Hack-O-Lantern - 1988

The sublimely titled Hack-O-Lantern is the type of movie one might put on while doing other things.  Yes.  This is the type of movie that you have to agree doesn't have "mass appeal" even though it has kills and nudity and a guy in a mask....  This has B-grade written all over it's face.

This is the type of movie where I'm literally having difficulty remembering any details about the plot.  It's a slasher, and details are not big to begin with, but I mean I am sitting here wondering, was there a love story, side stories, anything?!  ANYTHING?!  But no, I don't think so.  I think it was simply:  girls getting hunted by guy in a stupid mask (see above), some nudity, and people wondering who is doing the killing.

It's a very black and white plot for a very by the numbers slasher.  One thing I didn't like is that the killer is at times depicted as superhuman, such as having super strength in the above pictured scene - he kills that woman by first squeezing her to death with her dress ties in the back.  Also, spoiler alert, but later when it's revealed who the killer it is, it also sort of implies there may have been multiple killers, which I just never like.  I like the classic "one guy" approach.

Hm.  I don't have much to say here.  I watched it at work, getting paid.  I give it a 2.

The Monster - 1975

Also known as:  I Don't Want to be Born, Sharon's Baby, Son of Satan, Evil Baby, It Lives Within Her, The Devil Within Her, It's Growing Inside Her, and The Baby.  Holy shit dude.

What do you name your devil baby movie anyways?  Do you settle on calling it The Monster?  I love how Amazon and IMDb sometimes call a movie completely different things.  Also, I do wonder why?  If the rights to playing the movie spell out that it should be titled The Monster, then shouldn't IMDb change their sheet to say that too?  Does any of this matter?  Am I the only one who gives a shit?  Yes.  The answer, is yes.

Another thing...while we're on the title.  Sharon's Baby is a fine name and all, but who the fuck is Sharon?  The main character in this is named Lucy...you know, the woman...with the baby....Sharon's baby?  Lucy's baby?  I'm done.  There is no one named Sharon in this movie, and the closest you get is a side character named Sheila.

What you DO have, instead of a Sharon, is a woman named Lucy who used to work as a stripper and has a shady past.  Her and her new husband Gino are expecting a baby, and there are complications with the birth.  Donald Pleasence is the doctor who exclaims "This one doesn't want to be born."  Once the baby is out, it grows faster than normal and is dangerous from day one.  Mixed in with all this is Lucy's flashback to a dwarf she used to dance with who came on to her one night, she denied him, and he cursed her.  Hence, the baby is possessed etc etc.

There's a few good moments of unintentional comedy, there's some cool deaths, there's some random scenes of nudity.  In other words, this has the ingredients.  This is fast moving enough, wacky enough, has Donald Pleasence in it, and these all add up to an enjoyably bad movie.  They also put a ton of weird sound effects around the baby, so at times the baby is apparently a semi truck dragging pots and pans with a siren going on in the background.

It's a subpar send up of Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist.  If those had a nude stripper that also liked dwarfs.  Put this on the list of movies I've seen with evil midgets, and similarly, the whole "unexplained midget" thing.  I'm not saying you always have to explain your midget.  But this is a trope in movies, and it's one that I see pop up a ton.

Circus of Horrors - 1960

Recently, I was watching The Great Escape with my roommate.  We smoked some weed, drank some beer and whiskey, and watched the classic WWII film.  It was fine and all, probably a good example of a 4 star war (star wars?  what?) film, but one which I doubt I would recommend to people.  It did feel aged.  She knew it from her past, what can I say?

The Great Escape had Donald Pleasence in it, and I was reminded just how great he is as an actor.  I took to Amazon and added every movie of his I hadn't seen to my queue.  First one down, Circus of Horrors.  A movie where it's more an extended cameo by Donald "Pleasence to Watch" Pleasence.  DP is a alcoholic father with a dwindling circus business and a facially deformed daughter.  Plastic surgeon Doctor Rossiter finds the two of them and says he will fix Pleasence's daughter.  

Soon enough, Doctor Rossiter cures the girl, and Pleasence, in a fit of happiness, says he'd gladly split ownership of the circus with Rossiter.  Later that night, Pleasence is attacked by his pet bear while the doc stands there and does nothing, and hence the circus is his.  

This movie has a ton of unanswered questions.  Also, there is hardly a "bad guy" in it.  Rossiter being the only candidate, you'd peg him for the baddie immediately, however he is not evil.  He did not cause the bear attack, he didn't fuck up any of the surgeries on purpose, etc.  Later on, he inherits the circus and becomes the manager, and in fact saves the circus and revitalizes it.  He finds people who are deformed, fixes them up, and recruits them for the circus, but it's always shown or at least implied this was a agreed upon situation.

