Sister Street Fighter - 1974

One more Street Fighter movie down... This one I'd for sure not seen before.  At this point in the series I believe it really went off the rails, though I'll have to check imdb later to be sure.

From my memory, Karate Bear Fighter and Karate Bull Fighter remain. But this was a departure by taking Sonny Chiba and putting him in more of a cameo role, as the main character is clearly the "Sister".

Sister Street Fighter has this innocent enough girl go against bad guys and seek revenge, but the plot takes too much dialogue as we wait for shit to happen. I fell asleep the entire film the first watching.

Gone are the cool effects and editing, gone is the charismatic main hero, gone is the music (mostly) and instead this sorta becomes a rape and revenge standard 70s grab bag.

Sonny Chiba appears in the very ass end and helps save the day, as if to cement the point that even though this is Sister Street Fighter, she can't actually defeat the baddies alone.

half a star.

The Suckling - 1990

I've had movies be reviewed multiple times on this site but I don't know if I've completely changed my mind on any. I re-watched The Suckling, which is not one that I ever thought I would re-watch. My original review spoke so negatively of it that I actually think I must have watched something else. This movie didn't seem familiar at all.

What you have is the story of a woman who goes to a crazy abortionist in the very beginning and in possibly some of the most graphic fashion I've ever seen we see an aborted fetus get dumped down the tubes. The fetus somehow comes alive and starts to mutate, with no explanation that I could remember.  Then it attacks a whorehouse full of random people... Yes we're talking a movie that is riding that self-aware wave.

But it's not bad. The music in the beginning is great, the acting is all over the place, but is often so bad it's good, the effects are amazing. I'm sure  this person must have come from an effects background. I already know without checking that these effects guys have worked on other things and are probably well known.

Eventually we get stuck where it's a bunch of guys in a locked house talking, and sometimes the dialogue and the pacing isn't the best, but I think they also knew that it wasn't going to be so they tried to keep things happening throughout. A lot of times the politics of the group in the house as well as the overall threat of the monster are both entertaining enough to keep it from getting too dull.

I'm fucking convinced that I haven't seen this before and it would for sure be a great midnight movie type of thing. Drinky, Smokey, Friends one, sort of pay attention and sort of do something else. Four stars.

Return of the Street Fighter - 1974

And we're back with the return of Sonny Chiba as the Street Fighter which came out the same year as the first film. I might as well review these since I have them on a box set, right? I don't feel like I'm watching any movies these days at all so at least you're getting something.

In the sequel we have some flashbacks to the first film including the last testicle ripping scene, and we have another plot about Sonny Chiba being on either side for some sort of political nonsense plot line. All culminates in the fight scene towards the end, and I will say that this time they needed more action.

The music is back, the clothes are back, the over-the-top acting is back, and it definitely entertains a lot. However, like I was saying, I could have done with a few more action scenes especially in the beginning.

Some nudity in it this time was nice and there is a funny scene where Sonny stabbed someone with a gun.. oh, yes you read that right.

3 stars

Carnal Highways / Carnal Olympics - 1979 / 1983

I was gifted this random DVD by my ex wife.  Your ex wife gives you porn, things must be at least kind of good right?

This is actual porn.  I expected softcore with a plot and more of "that kind" of thing.  Also, I wonder if there are still the theaters showing porn these days.  I wonder when that stopped being so much of a thing.  I'm sure there were protests, lawsuits, arrests, which ended that whole fad.  But it's fascinating because these DVDs come in a case that shows all the old advertisements and fliers for seeing these porns, in actual theaters.  Where presumably you could jerk it.

Vinegar Syndrome put out this double DVD pack and I put it on last night, in a weird mood I guess.  I enjoyed a glass of cheap wine and watched Carnal Highways first.

Carnal Highways is the story of two aimless dudes who buy a semi truck, and they're eager to hit the roads to deliver their load of desks to San Francisco.  They know that truckers apparently have a reputation for being horny all the time, and so they are also looking to get laid.   They encounter a woman who first recounts a lesbian experience before both truckers fuck her.  Then they continue on, having sex with many women before the end scene where they deliver the desks and group sex ensues.

