The Decameron - 1971

 I will admit to you that I had only seen Salo the 150 Days of Sodom before this as my sole knowledge of Pier Paolo Pasolini.  Now I've seen two!

The Decameron is a erotic early 70's Italian film based on some ancient writings, in this case by Giovanni Boccaccio.  The original Decameron is a collection of 100 stories which people are telling each other, spanning subjects from love and lust to life and death.  The Decameron film collects 10 of these and puts them here, loosely ensembled by theme.

I'm not going to go into plots too much, but basically some are comic and some are sexual, some are plot stories, some are pointless little exploits.  The stories seem to have no real connection besides a lot of them, maybe most, being sexual in nature.  The film is graphic, with male and female nudity, and showing all manner of inappropriate coupling.  It does not do this in a overtly sexual manner though, usually playing the sex as comedic or lighthearted, and having no ill effect usually.

Perhaps this attitude of the film is what would make one call it uniquely European, and moreso uniquely 70's European.  The film faced much censorship and clashed immediately with the sensibility of most, but given that, it made great waves and remains a cult film, especially given the other thematic tones and filmmaking flourishes present.

There is a dreamy quality, one I like in film a lot, to this.  It drifts listlessly, lazily from one story to another, and clumsily cuts things short, overextends others.  It doesn't feel at all scripted, or even like a movie.  It feels like a slice of life, warm and cozy.  It feels like a memory.  The characters are all us, they're all us when we were young, in our late teens, having sex and falling in love, spending lazy summer days drinking wine and frolicking about the rolling green countryside.

Nothing in this film has true consequences, and they're all shown without moral lessons.  These are snapshots, told to us by the person who lived them, likely with a wry smile and a warm wink.  They are told to us when we are kids, wanting to understand what exactly "life" is.  

You may have to be in the right mood to fully appreciate it, and it's a little long because of the looseness, but it truly is beautiful in many ways.  I give it 4 stars.

Arcade - 1993

 I'm sorta kinda watching Arcade in the background while I work. Someone's got to. 

This is a dumb ol' piece o' crap evil video game. Alex and her friends are into games, and evil John DeLancie introduces them to "the next level" of gaming. Fully cgi, artificial intelligence games are next you see, and they're killing kids...

This movie is so much a product of its time. It's got a big shit eating grin and it wallows in its own filth. 

The movie stars Seth Green (my phone defaulted to Serf Green, which is funny) and Peter Billingsley. It's a fun dumb romp of campy fun from D grade auteur Charles Band's production company. 

I kinda liked it, I give it a 3.

The Rite - 2011

 Yikes.  I guessed this was about 20 years older than it was.  That is not a good sign, eh?

I've never cared too much for exorcism movies.  This broadly includes The Exorcist, I will even admit, which I feel like great music and great cinematography aside, is largely boring and not scary.  I don't find anything scary about devils or demons or satans or whatever depicted in movies, even including the demonic kid movies or whatever.  Cults and people as villains are cool, but not actual demons.

The Rite is about a mortician who decides to join the clergy, and is targeted to become a modern exorcist because of his background of being used to dark and scary stuff.  He is paired with Anthony Hopkins as a working exorcist, and they are sent to exorcise a pregnant woman and a young boy.  There's a lot of scenes of this, and basically not much happens except the younger main character stuggles to decide if he thinks exorcisms or even god are real.

Hopkins then himself becomes possessed by the devil, and it's up to our young protagonist to test his faith by clearing Hopkins of the demonic influence.  Again, I'm kinda like, I don't care,,,?  The dude finds Brazilian hottie Alice Braga and he's paired with her.  There are some tittilating teases to the audience with the hot pregnant woman, and Hopkins gets to play a villain again briefly.

There's not a whole lot to say about it other than if you like exorcism movies, here is another one for your consideration.  It goes straight down the line, and when it ended I wondered aloud, "did anything happen in that movie?"

I'll give it 1.5 stars for the acting and the basically "it made sense and was linear" aspect.

The Watcher - 2000

 The year was 2000 or 2001 when Ben Shannon and I rented this terrible Keanu Reeves "horror" movie and watched it at his house. I don't think we liked it even then. 

