Helga, She Wolf of Stilberg - 1972

 I can't recall right off which of the Ilsa or other Nazisploitation movies I've seen. Some here, some there. Not tons, I'm not a weirdo. 

This entry isn't strictly Nazi because there aren't any but this is still very much ripping off Ilsa She Wolf of the SS and it's ripping off the popular Women in Prison films up to this point. 

These movies are super low grade misogynist Z types wherein nudity is not only present but featured in virtually every scene, sex is had, beatings are shown, and often lesbianism is hinted at.  The actresses are amateur, the plot is minimal, the language is dubbed, and the desire was to titilate the greasy blue collar men in the audience who drank cheap whiskey while they watched, hands going into their pants. 

Bygone era is what I'm referring to here, and it's a really interesting thing, man, to watch these bizarre 70s exploitation films of all genre. Torturing and raping women in a prison would get so cancelled in this modern day it's not even funny. 

There's also a strangeness to this movie because in a lot of scenes of whipping, beating, slapping, hair pulling, it's clear these actions were really done. These women were actually degraded and abused physically for this movie, and one wonders, was the $100 they got for it worth it? I wonder about the making of these kinds of things. 

All this aside, it's a generally whatever exploitation flick. 3 stars. 

The Vineyard - 1989

 I recall this movie all the way back from the days of video rental stores, cause I have certainly seen the cover for this movie before:

Scotch fixes everything.

The Vineyard is directed by Jomes Hong, starring James Hong.  James Hong is one of those actors who's in absolutely everything, I knew him when I was younger from Wayne's World, but then as I got older I saw him pop up in horror movies and Sci Fi movies.  He has one of those faces that's very unique, and he has a very noticeable presence as well.  

The Vineyard is a relatively tame late 80's horror movie.  Basically, James Hong is capturing young people and torturing them, then planting them in his vineyard and drinking some of the wine after science has been done to it (see pic above) to remain young.  We see his real age twice, like again above, and after he drinks the wine it restores him to his normal looking self.  People come to the vineyard to see what's happening there, and they begin to uncover his secret while in the meantime he is hunting them to remain young.

Something about this was kinda just....I dunno, mild.  Don't expect a lot, that's for sure.  There's nudity, and the effects are pretty good, but something with the momentum left one wanting more, and none of the characters are very interesting.  I just realized there's barely a lead character in this, and its not just because we spend a lot of time with Hong.

Probably super low budget, there's not like there's endless things to complain about, it just sorta is there and then it's not.  I've always wanted to see it, so maybe I had built it up a bit in my head.  I'll give it a 2.5.

Dagon - 2001

 I watched a bunch of Brian Yuzna and Stuart Gordon movies early on in this blog, and I really liked the Re-Animator series and Society and even The Dentist and other stuff they've done.

These two are a good selection of an unknown favorite because while they may not blow any one thing out of the water, they're above average in the low budget lesser-known side of things.  They have a nice comedic timing and great effects, and the movies are minimal in scope so are often more fun than those that overreach.  These guys know what kinda movies they're making, and that's ok.

Dagon is based on HP Lovecraft stuff, which almost instantly makes it contender for best HP adaption, cuz most of them pretty much suck.  I might've read this HP book, or not.  I read a 800-something page collection of his works, and I don't fucking remember.  

In Dagon, a group of young people accidentally comes to a small fishing village when there's stormy water.  Two of them, Paul and Barbara go to shore and Paul goes back to get the others on the boat to find they're no longer there.  Then when he gets back to the village, Barbara is gone, and he's off to look for her.  That night, a crowd of crazy fish people descend on him from everywhere in the village, eager to sacrifice him to their crazy fish god Dagon.

In short, this movie is what you need it to be.  It's fast paced enough, dumb and whatever while not being trite.  The main guy Paul is alone for the vast majority and it well acted enough to pull it off, and there's occassional nudity and other fun stuff to keep you from checking your phone.  

This, like a lot of their stuff is well done B horror, and it need not rewrite the book, just have a great chapter.  I give it a above average 3.5, though for it's ilk it's like a 4.

Paganini Horror - 1989

 I was going to do Paganini, a different 1989 film starring and written by Klaus Kinski, I got it confused with this movie Paganini Horror, and got about 20 minutes in before I realized my error when I wondered "where the fuck is Kinski in this movie?"

Kinski in part made yesterday's blog post Vampire In Venice so he could get his Paganini biopic made, and he made that in 1989.  I believe I read about Vampire in Venice that Kinski collaborated with Luigi Cozzi on Vampire in Venice a bit, and it seems shared with Cozzi about his Paganini idea.  Cozzi then turned around and made this movie, Paganini Horror, probably at the approval of Kinski...  or maybe just without, I dunno which one is wonkier and funnier.

Paganini Horror is a late 80's, MTV influenced, over top late Cozzi film.  Cozzi is still alive and made a movie in 2020, and I'm interested in looking it up some day soon and seeing what his recent output is like.  This one is extremely indicative of the time, it's flashy and showy and insane, it's dumb and fun, and short of not having any nudity it's overall trash-o-rama.

