Village of the Damned - 1995

So another John Carpenter movie in my movie marathon night.  I also rewatched Crank (it holds up, for sure) and I watched The Pyramid (2014, horror, pretty stupid).

Village of the Damned stars Christopher Reeve as a local doctor in a small town where suddenly everyone passes out at 10am one day.  Christopher Reeve soon notices that 10 local women are pregnant, and their date of conception was the day of the pass out.  They all have the babies, and soon enough the children are exhibiting strange behavior.

Thematically this felt very similar to Prince of Darkness.  I guess, you know, I did watch them on the same night after all.

Faster moving and more linear than Prince, this was an enjoyable film.  Despite the fact I don't like evil children in movies, all the kid actors are pretty decent, and their powers are shown front and center enough to keep one entertained.  This had a similar style and atmosphere as Prince, and I have to say that in retrospect its a throwback feel like the 70s horror movies I know and love so much.  I miss 70s movies, man.

Not as much to say except I liked this more than Prince.  It was also bigger in the payoff, whereas it felt like Prince sort of petered out with a nonending, this ends and it ends well.  I will also say that with the pacing of a 70s movie, the feel of the 80s, but better enough to make you think possibly 90s, something about this movie felt a little bit timeless.  It could practically exist today, and you wouldn't even need a plot point about cell phones.

It's aight.  I'll give it like a 3.5 or something.

Prince of Darkness - 1987

Either way it's 90s feeling, and my man John Carpenter is in his "downward slope" which unfortunately he never really came out of.

John Carpenter was a king of horror in the 80s, with too many an excellent horror movie to name, and this movie, while not bad, shows us just how having tons of great elements still may not translate to a entirely good movie.  Also, there is a good chance I'd never seen this before.  If I have, it was so long ago that I don't remember it.

Donald Pleasance is back as a priest guy who has a giant vial of swirling green liquid he's protecting from public knowledge.  For some reason I don't remember he decides to enlist the help of his friend, a college professor played by Victor Wong, to determine exactly what to do with the vial...?  Or something...?  And, for some reason I don't think they explain, the professor invites his college class to come by this giant church where the vial is held and help...?

Details are scant, and though it could certainly be my not remembering them, I don't think great, concrete reasons were ever really given.  Anywho, the vial cracks open when everyone gets there, liquid gets out, and it infects one of the students.  She turns evil and soon is converting other people to evil, while outside the local homeless population are all turning evil, and soon enough the good guys are trapped in the church, while evil in there grows...

The main issue I felt with this is that it has a ton of plot dialogue, but not much to it, and it amounts to a very slow movie.  The cinematography is excellent, the music is always top notch, the ensemble cast of Carpenter favorites is good, and the makeup and the effects are all very good.  It's minimal in approach and minimal in scope, but keeps things interesting with creating a full atmosphere.

Like I said though, rather slow.  And not my favorite.  It feels a bit overdone in some parts, and it feels incomplete in others.  It's not my fave Carpenter, but far from his worse films.  I'd set it somewhere lower than The Fog, but well above Escape from Los Angeles.  I'm also going to watch Village of the Damned, to complete the Carpenter-athon.  Thanks to Idaho Public Library for these rentals, shout out motherfucker.

Christabel - 1988

Mid 80's?  I think...?  Uh, it's hard to tell on this one.  I guessed 1983, and what I didn't know then was this is actually a British miniseries edited together into a feature film.

Yeah dude.  So, I started this thing, and it has this black and white footage of a swastika, and I'm like, sure uh I guess I will watch a Nazi movie.  And this is a character driven story, a drama, a movie about a young woman named Christabel in World War II.

Christabel is played by Elizabeth Hurley, but I didn't recognize her at all.  She is a British middle-class woman living in Germany in the beginning of World War II, and her husband is the member of a anti-Hitler group.  In the beginning, we see them at a party where someone is imitating the Fuhrer, and they laugh along with him.

Soon enough however, as things escalate, laughing at Hitler seems the furthest things from their minds.  Once the war picks up and once England is heavily involved, it becomes not as safe to be a British person in Germany, and everyone who is not German becomes a possible enemy of the state.  Christabel and family do their best to get by, even resorting to at one point sending her back to England to live while her husband stays in Germany.

I stopped this movie the first night at 90 minutes, figuring it was almost over, but this is a 2.5 hour epic war film.  This movie goes and goes, and I'll pitch out a guess that it will likely be the longest movie on the set.  And yet, despite being so long, there was many incomplete feeling parts of the story, and parts where I wasn't sure what was happening or why.