This movie was apparently made because Keanu signed off on a cameo role in the movie, then they rewrote it and expanded his role. He had signed and was legally obligated so he begrudgingly made it. It's one of his few "bad guy" performances. 

James Spader is a drug taking cop...  Drug taking as in it's seen once, never again, and apparently we are left to decide he "just simply beat it" based on what the movie tells us.  Marisa Tomei is a therapist, Ernie Hudson is a cop guy. It's a whatever plot, basically Keanu is killing women and taunting cops, Spader pursues, it's the "cat and mouse" thing you've seen before. Made all the worse by terrible 2000s over done style. Honestly, again, it's an awful time stamp. 

From minute 8ish I think you'll know how this one's gonna go. And guess what? You're right. It doesn't shock or surprise. The Watcher marches along, straight down the line, average in every conceivable way, and chock full of stupid early 2000s choices. 

I'll give it a star I guess.

The Crazies - 1973

 Guessed the year without even a moment of hesitation.  

Elephant in the room time here, I got a new GF and she lives a ways away and even when I'm not busy with her I have not been in the mood to watch movies.  I had two entire months of basically watching only partial eps of MST3K, and now I'm finally watching some things here and there, even if it was only on in the background like this movie here.

The Crazies starts with it's alternate title of "Code Name: Trixie" and it was directed by George A Romero.  This film was in a way Romero's return to horror, after making Night of the Living Dead he did a comedy and a drama, and though this has comedy elements, it is mostly suspense and/or horror lite.  

The plot of this one is that there is a government leak of a new virus into the local water supply - a virus which either will kill you or make you go insane and start killing people.  It's sort of like an almost remake of the idea of Night of the Living Dead except with an explanation this time.  Mobs of people after the main characters either way, just one has an explanation and one did not.  

Romero was always trying to become a real director throught his career.  I'm not slamming him right here or anything, but you can see that for all his stepping into other genres, he never escaped the horror genre, and after about 1980 never did much else outside of that.  But one thing he did return to was comedy, firmly keeping that as part of this movies.  Which...  he regretfully didn't do well, as exemplified here.

It ain't funny.  I am not even totally sure it's supposed to be, except it obviosuly is.  Truly though, it is too dumb to be scary and not well written enough to be funny, so instead it's kind of just "there".  Tuning it off would be no fault of yours.  So, I'll give it like a 2.

Earthquake - 1974

 Continuing on 1970s disaster films, as started in The Towering Inferno.

I mention Inferno, and honestly, this movie felt a LOT like it.  Charlton Heston, big building in trouble, natural disaster theme, and lots of character drama in between - these felt like the same movie.  To the degree where I once fast-forwarded to see if it contained a scene I specifically remembered because I was actually for a moment thinking I had seen this before.  That is how familiar it felt.

Charlton Heston is Stewart Graff, a no nonsense character who is actually quite nonsense since he's putting up with some bitch drama queen alcoholic suicidal bitch wife.  The other characters are "I don't play by the rules cop" George Kennedy, Genevieve Bujold, Richard Roundtree and Marjoe Gortner.  Marjoe Gortner, despite a bad intro to him, I guess was a real actor?

Earthquake is basically the average disaster movie with a decent budget from the 70s.  A small quake hits at minute 35 and people are worried, but the Jaws-ish mayor character says there's nothing to worry about while science says there is, guess who wins?  Then the big one hits.  This movie takes place in LA and it mostly affects a skyscraper which is 40 stories high.  There's a line of dialogue, basically "this is why we shouldn't build them this high".  Buddy, if you only knew what was coming.

Heston to the rescue, Kennedy to the rescue, Gortner goes nuts and other people do other things as the movie evolves into a "crisis" level affair.  It's what you expect, and how many times have I said that?  I wonder when the next disaster type movie will come along?  I like them, personally.  However that said, this is lesser than Towering Inferno, and it feels like a unnecessary follow up, 2.5 stars.

Land of Doom - 1986

 There must be something I am missing that made apocalyptic movies so fucking popular in the 80s. There were kazillions of them!

