DRESSED TO KILL (1980)

I know most critics say that Brian DePalma just ripped-off Alfred Hitchcock for many of his films but having personally not really watched a whole lot of Alfred Hitchcock movies and having watched way more Brian DePalma movies this never really bothered me much.  Also having watched a lot of 70's Italian giallo movies I see a big influence from those in this particular movie(of course those movies have also been said to borrow from Hitchcock from time to time).  There's clearly huge influences from PSYCHO in here as well as borrowing the jump scare ending from DePalma's own CARRIE and also his trademark split screen shots.  Even with all the re-used elements I think this is a really great film made by a director who was still able to make great films(which is not so true anymore).  It's also an example of a film that takes its time and builds a plot unlike modern Hollywood which is all about rushing things and filling the screen with brainless/meaningless action set-pieces that add nothing.  This also has to be the classiest movie ever produced by AIP's Sam Arkoff.  Angie Dickinson looks very hot for her age(49) although I've read that her shower scene had some stunt nudity involved.  Having recently watched this on a big screen the way it was meant to be seen definitely helped me appreciate this even more. 

MEMORIAL VALLEY MASSACRE (1988)

Whenever I see the word "massacre" in a title I get a little excited.  You think I would know better.  In this 80's massacre/slasher flick you get a wacky caveman/Tarzan/Wildboy asshole who is massacring campers in a pretty crappy/typical film from this genre.  Biker movie great William Smith shows up as a camper but he doesn't do much of anything.  Cameron Mitchell appears for about 2 seconds and there's an inter-racial biker gang that is about as lame and incompetent as possible.  There's also a black Crazy Ralph character.  It also has elements which seem to be trying to rip-off JAWS with the ranger who must keep the camp open no matter what, the rag-tag hunting party thrown together and that stupid tag line on the poster.  Pretty much a waste of time and it doesn't even have a real ending.  Any of the FRIDAY THE 13TH movies is better than this(except for that shitty remake).

"What's the matter, don't you like speed-metal?":

HOWLING II: STIRBA- WEREWOLF BITCH (1985)

While the original HOWLING movie is probably one of the greatest werewolf movies ever made, this one, along with all 6 of its sequels, are not quite that memorable and range from mildly entertaining to downright awful.  This one is far from the worst.  You get Christopher Lee as a werewolf hunter who hangs out in a new wave club and wears a pair of silly punk glasses in one scene, a fellow werewolf hunting dwarf and Sybil Danning looking totally hot and getting topless for many delightful moments.  You also get a pretty terrible new wave band called Babel that plays a song called "Howling" over and over again.  There's also some awful rubbery looking effects and some silly gore scenes.  A guys eyes explode out of his head, a rubber bat monster rapes a priests mouth and a punk rocker has his hand bitten off in some memorable shots.  Throughout the film werewolves are given strange mystical powers that make no sense and the filmmakers seem to have confused some of their weaknesses with vampires so people use garlic, religious pendants and holy water to fight them.  The silly-looking wolf-persons also have boring orgies in which they writhe around and make pig noises at each other.  Only really enjoyable if you don't compare it to the original at all.

MR. MAJESTYK (1974)

If there's one thing I learned from this movie it's that you don't fuck with a man's melons.  In this 70's action classic poor Charles Bronson just wants to grow his goddamn watermelons but no one will leave him alone!  So of course this means Bronson must take on the mob, the cops and other assorted racist/hillbilly types that get in the way of him making himself an honest living.  This your typical yet iconic role for film's greatest revenge-seeking action star of the 70's and 80's and of course it all plays out exactly like you would expect but it's still damn fun.  If your a Bronson fan at all or just a fan of 70's revenge tales this is a must see.  Also if you're a fan of gratuitous melon violence this is the movie for you.  

MANSON, MY NAME IS EVIL (2009)

Having watched just about every movie and probably every interview ever with Charles Manson(I find the guy to be an entertaining son of a bitch!) I would have to say that this is one the worst film versions of the whole Manson case.  It mostly focuses on Leslie(hence the original title of LESLIE, MY NAME IS EVIL) and a conservative young juror who becomes infatuated with her.  There's not a whole lot that's factual about this movie except for the characters names and I'm not sure if you're supposed to take anything seriously since it fluctuates wildly from being a serious drama to being a spoofy/unfunny comedy.  I get the whole point about war being bad and religious conservative hypocrisy but it's all portrayed in such a silly stylized way that it comes off as a muddled mess of a narrative.  The 2004 remake of HELTER SKELTER was worse than this but not by much since this also has that direct-to-video/TV movie feel to it.  You get to see some hippie boobs here which gives this a tiny edge.  For a way more accurate(and way bloodier!) portrayal of the killings that ended the 60's watch THE MANSON FAMILY by Jim Van Bebber instead.

DEEP THROAT (1972)

Arguably one of the most important films in the annals of exploitation film making as far as pushing boundaries for what was acceptable in onscreen explicitness.  Also arguably one of the most profitable films in the history of motion pictures(hard to prove due to all the organized crime involved with its distribution).  This movie helped spawn the porn industry that was to follow and became part of the mainstream in a way no porn films really would after it.  How do you even judge a film like that looking back at it today?  The film itself is very silly and pretty typical of a lot of seventies porn.  The soundtrack music is great with it's absurd lyrics and funky style.  The sex scenes are fairly standard for the era.  One guy drinks some Coca-Cola out of a cup in a vagina in the weirdest one.  Star Linda Lovelace would go on to write a book claiming she was abused and forced to make these kinds of movies then she would retract that and flip-flop a couple of more times to make herself out to be not very believable either way.  Male star Harry Reems would get dragged into court on obscenity charges which seems completely fucking insane in retrospect!  Director Gerard Damiano(credited as Jerry Gerard) would get cheated out of making a fortune by people you don't want to question too much about where your money is.  There's a great documentary called INSIDE DEEP THROAT that tells the whole crazy tale of this milestone film.  While this is not the first hardcore type film ever shown in America it is the one that started the ball rolling and worth checking out just for historical purposes and 60 minutes of goofy sex thrills.