In the beginning of Paganini Horror, a little girl plays a song by Paganini, then goes and kills her mom.  This piece of music is cursed, and then 80's pop star Sylvia gets it because her bandmate buys it off Donald Pleasense they're gonna play it and open up the horror.

The movie takes a while to setup, and there's not a clear payoff at all, I will say.  There's not a lot of bodies, blood, guts, kills, monsters...there's sorta no thrills or scares in the movie.  In fact, once the song is sung nothing basically happens except a hole in the ground exists which sorta leads to the devil or whatever.  This movie was sorta dumb come to think of it.

I dunno, it has some fun and 80s kitsch.

Vampire in Venice - 1988

 I'm a renowned Klaus Kinski fan, and as I watched this movie with a whiskey in hand this morning I thought to myself:  "Ya know, a person could do a lot worse than watch every Klaus Kinski movie."  Maybe.  Life goals, eh?

Vampire in Venice had a very troubled background, and would certainly get many people cancelled today.  The Kin-ster famously had mental health problems which manifested later in his life, and he was accused of sexually harassing and basically raping a couple women on this set.  In addition to that, he took over the production, refused to do reshoots, took over the lighting setup, and rewrote the film dialogue.  It's worth reading about if you're a fan of that kinda stuff.

Kinski stars as Nosferatu in the sequel to his 1979 film with Werner Herzog.  A group of people are in Nosferatu's realm and uncover the fact their family has been haunted by him for a few generations.  Nosferatu is now seeking death, but he's not going to give up easily.  It is said many times that the only thing which can kill him at this point is being loved by a virgin woman.

The movie works well in certain ways, and meanders along in others.  It doesn't have a strong drive in any way, sorta wafting about between scenes with no sense of progress being made.  In that way it achieves a certain atmosphere of aloof despondence, and honestly that sorta works for this flick.  Balanced by some occassional kills usually by way of brutal looking garden fences, overall I'd say it works, it's just off and or unusual in it's tone.

In short, it's nothing hugely new novel or even all that nifty, it's just another vampire movie, helped by Kinski in his weird enigmatic charisma, and like I said, you could do worse than watch all his movies.

It Follows - 2014

I'd been wanting to rewatch this movie in recent weeks and asked my friend if he wanted to watch it with me.  He expressed no interest, so I rewatched it alone last night.

It Follows has changed the horror scope a bit, and I've heard it referenced as one of the early films that brought on the phase we're in now, which is being commonly accepted as "elevated horror".  This, The Purge, and some others came out, and began a trend which led to Ari Aster and Jordan Peele and few other people, but mainly it seems A24, which is doing a bizarre mix of elevated horror and total shit such as the new Halloween films

It Follows was recommended to me by my wife's coworker, and I remember watching this for the first time in 2015 or 2016 with my wife of the time, saying yeah, sure, that was good.  I get it.  

Then, I promptly forgot about it and didn't give it much mind until the last few months when whatever I was listening to mentioned it.  Now, elevated horror is fine, and I am welcoming it bringing horror into a more mainstream audience sight, but also it's return to slow burn, more psychological and character based horror ideas.  I am not going to trash it, I think it's fine.  Is It Follows elevated?

Yeah, I would say so.  The story is more character focused, following one heroine and delving into her life and character.  It is slow burn, with very few jump scares, and rather having the emphasis be on trope-averting scares, but still some cool genuinely creepy stuff.  

Plotwise, the idea is that our young heroine has sex with a new guy, he ties her up, and warns her that he didn't mean to hurt her, but there is a awful thing he gave her.  There's these creepy people that are coming for you.  Only you can see them.  If they get you, they'll kill you.  And the only thing it seems to be done about this is to have sex with someone else, which passes the curse (or the STD, basically).  

Like I said there's some good stuff in here, some cool moments and tense build.  The main character manages to show proof of what's happening to her to a small group of friends and they try to fight back or evade the curse.  The "followers" after her are a cool, threatening, but subdued idea.  They're all played the right way, and I'm frankly surprised there wasn't a sequel to this in a way.  It would be very easy to redo this.

I'll give it a 4, I think it's a fun new idea, original, and well executed.

Dogs - 1976

 A long time ago in a post I don't remember I talked about wanting to watch animal attack movies, and I name dropped wanting to see this movie.  I never watched it.  Til now.

I put this on during a rather slow day at work and watched animals killing people while I was waiting for something to do.  Friends, this is what I do with my time.

Dogs stars David McCallum, Linda Gray and George Wyner.  Dogs is a couple years after Jaws, and likely about 20th in line to capitalize on the animal attack idea after Jaws, and basically follows a group of peeps in a small town where due to unknown reasons the dogs start to attack and kill people.  

This movie is pretty much whatever.  The Dogs are made to look ok, but you can tell its tricky camera editing and a few highly trained dogs and handlers.  The rest is mild tension and character shit, as random Scottish cop David McCallum dresses in all denim and wanders around this town.  

I mean, it's fine.  Ebert gave it zero stars.  I appreciate that.  But it's not like it's rewriting the book on a bad film, it's just dull and uninspired.  It can at least have a 1.5 though.