Land of Doom reminds me of that movie Hundra I watched like a million years ago. If only cuz it was another female protagonist led, oldy timey sword and sandal whatever. I guess Conan the Barbarian influenced this as well, on second thought. 

So basically it's girl warrior teaming up with good guy to take on huge gang of baddies blah blah. It's post apocalyptic but also sword and sandal, and if you think that's original you need to watch more movies. 

Trying to remember anything noteworthy about it... Hmm. I literally finished it like an hour ago. It's already a grey blob on my memory. Who knows. 1.5 stars. 

Cult of the Damned - 1971

 Its slow at work and I wanted something weird or crazy on in the background. I put this on. 

The uncredited alternate name I came up with for this movie was "Things Happening: The Movie".  But as this movie kept going, and it dragged on as it really has a tendency to do, I downgraded it in my head to "Things Sorta Happening: The Movie".

This movie is some sort of wandering psuedo indictment of the rich. It has a fat girl (fat by 70s standards is probably under the average weight now...) with a gay dad and a cruel mom, and she begins to hang out with these annoying free spirited hippie types who give her drugs and make her feel sexy and accepted.  The guys are in a band and the lead singer starts seducing everyone. Along the way are "trippy" interjections and long, boring scenes. 

This was apparently written by some guy for his wife to star in, and if someone wrote this for me I'd probably fucking break up with them. 

I don't know what the point of it was or what it was supposed to be, but what it is instead is a giant waste of time. When the best thing about the movie is its creative newspaper collage opening, well, you know it's bad. No stars.

The Howling - 1981

 After two months of silence, I forced myself to watch something which would surely get a review posted.  It did.  And don't call me Shirley.

My grandmother used to record movies rented from the store onto VHS at home.  I know a lot of people who did this in the 90s.  VHS were expensive, and with just two VCRS (or one with two tape trays) and some blank tapes you could rip these movies off for relatively cheap, and very easily.  The crime was simple, and a lot of people took advantage, as well as of course recording movies and shows off of cable TV.

Anyways, we borrowed a bunch of VHS from time to time, and one of the ones I remember borrowing specifically had The Howling first and The Manitou second.  Now that I write about it, I wonder how and why this double feature VHS came to be, as well as I wonder specifically how we ended up with it.  Who chose to borrow this?  My dad is the clear candidate, and I wonder if he knew what this or The Manitou was, if he ever watched them, etc.

The Howling was the movie that got Joe Dante onto Gremlins, and cemented him as a horror director before he got later saddled as a kids film director, basically stemming from Gremlins.  Dante had done Piranha before this, and that was successful, but this was also successful and won awards and the effects especially got the movie noticed.  

The Howling stars Dee Wallace, Christopher Stone, Belinda Balasky, and oddly enough Robert Picardo as well as a whole ton of classic character actors like John Carradine and Dick Miller.  We begin with Dee Wallace as Karen being contacted by a serial killer and meeting him in a sleezy porn theater.  Karen works for the news, and is this guy's target basically because he's infatuated with her.  Once at the theater, he turns into a werewolf behind her, gets shot by the police, and leaves her scarred and scared, with a doctor's recommendation to take some time away at "The Colony," a creepy community with a scary secret.

I haven't said it yet, but given that we borrowed this on VHS for a long time, this was a childhood movie of mine that I absolutely loved.  I remembered every part of this, even the exact cadence and tone of some of the dialogue.  I watched this about 1000 times and it was my genesis of horror movie interest.  The script was rewritten by John Sayles, so there's a comedic and meta level to the film, it's a hair over 90 minutes, there's nudity, the vibe is fucking weird and creepy, and everything in this movie works extremely well.

I really love this movie, rewatching it I would say it still holds up.  It's a weird one, for sure, very unique and very tonally offset.  At parts The Howling feels like a 70's movie, but then other parts it feels exactly like a lurid gauzy 80's masturbation fest, so it bridges that line terrifically.  