It leads us to my overall takeaway with the film, which is that it felt broadly unfocused and almost pointless.  As a genre I'd be hard pressed to call it anything besides straight drama, with a horror edge to it.  There's some cool blood I guess occasionally but overall it's very mellow, and very little really happens in the movie.  There are some minor cool things along the way, such as a death by throwing knife and some real lions....  but uh, you know.

In all this isn't like "a bad movie".  I guess my hazy memory makes me feel like it was sorta boring, but it is also 1960 and it's Hammer.  So I should give it a break.  I'd recommend it mostly for completionists though, not much to the casual viewers.

Bone - 1972

I guessed later 70's.  Hm. I'm going to blame it on the fact that I have been watching less movies lately.  There, now I don't feel bad.

Yaphet Kotto, Andrew Duggan and  Joyce Van Patten star in Bone.  Simply titled, this is Larry Cohen's first film, and Cohen is a director I'm beginning to realize is someone I should by all rights love.  I mean, my intro to him was It's Alive, which is perhaps the most accessible, but for me the least likable of his work.  I'm also not a fan of the supposed "blaxploitation" genre, and some of his work was in that form...  let's face it, the guy had a career mostly in exploitation, and it's generally not top of my list in terms of what I wanna see.

We all have our genres that interest us, and for me it was always the offbeat, ambiguous, or strange feeling flicks.  Of course, I am drawn in by dynamic and interesting actors, and that's what kept me in Bone for the whole film.  Yaphet Kotto turns in an amazing performance, turning what could have been a straight blaxploitation into a legitimate social commentary.

Plot wise, Bill and Bernadette are a regular couple who get their home broken into by Yaphet Kotto as Bone.  Bone is a on-edge virile man, and he threatens to rape Bernadette unless Bill go out and get him money.  Bill goes out, only to realize he was sort of unhappy in the marriage anyways, and this is further cemented when a woman at the bank flirts with him and he considers going home with her.  Meanwhile, Bone and Bernadette get their drink on, and realize they aren't as natural enemies as they may have thought, and that there may be a natural attraction there.

This is the type of film to take blaxploitation and turn it a bit on it's side.  That's why I stuck with it.  It paints the white people as fucked up, even more so than the supposed "bad guy black guy" that comes barging into their lives.  There is no reason why the black guy should always be the villain anyways, and this movie focuses in a lot more on the faults in both Bill and Bernadette.  However, the character of Bone is certainly still a ridiculous racist stereotype at times.  Hey, it's a product of it's time, what can one really do?  I guess?

If I'd started with this, I'd still be interested in the rest of Cohen's work.  The comedy still works, the tone is mysterious and interesting, the actors are good or at least good enough, and the pace is really nice.  It's different then most exploitation, it's clever....etc....

The ending of this movie is strong, and leaves some interesting questions and commentary.  I liked this!  Not for everyone sure, but a good "entry point" into Cohen, social commentary, and blaxploitation.

Damn, why is this rating so common right now?  It's weird.  This is definitely not a 4 star movie.  It leaves a lot to be desired in some departments.  Three seems low, like "right above average".  3 seems low, 4 seems high, so again, we have a fucking 3.5 man.  Oh well.

Out of the Dark - 1989

Here's a rare treat.  From me to you.  A time when I am not writing a lot and you get a rare Saturday update on this here blog thing.  Out of the Dark.  From the director of Cyborg 3: The Recycler.

I put this on my Amazon queue cause I was on there, and the dumb cover of a killer clown caught my eye.  Hovering my mouse over, I see that this is not a newer film, the year is 1989, and when I click for more info I get a treat, as Karen Black is in this one.  Well, it don't take much more than that.  Officially added to my queue.  With my short ass attention span these days it also gets bumped into the "watch sooner rather than later" category, because horror, and because Karen Black.

Wikipedia tells me this is an "erotic horror comedy."  Is it?  I certainly see how they could say that, although it was not my thought as I watched it over the last two days.  Starring Karen Lorre as Jo Ann, an upbeat woman who gets employment at a phone-sex call line, where Karen Black is the boss and her co-workers are all similarly young, fun, sweet women.

Soon enough, the calls they're receiving at the place are getting weirder at the same time that the first call girl turns up dead.  The girl was walking her dog, and a dude in a clown mask appears and smacks her with a baseball bat.  We get this and several other kills in the movie, and having the plot of the film overlap with a sex phone line, we also get a bit of nice nudity.