Carnal Olympics is a kinkier story.  There is a competition on to see which porn actress is the best, and naturally the way to decide this is to have the actresses engage in a lot of porn.  They have a threesome lesbian scene first, then group sex, then they have to seduce police officers.  In the end, there is like a 30-40 minute group sex scene where every guy jerks off into a bucket!

There's so much to say about this double set.  First of all, the actor in Carnal Highways who plays the Mexican dude was not hard most of the movie.  In fact, one thing I noticed is that a lot of the times the dudes would start off flaccid and the girl would have to excite him.  Seems like every guy I see in porn now is rock hard from instant one.  Second off, the hairy girls and the hairy armpits is of course different.  Full on pubic hair, hairy armpits, it's just not seen anymore.  And of course, the difference in girls bodies.  They went for a theme here, having really tall women.  And some of their breasts and other bodies are just not seen in porn nowadays, which I think is kinda too bad.

Was it hot?  Yes, I think so.  I found myself aroused.  Hell, I'll say it, I masturbated to one of the police seduction scenes.  They have anal sex once on the DVD, the lesbian scenes are good, and the long orgy scene in Carnal Olympics is pretty phenomenal.

I haven't reviewed true actual porn on this site, nor was it ever my intention to.  But this is honestly really fun to revisit.  The dialogue is as bad and forced as you remember from being a kid, the music is wacky, the acting terrible.  The people fucking look like some person you'd see at a book store, and that's both refreshing and hot in a way.  Porn, plots aside, used to be way more realistic.  I think we can all agree on this.  Also, the camera work and angles are more like real sex too.  You don't see a lot of insertion or anything else like we see now.  Sometimes the closeups are on literally two blurry thighs sort of moving.

I'd recommend it for fun, definitely.  3 stars.

Planets Against Us - 1962

I put in this 60s film.  A bit about my life now first.   I have been in the cabin, and I literally went through a long period of not watching anything.  I just haven't been in the mood, and with the library and all closed, and since my video rental store has a shitty as fuck collection, I was getting by on only watching The Twilight Zone...  which will eventually get a review, cause fuck it, why not.

This is a typical 50's feeling sci fi flick complete with all the dialogue, vague plot pieces, and glacial movement you'd expect.  It has been a long, long time since I saw something like this.  But I knocked it out, as I do.

This movie is very much dialogue driven, and I guess that makes sense.  Essentially, there is a alien on Earth who has taken the image of a recently deceased guy. This alien somehow appears at multiple places on the globe in the first few minutes of the movie, and when the government finds out about this, they begin an investigation and there is a mystery afoot.

You know, I watched this a day or two ago I guess, but I seriously don't remember anything about this.  I might have fallen asleep, I did sip a nice Irish whiskey during it, but was not drunk for sure.  I think it was completely unremarkable....that might be the problem...?

Either way, it kept me mildly entertained sometimes, but it was slow as cold molasses and it had no thrills to it at all.  Cool monster shots at the very end for like 15 seconds.  1.5 stars.

Prophecy - 1979

Aw, my breeding ground.  The 70's, horror, sci fi.  I rented this from the very limited and extremely random selection had at my local Super 1 Foods, where there's a built in little movie rental place.  It's still open and running.  Essential business y'all.

Prophecy was a movie I'd seen before many years ago.  In one of my killer animals/giant monster marathon runs I used to have in the day, I rented this and saw it for the first time probably 12 years ago.  I kept it in the back of my mind, and this is my first time rewatching it.

Robert Foxworth, Talia Shire, and Armand Assante star in a film by John Frankenheimer.  Those are a lot of names for a late 70's horror, but since Jaws had made a big "splash" earlier in the 70's, this got made and made with a surprisingly high amount of seriousness and budget.

Phophecy starts with some killed hikers and a environmental specialist being brought in.  He is Robert Foxworth, and he doesn't want kids but his wife (Talia Shire) is pregnant and hasn't told him yet.  They reach the land where the deaths happened and are greeted by hostile Indians, led by Armand Assante as John Hawk.  They investigate the land and a nearby paper mill.  Turns up that there are giant mutant fish and other things everywhere, and it might be because the paper mill is dumping mercury into the water.  Sure enough, that's the case and the proof is in the 9 foot mutant bear that's hunting and killing people.