Demonia - 1990

 Whatever happened to these crazy giallo Italian flickmakers like Bava, Argento, Castellari, Fulci?  Well, sadly, a lot of them are dead.  What were there later films like?

Demonia is near the end of Fulci's career, I think about 10 years before he died.  I'm not going to google it again, you figure it out.  Fulci had been away from a big hit for a while, and had a few TV made movies around this time, was basically circling the drain of life man.

Demonia is a harkening back to the OG films like this.  It's straight-forward, badly acted, and ridiculous.  The effects are so bad they're good, but really, quite bad.  There are these awful patches that are placed on actors, so it's obvious where the blood's gonna spurt out from.  Then, the film quality is good enough to show how bad the blood and guts look...  it's pretty great.

Plotwise, I mean who knows and who cares.  Some nun demons are brought back from the dead and are after a few people, That's about it.  

I didn't pay strict attention, nor should you.  I'll give it 2 stars.

The Man from Earth - 2007

 I remember discovering this movie about 7 or so years ago by reading about Star Trek authors Harlan Ellison and Jerome Bixby. I clicked on them to see what else they'd made. The Man from Earth? Boring name. 

I rented this on a whim expecting nothing, and was frankly blown away. This movie is extremely minimal, low budget, amateur, and has bad film quality. But what it involves, what is takes you on, now that is where it shines. 

The film evolves through only dialogue. A group of friends are seeing their friend off as he leaves town, going to his house and pestering him with questions about why he is going. He eventually gives and his story starts. 

I explained to my gf who I was watching it with, mild spoiler, the movie is basically: what would it take for someone to convince you they are immortal? This is the plot. The friend has been alive thousands of years, and begins to convince the others of this. 

What's amazing is first and foremost the writing. They address everything you could think of, and many things you couldn't. It's written with knowledge of history, religion, mankind, morality, pain, love, existence and existentialism. It goes into what someone would learn, how memory works, what we hold as valuable. And so much more. 

The Man from Earth is a spectacle not like many others, a film that poses questions and makes bold statements using the medium of minimalism to do so. I wish more like this existed. 5 stars. 

The Devil's Rain - 1975

 I mistyped the year as 2975.  Wouldn't it be cool if in some weird alternate universe, a sequel to this movie was made 1000 years later in 2975?  I know in this world supposedly anything can happen, but I guarantee that will not.

The Devil's Rain is a pretty well known cult movie again.  I'm obviously watching some horror since it's October, one week til Halloween, and no I have not decided yet what to watch on Halloween night.  

William Shatner, Tom Skerritt and Ernest Borgnine star in this accidental Ernest Borgnine double feature I had (with Escape from New York).  The movie is about a group of Satan worshipers that William Shatner infiltrates, I don't remember why.  He has only his religion to help him against the cult, and as he witnesses their Satanic mass and other stuff, he can't help but be pulled into their world.

This movie is well known for starring Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan, and he is in a small role in the movie as well.  The existence of real, modern world Satanists and the troubled "cursed" production made this well known as well, but it was also a bomb and got panned by critics.

The Devil's Rain isn't like, blowing up and changing Satanic movies as we know them or anything.  By this point in 75, some crazier shit had been done, and some crazier shit would be done still.  This is just, ya know, another bump on the log, link in the chain, and it is what it is basically.

I might have watched this before, if I did I didn't remember it, and that's possibly cause it's not very memorable.

Escape from New York - 1981

 I put this on for my girl, who fell asleep about 20 minutes in.  I stuck with it, it had been a few years, and I have to say, what a strange one huh?!

This is a true cult movie, one that has stood the test of time and remains a true enigma as well as a true classic in the realm of films.  Escape from New York, like a lot of Carpenter films, was not a movie I grew up with by any means.  If memory serves me right, I had probably only seen the original Halloween, maybe like Vampires and one other or so by the time I was in my late teens.  It just wasn't in my line of sight for some reason.

Whatever the reasoning may be, the movie Escape from New York is something else.  One thing, my girl as I may have mentioned does not like horror movies, and as I started this, I told her don't worry, it's not horror.  It's not.  But as I kept watching, I started to grapple with the question, what genre is this movie?  The easy and quick answer is action - but is it?  There's action sequences yes, but it's not that actiony.  It is the genre that used to exist and doesn't now, adventure, but even then, it's very minimal in that way as well. 

Escape from New York is essentially a thriller, in many ways.  Again, it's genreless...  But it's about Snake Plisken getting sent to the current anarchy prison state that is New York City, where he is to rescue president Donald Pleasense, who's hamming it up big time as a highly disturbed British United States president.  Love it.

Along the way, Snake fights with some locals, meets locals like Cabbie, Brain, The Duke, and he encounters other obstacles.  Snake is played by an incredibly hot and alluring Kurt Russell, who is a bad guy with a good heart in Snake Plisken.  

The movie is nearly flawless, and I've seen it many times.  There's a lot of cool things about it, but I'm not going to go on and on and on here.  If you're a film guy, you know, so there' not a lot left to say.  I'm just going to voice in and say I agree, it's five stars.