eye candy, but then so does the Marvel cinematic universe.  We watch in spellbound glee as a cup of coffee drinks itself, as clothes get put on a person we can't see.  We wonder, when anyone's talking to him, where he is.  Every time a door is opened we don't know if the Invisible Man came in, or left, etc.  It's for sure kitschy, but it is fun nonetheless.  Even in the effects driven world of 2018, where a movie like Aquaman comes out and they probably built a total of three sets and the rest was all CGI, Agent still has it's draw.

At less than 80 minutes, Agent flies by, and even with a lot of unnecessary dialogue, it still flows by quick as a waterfall.  It's harmless fun, extremely of it's time, and fun in that way.  I'll give it 3.5 stars!  Why not right.

Oh!  I do want to mention one thing.  Again, product of it's time.  They have Peter Lorre, a decidedly white man, playing a Japanese general in the film.  And seriously, I didn't even know until the very end he was supposed to be Japanese.  I mean, I know it was commonplace at the time to do this sort of casting, but sometimes they'd use makeup, or do other terrible effects like that.  Nothing.  They just thought with maybe a very ambiguous accent people would think he was Japanese.  And honestly, it's horrible.  It's ridiculous.  But hey, 1942.  I guess that's how it goes.

Jason X - 2001

I was doubtful if I was going to review this movie or not.  Sure, I have reviewed a lot of the Friday the 13th series and I was always against reviewing any of them at all, because I didn't think they fit the "nature of this blog".  But who am I kidding.  There's no reason to do that.  No one cares.

Jason X was scripted and made while Freddy Versus Jason was being conceived and in development hell.  There was a brief stint when they wanted to make another Jason movie to I dunno, remind the audience who he was.  They got a random assortment of people involved including director David Cronenberg, and at some point the idea came up, take Jason to space.  Okay.  Sure?

Jason X is by no means a real movie.  This isn't real, right?  This is some alternate dimension where the Jason series would've made sense going to space.  Of course, this wasn't the first nor the last horror movie to randomly take it's franchise and it's killer to space.  Hell, I even reviewed the Leprechaun movie where the Leprechaun goes to space.  Ugh.  Why, god?

Jason X in the beginning is in the far off year of 2010 when we have technology to effortlessly freeze people with cryogenics.  He is killing people at the cryo lab and eventually main girl Rowan gets him locked in a cryogenics freezing chamber.  He's frozen along with her, fast forward to the year 2455 and now it's the future where Earth is gone, Earth 2 is around, and amazing space technology exists.  They bring Rowan back to life and of course Jason comes back to life soon enough as well, and now Jason is on the loose again!  In space!

And...it's not that bad.  It's pretty lame and stupid obviously, but it's dumb enough to be fun, and it is for sure making fun of itself.  Eventually there's a robot that kills Jason, and these robot ants rebuild Jason into "Uber Jason" and he's got a metal body and a new mask, and it's somewhere around this point you just accept your lot in life, and take it for the nacho cheese flavored dipping sauce it is.  This is by NO MEANS made to be taken seriously, and in a way it's almost making fun of the very idea of Jason just by existing.  It shares a similar feel to the self aware horror movies that had been coming out previously like Scream.  It also reminds me of the huge departure made with Slumber Party Massacre II.  But that was a significantly bad film, whereas this one is more baffling.

It's hard to rate this.  This is not a horror movie, nor is it a proper sequel.  I could be extremely harsh on it, yelling about it's lack of really keeping with the series.  But then, I would have to throw Jason Goes to Hell, probably Manhattan, and definitely Jason VII and probably Jason V under the bus as well.  I think it's only fair to say that most likely, this is not canon.  Hell, what the fuck does canon even mean anymore?  Does anyone really care?  I sure fucking hope not.

I guess it can have a middle of the road 2.5 stars.  Not sure what else to give it.  It does entertain, it's for sure one to watch with friends while you drink and smoke.  Not a movie to ever critique as an actual film, that's for fucking sure.