This movie kicked my ass.  It has tons of cool acting first of all, and the violence ranges from hilarious to some of the best of it's time.  Visible wires during several scenes clash perfectly with prime puppet sort of practical effects, but it all looks awesome and every other part of this movie is selling the shit out if it.

The fact is that I was unprepared for the pacing, and even for it's time it moves very slow in parts.  I checked several times to see how much was left.  That said, it really brings the thrills at other parts.  Yes, certain things prevent it from being taken seriously, but if you look at it as a prime so-bad-it's-good specimen, than it definitely succeeds.   I'd give it 3.5 stars.

The Street Fighter - 1974

I don't know if I ever really saw this movie before. I know Sonny Chiba and I know I've seen some of his movies, I also know of the Street Fighter series and I know of the multiple sequels therein. But I honestly don't remember if I'd ever seen this movie before. I guess I fail.

I put it on last night having recently re-watched both Kill Bill 1 and 2. It's easy to see where that movie got its lineage. Street Fighter is brutal and violent and groundbreaking and overly stylistic and all that would later be known as Quentin Tarantino's trademark Style.

Early on in the film it's apparent that Street Fighter draws a lot from classic japanese Cinema. Toshiro Mifune was basically the same character in most of his movies, and even looks very similar to Sonny Chiba. They both have similar facial expressions and I would have to think that Chiba was deliberately modeling himself after Mifune.

There's all sorts of fun and wild things happening in this movie too. Besides the fact that the plot moves fast, there is multiple story lines going on at the same time, there is brand-new groundbreaking special effects, and there is an antihero dark main character who we want to learn more about.

I've started to watch the sequel right after the first one, but honestly without getting too much into the sequel let me just say that the first film is a necessary, amazing, still relevant and groundbreaking film to this day and I give it five stars.

Nowhere to Run - 1993

Jean Claude Van Damme hasn't been mentioned in this blog yet. I think. I rented a JCVD double pack dvd with this and The Order.

Jcvd plays a criminal who in the beginning escapes jail with his buddy. Jcvd is a good guy though and once he escapes he becomes a drifter and camps out on land owned by Rosanne Arquette. She soon discovers him and once he beats up some hunters she knows he's good.

So then this movie becomes a classic good versus bad with the girl everyone wants to fuck thrown into the middle. And she does get nuuuuude.

I had a really good time watching this despite the fact it's a pretty stupid sub par action flick.  I was in the right mood. It's kinda lame though and probably 2 stars.

Interview with the Vampire - 1994

There's new horror, there's old horror, and then there's "formational" horror.  I'm coining this right now, and it simply means the horror from when you were young, perhaps getting introduced to the genre, and you watched these movies, and they helped you understand what the genre was.

I don't know what exact age I was when I saw Interview for the first time.  I do remember that even then, the cast was a huge deal.  The cast is, in retrospect, probably one of the biggest things about this film, and very much helped it achieve success.  That and direction by Neil Jordan helped the film gain mainstream attention.  I don't have to google it to know this film must've been a financial success.  It simply HAD to be.

Brad Pitt stars as Louis, a downtrodden and defeated man who gets munched on by Tom Cruise and becomes a vampire.  Louis relates his story of vampire life to Christian Slater, and as the story unfolds we see Antonio Banderas and Kirsten Dunst play other leading figures in the vampires chronicle.  And you know what?  It holds up.

I remembered most of this film.  What I didn't know at the time, and on rewatching really stands out, is that it's shot extremely well, and the pacing is such that a two hour film simply flies by.  There is an odd mysticism to the characters, there is small attention to deal, there is nudity, there is a bit of violence, but overall it's remarkable how tame this film is.  IMDB classifies this as a Drama/Thriller moreso than horror, and I agree with that definition.

I'd say, on rewatching, there a few moments of plotholes, and some parts that don't make too much sense, but overall it is fantastic world-building, and it's believable as a vampire movie can be.  It made me want to read the book, and it also made me wonder about these characters more.  Also, I forgot that the Interview segments take place in San Francisco, so that was a fun bit.  I have walked by the building where the interview takes place many a time, shit, it's right on Market Street.