I feel like I could talk about this movie forever, but overall what I love about it is the atmosphere, the B quality of it, it's full self awareness of what it is, and yet it is solidly backed up with acting and effects.  Nowadays, things lean into genres too much, and movies are seemingly not allowed to just be a little bit funny or off or horrific, they have to commit to things more.  I love that this didn't get roped into being just one thing, and instead it is multiple.

I cannot give this movie less than 5 stars.

Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night - 1987

 I've been following up a few of the random ass childhood movies I remember here recently, and this is one of the epitomes of that list.  (I'm going to call it Pinocchio 2)

A lot of these aren't worth rewatching. I'm sticking to the weird, unknown, offbeat. I'm sticking to those that sorta fit the blog. If ever an animated kids movie could be Grindhouse, it would be this one.  First of all, Pinocchio and Geppetto look different. The animation is not as good. The blue fairy looks totally different. Jiminy Cricket simply isn't in the movie, replaced by Willickers. 

The plot is another test of Pinocchio's moral code. He is a real boy from the onset, and it is his birthday. He asks Geppetto if he can deliver a shiny gold music box to the mayor, but of course he gets taken advantage of and the box ends up at the creepy carnival that's in town. Now Pinocchio feels it's his responsibility to get it back, even though the task may be more difficult and sinister than it first seems. 

Produced by the smaller animation company Filmation, Pinnochio 2 here is a weird movie.  The movie is not all over the map or anything, but it definitely has the 80's/90's aesthetic of being creepy and frightening at times.  The puppets and the scene where the evil cohort Puppetino turns Pinocchio into a puppet are super creepy as fuck.  There's also another nightmarish scene of Pinocchio getting drunk and warping into some evil universe.  It's pretty offbeat.

I have mentioned in here the circumstances which I've seen some of the movies under.  This one stands out again.  I broke up with my recent girlfriend, after 4.5 years or so we called it quits.  That was about a month ago, and this movie I watched with a new girl.  We'd been having some sex all day, and then putting this on, I'm pretty sure she thought in a not insignificant way, 'who the fuck am I dating?'  Pretty awesome.

Pinocchio 2 was a box office bomb and one of the last few projects made by Filmation.  It has gained a cult following according to Wikipedia, and I think it deserves it.  It's up there with the creepy animations that were so prevalent for a short time.  I love movies like this, and it sure left an impression on me as a child.  As I watched with Lindsey, I sang along to the last song, "You're a Star."  I had not seen the movie in like 20 years, but all those lyrics came right back to me.  

I highly recommend it, as a lover of the weirder darker side of animation. 4 stars.

Night Killer - 1990

 Different years for this movie exist on the internet, but one fun piece of trivia I found that keeps being repeated is that Texas Chainsaw Massacre was released in Italy under the title "Do Not Open That Door", with this movie then capitalizing on it and being named "Don't Open That Door 3".

Does that make this an unofficial part of the "Don't" series of films I was watching?  Does this make it part of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series?  Does it make it both?  I say yes.  Let's look at it through eyes like that, shall we?

Well, no, we won't.  But this movie is insane.  In the beginning of the flick, a modern housewife has her husband leave her home.  She immediately starts fondling her naked breasts in front of a mirror, and gets a obscene phone call from a killer.  The killer is in the house of course, and thankfully the rape scene is not shown but rather alluded to later.  The woman's reality is shattered, she hooks up with an abusive weirdo, and there's still a killer out there.

This movie is all sorts of off-kilter misogyny, full of weak exploited women and insane creepy men.  Night Killer was directed by the guy who brought us the infamous Troll 2, and it feels like it.  Not only that, but Bruno Mattei was also brought in to film additional gore scenes when the studio didn't deem it gory enough. 

Night Killer is a pretty fucking over the top experience, and the acting, the effects, the pacing, are literally all over the place.  If you wanted backstory about anyone, motivation, explanation, if you wanted this to make sense, please go look somewhere else.  This movie is wall to wall fun for exactly that reason though, and it will leave an impression on you.  

Night Killer is what became of the giallo style eventually, it got mixed with too much weirdness and amateur attempts at bloody horror that it got forgotten.  But these weird in between films are a fucking hoot, and honestly, this is one I'd watch again.  Ill give it 4 stars.