It's all well and good, and for a film where I was expecting very little, it actually entertained more than I was expecting.  They do a good job of having the right amount of characters, the right amount of kills, and the right amount of other things happening to keep the momentum going.  This movie thankfully does not become a game of "waiting for the next kill" like so many other films.

So many of these movies are interchangeable feeling, and this one doesn't specifically stand out.  I will say that a lot of people who are afraid of clowns seem to have put this on lists of "the creepiest clown movies" and I suppose it probably is.  To me, it felt above average, and it also felt late 80's.  It's funny, cause I can really fucking tell dude.  I can tell it's late.  Cause of the specific boundaries it pushes, because it has a level of self-awareness.  Once you know what to look for...  Obvious.  Yo.

Rating.  I am currently waffling between 3.5-4 stars.  I feel like I've given out a ton of 3.5 star ratings recently.  So hell with it, I'll give this a B movie 4 star review.

A Boy and His Dog - 1975

I don't remember why I rented this.  I think it was a sudden feeling of "why the hell haven't I actually sat through this extremely well known sci fi film, when after all I write a goddamn movies blog?!"  And with those thoughts I rented it from the library.  Libraries man, they're coming back.

I've seen this movie before, let's start there.  The whole story is that I've seen this, as a kid, and several times (probably) since then.  But, I remember nothing from it as a kid, and as an adult, my memories are from at least ten years ago, when I put it on and never made it more than half way.  In fact, I think I even tried to watch this once or twice and stopped.  And why?

This is not any more hard to watch than anything else on this blog.  In fact, it's right up my (current) alley, which is to say it's 70's, culty, and written by wonky novelist Harlan Ellison.  To be honest, I'm not sure as to why I never finished this one.  I think I was just not in the right mood those other times.

Admittedly, this movie is all over the place both stylistically and thematically, that and they really seem to have a mission to push away and fuck with their audience, taking their audience into both sexual and disgusting places, taking it all with slabs of black comedy, having dumb elements of humor and fantastic, whimsical parts as well.  This is the type of comedy that was for adults but was equally for kids, as much the type of film the teens would like as would the kids they babysat for.  This type of thing, in other words, again something that's relatively gone now.

In the beginning, we see loner Vic wandering the wasteland with his faithful, telepathic dog companion.  And wait a minute, what?  Already, a few minutes in we have an unexplained telepathic dog.  Moments later, we learn that sex and rape are the main goal for our supposed hero.  Man, are we off to a good start or what?  They roam around presumably raping chicks, but so is everyone else who've been doing this since World War 3, which destroyed everything in 4 days.

The movie only gets weirder from there folks.  Soon there's a secret underground society in makeup, soon there's forced ejaculation, real dogs fights back when they'd blatantly hurt animals on film, and lots more!  This is one for the books.  And yes, it's definitely uneven.  There's great parts, thrilling and compelling parts.  There's also awfully self-aware, weird and uneven parts.  There's not as much laughs or action or anything as there should've been, and rather we're left "just kinda waiting" longer than anyone ever would want to, but this is still a wacky ride I should've taken before.

A Boy and His Dog is one of those movies that could easily be built up.  When you mention everything taking place, one is ready for a true WTF rollercoaster.  But, if someone went into this with no anticipation, would probably be very pleasantly surprised.  3.5 stars.

Side note:  Just love to track the years where these "futuristic thrillers" take place.  This one is 2024, so we got 5 years to make the world end up this way.  Get on it, guys.

The World's Greatest Sinner - 1962

Bump.

We can't all be Orson Welles.  We can't all create Citizen Kane as our majestic expression of ourselves.  Some of us, if we created something, who knows what the hell it would come out to be.  Who knows just what the message we'd get across would be.

So, actor Timothy Carey went ahead and created the movie he wanted to make.  It wouldn't be the first and certainly not the last time that an actor created a vanity project, and of course with his own financing and his own control, he did an entirely "self-driven" film that had no filters, no other words put in about the story or anything.

The World's Greatest Sinner is an experimental film.  Everything from the ground up feels highly experimental.  The feeling of the film overall is a coked out, infested, bizarre alternative to traditional film.  This movie feels 70's, 80's in it's approach.  It feels a lot more like the film that would come out later, claiming to be "a throwback" but then would have things in it that were obviously modern.  But, this is the authentic real deal, actually made in 1962, and therefore way ahead of it's time.

Timothy Carey plays Clarence "God" Hilliard.  Clarence is a middle manager of no great worth, and decides to give everyone the day off.  He's promptly fired, and that leads him on a self-indulgent journey to declare himself a god and start to preach on the streets about his beliefs.  Driven most likely by his sheer weirdness, God Hilliard begins to attract followers, and in a Life of Brian-esque turn, the least likely person becomes someone of great importance.