I sorta wish this had generated a few sequels and/or more of a legacy.  We got Queen of the Damned, but I don't think that had any of the same characters, and for sure was not as good.  This is something where I'm frankly shocked it didn't make a bigger impact in the media and sell some film rights to Anne Rice adaptations.  I give it a nice, 4.5 star rating.

The House that Jack Built - 2018

I remember when I worked at the independent theater we got the movie Dogville directed by Lars Von Trier.  Although I did not see it, this was my introduction to him as a director.  Later, I found Antichrist on a list of "disturbing films" and watched it.  I don't really remember my thoughts on it.

I gave Melancholia a shot, didn't like it, and I also thought about watching Nymphomaniac but I never got around to it.  But given that I heard about The House that Jack Built (THTJB) and I heard it was horror, I was killin' time at the video rental store, saw it on the new release shelf, and picked up a copy.  Fuck it, eh?  How bad could it be?

I put it on with zero expectation and the movie reminded me of why I happen to think, though often under-utilized, forgotten about, and given a bad reputation, horror can truly be as expressive a genre as anything else worth appraisal.

We hear some voices talking in the beginning and the tale unfolds.  It is the story of Jack, played by Matt Dillon.  Jack is a serial killer and intelligent, interesting person.  This film is not the story of a serial killer though, it is the story of an artist, and it is a story of the pain of being human, the pain of creation, and the pain of what we all do when we are forced to live through this world and this existence.  It just so happens he is also a sadistic killer.

And I do not mean to say he is not vicious, and I do not mean to say the film doesn't focus on the killings.  Through a thorough examination of five (actually more than five, but whatever) incidents in which he killed someone, we see the portrait painted of a strange, withdrawn, though charismatic and likable man.  He has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and his relationship to himself is surprisingly detailed and tender.  He knows himself, for better or worse, and he understands us better than we do ourselves.

The gruesomeness and the sense of tension is the first thing I noticed.  With such a wildly unpredictable main character, there are several moments where I felt a profound sense of dread and doom for Jack and the people he'd interact with.  The movie also goes through lengths to establish his chaotic and dysfunctional nature.  We see the childhood version of him, for example, in a display of the psychotic beginnings of killing and showing the "way he has always been".

I knew the ending would be divisive from early on, as I realized that we took a step into weird territory via the narration, which happens between Jack and (I thought at first) god.  Towards the end, he meets this godlike character, and the movie takes a weird arthouse bizarre introspective turn.  It wasn't the best nor the strongest end to be honest, and it does feel like the director must've wanted to show Jack was in fact not a good person who would not come to a good end.  In a way it feels a bit tacked on, sort of like they wanted to have a redeeming factor to the film.  Eh.

Amazing that even from a perspective such as mine, someone who "has seen it all" there are still new, interesting, and unique horror films that manage to inspire, upset, and disturb as well as they always have.  Four stars.

Tampopo - 1985

Ending a boxset is a hard thing to do. It finishes and I don't feel much like watching trash anymore, or like writing.  I also went on an almost 3 week trip, so there's that.

I got back to Sandpoint Idaho and felt the ol' urge to watch actual good movies too. So I went to the library and into the foreign section and loaded up on 7 foreign flicks including this, Tampopo.

I took an edible and wood-worked all day and then put in Tampopo, expecting a romance, or maybe a dumb comedy.

What I got though was a way ahead of its time comedy of small time life, a riff on Western cowboy film, and a commentary on Japanese culture which is a goldmine of comedy if you get the references, which I do...

Tampopo is a small ramen shop worker who encounters a couple mystery men early on. They order ramen and deliver the verdict: it's not good. They have a particular set of skills however, and they call in their best to help this woman train to become the best ramen shop in Japan.

It's fucking hilarious, and the ramen slurping never stops. The plucky young actress in it is great, the cowboy-ish men are hilarious, the stakes are insane, and you'll learn a lot about ramen along the way.

It's maybe 15 minutes or so overly long, but all in all, it's a fantastic journey well worth taking. See it stoned. 4 stars.