However, it succeeds in many ways, and if you were to look at Christabel as a simple, human driven dramatic story, then it is actually great.  The actors are really good, the sense of doom and the atmosphere and the interactions are all real and they're pulled off extremely well.  The simplicity of the characters story is good, and there are parts where you're not sure what's going to happen.

But, despite all those good things, it lacks clarity about exactly what does happen, we're left to assume certain things a bit too often, and several key sequences are not in the film.  It's essentially like this was edited down, which would be really awful, cause it's still extremely long...  how fucking long do you need a movie to be to make sense?!  Come on, people.

I have no idea how to rate this or how to even think of it.  It's unexpected.  It's also certainly not all bad.  Also, for sure not GOOD.  It's about a 3.

Mesmerized - 1986

I guessed later in the 80's....
aka "My Letter to George" and "Shocked"

Again IMDb and Wikipedia argue over the year, 1985 versus 1986, who the fuck cares.  I've heard about this movie for a while, I guess being mildly interested in the career of Jodie Foster and being connected to the vague concept of "things", I have heard of this movie.

John Lithgow and Jodie Foster star in Mesmerized, which is one of three awful titles they auditioned for this movie.  I wonder what the book was called?  I watched this, finally, cause I guess its unpopular enough to be on my motherfuckin' boxset.

What we have is Jodie as a young, naive, unknowing woman who marries John Lithgow in the first few moments of the film.  She doesn't like him from the offset, and I argued with myself about if her actions in this movie are justified.  I think this is an example of a film which could have arguably made the actions more shown versus inferred.

There is in this movie:  Suggested marital rape.  There is also proven voyeurism.  There is implied possible slight physical abuse.  But nothing being shown makes us unfortunately side with Lithgow for quite a while.  Which, if it was planned, turned out perfectly.

This movie is the type of thing which will leave an impact whether you "agree" with it or not.  The acting fucking sells the thing, and you'll like it whether you want to or not.  There is a insane level of performance in here, for a slightly incomplete story.

We never truly know either characters motivation, and nor do we really understand the why or how of it all.  Several key elements are left blank, and we fill in the details as we can, but it is too many blanks that may end up with the wrong leaning Mad Libs.

I feel like this is a great movie with great potential, and the infused meaning will stay with you no matter what you read into it.  It's greatly shot and acted.

I wanted to splice in the IMDb plot outline which says "An orphaned New Zealand girl married to an older, wealthy businessman learns to deal with his strange sexual desires."  This is fantastic cause it's nothing at all about the actual plot of the movie.  He wants to have marital sex with her.  That's literally it.  And it's all about his mostly mental abuse of her and her dealing with that.

I have to say this rivals Lamb in terms of emotionally effecting films on the set.  I liked this, but I still think it gets only about a 4.5

Act of Love - 1980

Guessing the early 80s in this one.  And I recognized the main actor whose name I forget, the lawyer dude who is the driving point behind the movie.  In the house, research may tell me from what. (It never did)

Act of Love is the story of one brother showing off on a motorcycle and falling.  He falls on his neck and shoulder and ends up in the hospital.  His younger brother (Ron Howard) feels enormous sympathy, and then it's determined later that his bro is going to be paralyzed from the neck down.  There is a bit of drama around this naturally, and it only gets worse when the paralyzed guy says that if he is not able to be treated, he wants to die, and would like his brother to kill him.

Naturally, this creates a tension where Ron Howard decides what to do.  In a chilling sequence, he does it a few scenes later.  What follows is a progressive vision of the trial afterwards, featuring the steps the lawyer takes and what they both do to take on the charges of manslaughter.

Like the 70s set, a dramatic and emotionally charged movie holds my attention better than the average stuff on this set.  The actors are pretty decent, and the drama of the story is believable and well executed.  There are very dynamic turns along the way, and they also chose to have Ron Howard feel certain amounts of doubt about the verdict and his actions.

I do wish they had a bit more about the verdict and the ending, and if I remember right, it also said this was based on a true story in the beginning.  How about one of those captions that says what ended up happening with the bro that got away with murder?

I liked this movie.  I think it achieved what it needed to and was better than the rest of this stupid set.  Not amazing though.  Just 4 stars.

My Chauffeur - 1986

Written while watching My Chauffeur and good god I might have to turn this the fuck off. It's annoying, pointless and trying way too hard to be funny. Also this main actress is terrible.

Some dumb blonde is made a chauffeur early on for reasons I forget, and she's up against all sorts of obstacles as she goes from "funny situation" to "comedy scene" and succeeds despite all odds. My Chauffeur starts innocently enough but once she is driving people it turns into a bad mess.