I mentioned Citizen Kane in the beginning for multiple reasons.  One of those reasons is that this film feels extremely close to the storyline in some ways.  The proximity to one central person, and his raise to fame, and the fact we know little about him, felt all inspired by Citizen Kane.  The character in both films is not especially likable, but has a certain undeniable charisma that draws people in, and we as the audience are struck with both anticipation and concern about what these people will do once they have the money or the fame which they seek.

The World's Greatest Sinner though takes a detour later down the line.  As God Hilliard gains more power, we see more of the apparent corruption therein.  We see him sacrifice some of the things he used to believe in for power.  And we see, in the end, his own struggle with the title and the power he has given himself.  The ending comes with a bit of an overly ambitious turn of events, and like that, 77 minutes in, it's all over, and you're left to wonder WTF this whole thing was.

In the end, I have no idea if this movie was good or not.  There are surely some well done parts of the film:  some good acting in parts, a cool soundtrack by Frank Zappa, with occasional nice photography, a charismatic and completely insane main character, and even way before it's time sexuality.  Despite all this, it felt broadly unfocused, way underdeveloped, and I even got bored in the later third.  It feels like they weren't quite sure where to take the story, and I think the ending is perhaps the biggest flaw in the story.

This feels like the sort of movie that would have gone forever if someone had just kept giving Timothy Carey money.  I think 1000% that he would have just kept filming, and I also think that if he had done maybe 2-3 things different, this movie would be a huge cult phenomenon not only now, but even then.  This has the seeds of something amazing in it, but somehow it got lost along the way.  The stabs of greatness are all there, but...overall... meh?  I'll give it 3.5.

Swamp Thing - 1982

So yeah man.  Here we go.  This is Wes Craven?!  This is Wes Craven, doing a fucking Swamp Thing movie and it's genuine 80's madness.  So, I am going to do some research here.  Obviously, DC movies had come out before, namely Superman with Christopher Reeve.  But, from my 1 minute or so of research, I can't see a lot of other DC movies before this.  WTF was the idea with making this one of the first DC movies?!

Swamp Thing apparently has some cult status to it.  It's easy to see why.  It's very uncommon that a big, established director like this will direct some sort of obscure, bizarre somewhat-action, somewhat-sci fi and also comic book movie, based on an even more obscure, even more bizarre comic book hero.  I mean really, whose fucking idea was this anyways?  A Swamp Thing movie?  With nudity?  The fuck you say?

It was a different era.  It was an era when they realized that kids movies could be cool, and dark, and weird, and have nudity.  It was an era where the sheer weirdness and outright creepiness of a concept was normal, where the main good guy is critically underwritten, the plot vague, the special effects awesome, and the whole industry different.

Yo, so check this.  Ray Wise is a ever lovable scientist in the middle of the woods, doing random experiments with glowing green slime.  Adrienne Barbeau is a fellow scientist or something who comes and joins the team.  Sparks of attraction fly between the two of 'em while in the meantime, baddies show up and get involved in the scene, trying to take the green goo.  Some of it eventually gets on Ray, he bursts into flames, runs into the swamp, and is presumed dead.  But now, a huge green monster shows up, and seems to be helping Barbeau and the other good guys!  Say What?!

This movie rides that weird line of being both kinda dumb and lowbrow while also being entertaining enough to keep one watching.  It does have an easy accessibility to it, it's likable, and the charming Barbeau makes a huge difference.  I was going to go on a big "whatever happened to Adrienne Barbeau?" rant but IMDb shows she's been working like crazy forever, and I apparently missed her in Argo and other actual films.  Still, she does seem to have dropped a bit from the public eye.

I did like this.  I may have taken an edible and watched part of it while high.  I may have thoroughly been swept up by the story, but my exhaustion made me watch it in two sittings.  Ultimately, it's the definition of a campy, kiddy, weirdo and surely dumb movie, but fun in all of those ways.

Gunan, King of the Barbarians - 1982

Did I mention I got a second job?  I work at a nice little bottle shop in the Castro area of SF, and it's feeding both my desire to make more money and my desire to learn about whiskey and beer more.  I work a lot though, and then my days off become more precious and more busy.  I haven't had much time for movies lately.  Although, I did carve out time for rewatching X2 and X3: The Last Stand.  Make of that what you will.

Gunan, King of the Barbarians is exactly what you think it is.  Is it a super unknown rip off of Conan The Barbarian?  Yes.  Italian?  Yes.  Super shitty, low budget, and skip-able?  Yessir.