The Rialto Theatre promised the greatest film ever and it's hard to argue against that:

ONE DARK NIGHT (1983)

An evil murdering psychic dies and then comes back to haunt a mausoleum or something like that.  I found this movie really hard to pay much attention to since it was really dull for most of its running time and also very silly towards the big finale.  Maybe it's just dumb supernatural horror flicks I have a problem with or maybe it's the PG-rating that made me not care very much.  You get a weird cast consisting of Jennifer Tilly's sister Meg, E.G. Daly from PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE and Adam 'BATMAN West.  There's also a black girl who chews on a toothbrush throughout the whole movie for some reason.  There's also some sorta zombies towards the end of the film but they're actually more like corpses that the bad wizard guy just flings around.  A.K.A.= MASOLEUM (watch the other 83' MASOLEUM instead, at least you get Bobbie Bresee's boobs in that one)

LUNCH MEAT (1987)

If you were to make a list of the worst slasher films of all time this one would get a high spot.  The story of a family of insane backwoods cannibals.  Where have I seen that before?  Yes, if THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE was remade as a crappy shot-on-video movie in the 80's, complete with shaky cam and non-actors it would look a lot like this.  Instead of being hacked up for barbecue our idiotic heroes are made into hamburgers, also there's no chainsaw.  Porn star Ashlyn Gere, under an alias, gets the final girl role though the whole movie looks really ugly and none of the actors in this thing seem the least bit attractive or anyone you would want to see naked.  The original big box VHS of this goes for quite a bit of money.  Must be because of it's rarity since I can't imagine too many people actually liking this all that much.  Not much gore and lots of boring and repetitive chases scenes. 

An ass-load of retarded crap!:

THE STREET FIGHTER'S LAST REVENGE (1974)

The third film in THE STREET FIGHTER series starring Sonny Chiba.  As a martial arts movie this isn't the worst thing you could watch but as part of this classic series it is pretty weak.  The main problem is that they soften the character of Terry Suguri up too much and make him way too much of a hero.  If you know anything about this series it's that The Streetfighter is not very much of a good guy.  He's supposed to be a ruthless hitman for hire but not a secret agent spy with disguises or a secret hideout or any of that crap.  You do get some blood and boobs, the fight scenes aren't bad and you get that kick-ass theme song.  Not a complete waste of time but don't expect anything as great as the original.

CANNIBAL MERCENARY (1983)

APOCALYPSE NOW meets CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST?  That sounds awesome!  You don't really get that but you sorta kinda do in a cheap-ass Thai movie kind of way.  What you mostly get is a junky Vietnam war movie with a few bloody kills and decapitations here and there for the first hour and then towards the end our heroes get captured and tortured and the cannibal part of the title kicks in.  You see this Vietnam seems to take place in some kind of alternate reality where the war was fought by a handful of Thai mercenaries who take on the whole Vietnamese army also the Viet Cong are cannibals.  The movie is just chock full of weirdness.  For example our band of heroes keep getting pissed on, then one of our heroes inexplicable starts munching on maggots(I guess he was super hungry), then the torture starts and a guy has a spike rammed through his head and his brains eaten(his "brains" strangely look a lot like creamed corn) then a guy has his eyes ripped out and arm hacked off and eaten(his eyes also look like creamed corn) also one guy is named Bunion.  Blood shoots out like a sprinkler went off, you get kung-fu and gun-fu and some music from DAWN OF THE DEAD is played over and over again.  By the end our main hero is completely batshit insane with his Nam-flashbacks and after viewing this I can relate.  Check it out if you're into RAMBO or golden showers or creamed corn. AKA= JUNGLE KILLERS: THE JAGUAR PROJECT(which sounds neat) and THE MERCENARY(which sounds fucking dull).

I guess THE JAGUAR PROJECT is a re-edited version of this film cuz there weren't any white people with stupid mullets anywhere in the version that I saw:

BASTONI: THE STICK HANDLERS (2002)

A plodding, slow-moving, drama about two people in the Japanese porn industry and then it turns into a love triangle kind of a deal when someone's ex shows up.  I think some of it's supposed to be a comedy also but I'm not sure since it's all just really dull and uninteresting.  The only memorable scene has our main actress giving blowjobs to a line-up of guys at her wedding and then getting married with a face full of bukkake love juice.  Classy sleaze and you do get to see lots of hot nude Asian ladies in simulated sex scenes but it's not really worth trudging through this whole pseudo-student art film to see it.

Thong soccer!:

NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD (2008)

We all know MAD MAX and its sequels.  Some of us remember that giant killer pig movie RAZORBACK but this Australian-made documentary digs way deeper than that into the world of insane exploitation flicks from the land of kangaroos and psycho stuntmen.  You get tons of clips from great looking movies full of blood, breasts, beasts, kung fu and general mayhem.  Tarantino shows up to give his trademark super enthusiastic opinion and isn't overly annoying.  The coolest thing to me is the obscure titles they dug up that even a film junkie like myself has never heard of.  I definitely need to track down some of the slasher films shown. Also the behind the scenes shots of stuntmen setting themselves on fire and jumping off cliffs or doing some unbelievable car crashes is pretty amazing.  CGI probably coulda saved a lot of broken bones and maybe a few lives but of course it would never have looked this authentic.  This would probably also serve as good background visuals in a party situation.