Most of the movie seems to be an excuse to play bad 80s music, and I wonder if this came from a music video director. Probably not because there is also no artistry.

I'm currently an hour in and the plot turned into the Chauffeur lady and a tight wound lawyer type going on a road trip. I guess it's a love story... Which is stupid cause we don't care about either of them, no history had been made for her or him, and if they end up together it won't fucking matter.

After I left the room twice without pausing, I fast forwarded three minutes and at this point they fucked. I really hope this is less than 90 minutes.

There's also a way overacting black couple which borders very dangerously close to racism. Another thought: there is nudity early on, then it stopped. Why is there not more? Why do only one topless chick?

One more note from after I finished it - only three more nude women, no comedy happened, and I don't remember exactly how it ended.

Taureg the Desert Warrior - 1982

I knew from the moment I saw this was on the set that I would rewatch it.  And watch it sober this time.

From my memory, I was in a drunken haze last time I saw it, and I dialed it in on Amazon Prime cause it looked kinda cool and maybe mildly interesting.  I don't remember much about that viewing, but I do remember that I felt it was pretty slow, slower than I'd wanted, and I remember that I was confused about the ending.

Rewatching this movie, I wanted this time to like it and at least to understand it.  I dedicated another 100 minutes to it, and...  I walk away the same way.

Mark Harmon stars as the ambiguous and enigmatic Taureg.  Taureg is a master of his code, the code being that of the desert.  He has two guys show up at his desert dwelling early on, and some army men come claiming the men are their charge and he needs to release the men to the army.  Taureg refuses and to hand over the two, and thus they shoot one of them and say they will come back.  Taureg has no choice but to take the other man on a huge desert crossing journey, and that compromises most of the film.

The journey is fraught with adventure, and along the way there are plenty of cool desert scenes, good music, and some action scenes that are good.  The main character is super cool, and sells the movie like fuck.  The camel blood drinking scene I remembered from last time was different, and there is more action than I remembered.  That said...  We get to the end, and again spoiler alert, the guy he was taking care of the entire time is the man he ends up shooting in the end.

I honestly am not sure if this was edited, if I missed something, or if this is just the way the movie is.  Several plot points are missing or unexplained, and several characters are never gotten back to, and it turns a movie that I wanted to watch into something that I just shake my head at and consider lost potential.

Taureg is a movie which I'm sure deserved better, and I'd be willing to bet there is a version of this that is not edited and thus makes some sense.  As it is, it feels halfway decent, so I'll give a halfway decent end review.

Delta Force Commando - 1988

I put on this movie just now, and I watched it, and I am really waffling here between if it was just bad, so bad it's good, or just averagely good.  Just that kinda movie I guess.

It's all in the name.  The name itself rips off other movies!  Delta Force, ripping off the Chuck Norris movie, and then Commando, ripping off Schwarzenegger.  There is zero originality to this, and they wear it loud and proud with the name and then with the movie therein.

There was a long scene about 40 minutes in where a helicopter has the main heroes, Fred Williamson as Samuel Beck and Brett Clark as Tony Turner, trapped in a bus after getting hit with rockets.  The helicopter circles and circles, flies around, and raises and lowers.  The scene goes on and on, seemingly forever.  It was at that moment, and at several others, where the truth of this movie hit me.

This movie is aware of it's second rate nature and it takes itself seriously anyways, I think.  They know this is not a great action movie.  But fuck it!  They still want to entertain you.

Do a few shots, maybe hit the pipe, and just enjoy it for what it is.  Dumb.  Its fine and it won't bite.

Dog Day - 1984

I guessed "1983 or so."
I thought this would be a rip of Dog Day Afternoon, and let's just say it right now:  It should have been.  It really should have, cause this movie....  well, let's wait for the review.

The 80's set is a sprawling motherfucker with twists and turns.  Twist me up for some good and bad, and so far mostly middle of the road-ish, average-ish reviews.  I have to say, so far...it's the worst of the three sets.  So far.  It can still change my mind.

So we start Dog Day with an aging villain committing a robbery, getting into a gun fight with the cops, and narrowly escaping, being chased by helicopters and such.  He is running through a field and finds a farm house.  He decides to hide out in the farm house and buries the money in the tall grass, and as he makes his way into the farmhouse we meet all the residents...

Spoilers, cuz who the fuck cares.  Not even sure what a "spoiler" for this movie would really be, actually.  The collection of people he encounters there are all crazy or weird or both, or at least terrible actors.  There's the kid who's rich and smokes, there's the horny sex freak woman who wants to bone everybody, there's the mystery woman who likes the main character criminal, there's the black guy who we barely see, there's the couple old guys I got confused as to who is who, and there's a few others who are insignificant.