This is the type of flick where they name it Gunan and then the main character is not even called that horrendous name.  Seriously, if you're going to rip it off, at least own the fact your ripped it off.  The main character is actually named Zukahn, and is played by some charmless Italian guy going by an American pseudonym.  This movie, again, exactly what you expect.

I don't feel like I have a ton to say about this.  I barely paid attention.  There was people in animal furs with swords saying things, and dull looking desert backgrounds.  There was some sort of plot I think, something about twins separated at birth and one of them being Gunan - or, I mean, Zukahn.

Also known as Lost Warrior and The Invincible Barbarian, this is a flick one will not watch.  You can't watch this, legally.  I think the law states you're only allowed to tolerate it.  Watching and paying attention can get you 10 years to life I think. I give it a star for trying.

Killer Nun - 1979

Another 1970's movie, another video nasty, another day, another dollar.  No, but seriously I do work later, so I am actually getting "a dollar".

What can I say about the awful portmanteau "nunsploitation"?  Wikipedia tells me the genre originated in the 60's, but mostly existed in the 70's, and if there's one thing we've learned thus far it's that yours truly author of this blog loves the fucking 70's fool.  I dig it.

Nunsploitation is done to vilify and sexualize the normally nonsexual personage of the nun.  There's wacky titles aplenty that exist out there, such as this one Killer Nun, Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun, Nuns on the Run, Behind Convent Walls, and branching all the way to modern times with Nude Nuns with Big Guns in 2010.  Ah, what a ripe genre for the grindhouse fanatic.

This one has 70's sleaze and softcore star Anita Ekberg as the main nun, sister Gertrude.  She has a shady past, she's a complex character, and we're given insight into her drug abuse, her sexual liberties, and her interpretation of the word of god.  When people in her mental hospital or wherever it is she works start to turn up dead, she's a clear candidate for the suspect.  She certainly acts insane at times, stomping on one woman's dentures, traumatizing others, and generally being a jackass.  So murder does not seem out of scope.

The acting in this is good, the sexuality of it also a nice focus.  They put Anita Ekberg front and center, and she's good as a shifty, untrustworthy narrator.  Soon enough she starts doing drugs, which lead her on little trips, unsure of what she's doing or why.  She runs out of the convent at one point, meets a random man at a bar, and fucks him in an alleyway later.  No words are ever spoken.  That alone was a scene to tell us exactly who this woman is.

There are a few unanswered questions and/or plotholes present, such as why they don't take any action to make sure it's not her doing the killing.  Seems like someone would at least attempt to put her in a room locked up, saying it's "just to make sure".  But I guess they explain it a little bit at times with faulty dialogue.  Eventually they do put her away in the last 10 minutes, and we get to finally see the true answer behind the riddle of the flick, and fuck, it satisfies.  What more can one really ask for from a late 70's grindhouse entry?

I liked it.  Some good nudity, good acting, and good storyline that is exactly the right level of complexity.  Low scope, likely small budget, it does its job just fine.  3.5 stars.  Nasty Scale: 4/10

Contract Killer - 1998

Also known as Hitman.

I'm looking for ways to kill time at work lately.  Browsing the internet, seeing all sorts of random ass sites.  But how many times can someone really check the weather, their bank balance, and read articles on The Guardian?  For me, I get burnt out on that easily, and the idea of a movie pops to mind.

I watched the Jackie Chan favorite Wheels on Meals yesterday.  I mention that because in my mind, this one is going to be "going up against" Meals.  And honestly, I'd have a lot more to say about Meals.  Jackie Chan's movies are more comedy-focused, and with excellent timing, and even more action, oddly enough.

Contract Killer has Jet Li as an ex-soldier living in a halfway house where he takes oddjobs, and eventually he hears of a $100 million dollar reward for finding the murderer of a local mob boss.  Jet Li is almost immediately recruited by con man and general trouble-maker Ngok Lo, although in the English dub they called him Arthur or something like that.  Amazon didn't even give me a choice on dubbing versus subbing on this or Meals.

Like I was saying, it oddly doesn't seem to have a ton of action either?  It's a blend of a comedy, a crime thriller, and a action movie, but there's really only 2-3 fight sequences, and the big one being saved for the end of course.  Jet Li has great abilities of course, never explained in this movie, but it's fine, and we watch him kick ass a few times.  It's all well and good.

The day when I was a Jet Li fan was about at age 20 or so I would think.  Hero came out, he had a flash-in-the-pan popularity, but I went back and watched his older flicks.  I still remember Once Upon a Time in China 1-3 being awesome.

I should say, the soundtrack to this was also pretty awful.  They have this late 90's rap that's just laughable.  Well...  Not much else to say about this.    Mainly a bump on the blog to assure people I'm still alive.