Dog Day is literally watching all these weirdos interacting, sometimes with the criminal fellow, and sometimes not.  The money is discovered and changes a few hands...  Cops come around and interactions are had...  Criminal man talks to a few farm folk and some things happen, sort of...  but generally, we watch random, terribly put together scenes take place.  Which ones are important and which are not, I don't know, because any semblance of a plot at this point is gone.

I'm willing to bet the script outline was something like:  "Guy gets money from robbery, goes to farmhouse with crazies (we'll improvise the rest)"

This movie tested my patience, it tested my sanity, it just generally tested everything.  It was barely over 90 minutes and felt like it was hours long, it dragged and was dull, it made no fucking sense, and it basically had no redeeming factors.  The pan and scan, not to nitpick, cause it was not really the filmmakers fault, was horrible, and a lot of time you can't see what's happening...  As if they needed to make this turd even worse.

Yeah.....  this one was a real dud.  I give it a fat zero.

The Bell from Hell - 1973

Also known as "The Bell"

I put this on last night, it was on my list of movies to see.  "The List" ladies and gentlemen.  My note for it that I put on the list was "prime 70's fare".

Renaud Verley stars as John, a man who has recently been released from a mental asylum.  He is a charming, attractive young man who goes to live with his aunt and her three daughters, his cousins.  They are also the same ones who originally had him committed, and he is soon enough out for revenge.  Buuuut, given this is prime 70's it's filled with weirdness in between.

And the weirdness is where this movie really shines.  Early on, John is talking to one of his cousins and he is apologizing to her for something.  He says "Maybe I should suffer, maybe I should tear out my eyes."  He then proceeds to do so.  It was a hilarious, random scene, and he was just playing a joke on her, but it's things like this that make me love it.

The acting is great, the effects are really good.  There is a bit of nudity, but it's mostly presented in a minimal way and also with a degree of "saving it" for only certain places.  There's insanity and hijinks and really odd character choices, which makes the movie highly entertaining and makes it fly right by.  I was thoroughly entertained.

I don't remember how I discovered this movie or why I added it to the list, but this makes me glad I did and it develops a curiosity for the other movies on my list.  I really loved this movie, and I don't even know if I mentioned that it had comedy in it.  Funny comedy!  I give it a 4.

When the Bough Breaks - 1986

Ted Danson.  Star of things.  I only know Ted Danson from Curb Your Enthusiasm really.  And I like him, I think he's a good actor.  And I'm finally getting around to his movie, When the Bough Breaks, a movie I've now thought I saw already fucking twice.

What's with that, I ask?  Of all the random shit that could happen on this boxset, why did I think I saw this movie twice already?  Life's a real goddamn mystery, huh?

Ted Danson stars as.... some guy who's name I forget in this murder mystery thriller thing.  It took me a couple days to get through this one, although it was not boring (too much anyways).  I took a night off from TV and I think the other night I stayed in the main house.

Okay, back to it, Ted Danson stars in this probably made-for-tv or again, at least edited-for-tv movie.  There's clear commercial breaks dude, and tracking problems again.  I wish there were special features for this boxset, not about the movies, but info about the actual boxset itself?  Again, including where they got these from, and who made the choices about what went on and what didn't go on?

OKAY!  Ted Danson stars as a psychologist working with the police about a dead guy.  Innocent enough.  But then the dead guy eventually brings Ted around to a kid, a kid that is hooked into this weird group where things seem slightly off.  The group is led by a mega rich and powerful guy played by David Huddleston, and cops warn Danson about the power the Big Lebowski has if Danson goes poking around, disrupting shit.  But he's on the case and he'll solve this thing no matter what it takes....

Sure!  We can do one of these.  These movies are fine.  And it is.  WBB take the path where Danson is a likable guy, with a charming love interest, a nicely done dog-like scamp of a cop that Danson is teamed with, and villains that are adequate.  This is packed with adequate pacing, dialogue that drives the plot forward, and even some action sequences.  The end is satisfying, perhaps even better than average because of a nice addition to Danson's character, and since he's acting it, it is pulled off.

This is no movie to recommend strongly, but at this point, where this set is concerned, I'll take what I can get.  I'll give it a 3.5

Internet research tells me I accurately guessed the year, this was in fact made for TV, and the love interest of Danson's was the girl from Con Air!  I knew I recognized her.  Also, there was a blooper with a wheelchair guy standing up out of the chair, and they left it in the movie.  I remember seeing that part, it was funny, and I am glad they left it in.  Just a fun, odd moment.