A great example of a stupid, brainless 80's slasher flick but it's also an extremely fun film if you're in the right state of mind. Filled with nothing but stupid murder scenes, idiotic high-schoolers that you can't wait to see get offed, plenty of naked ass and boobs and a killer that somehow has magical powers that don't allow him to stay dead. It's really the perfect movie to watch as long as you've got plenty of beers or whatever substance you prefer. Features a young Brinke Stevens, who would go on to be in a ton of way worse movies including a load of unwatchable shot-on-video garbage, who looks lovely exposing herself gratuitously for the camera, a psycho-killer who looks(and acts) like Fuad Ramses from BLOOD FEAST and a gal with a T-shirt that says "Space Baby" who I imagine would be awesome to hang out with before getting your head lopped off with a power drill.
This movie was directed by a woman and written by a feminist and I suppose they were going for some kind of a spoofy-feel but to me it just seems like another dumb slasher in an endless line of similar flicks that never really took themselves too seriously to begin with.
"Every girl should be given an electric guitar on her 16th birthday."
I recall this movie playing a lot on USA networks Night Flight show back in the 80's. I also remember this film being sited by many of the riot-grrl bands of the 90's as one of their major inspirations and I can see why. It's the story of young girls from a shitty town who play punk rock and become stars for being voices of truth in the stagnant cesspool of male dominated rock n roll in the early 1980's.
The best bits of this film are in the first half. You see the awful environment our heroine(Diane Lane who was about 17 when this movie was shot) is raised in, her and her sister's(Laura Dern who musta been about 15) depressing home life. Living with their stupid alcoholic aunt after their mom dies in a burned out suburbia isn't all it's cracked up to be. From there you get a pretty unbelievable yet captivating tale of their collective escape from a typical boring American existence.
The parts where I thought the movie fell apart come towards the back end of the film where things happen really quickly and any believability that you might have had in the film is thrown out the window. It seems like their was a rush to the end and it shows in some badly edited parts that all the cult film fans seem to overlook in every review I've ever seen of this film. I also felt that the tacked-on MTV video ending(filmed a year after the rest of the movie) seemed totally out of place and was just added to give everything an uplifting finale which I guess your average 80's film-goer would have demanded. All this being said I really don't want to be too negative in my look at this movie since I feel it's totally worth checking out.
You get some catchy tunes, a chance to see a band made up of half of the Sex Pistols(Steve Jones and Paul Cook) along with The Clash's Paul Simonon and great character actor Ray Winstone as a sorta Johnny Rotten-impersonating lead singer. Also members of The Tubes appear as an old washed-up glam band and you get a quick scene with Black Randy And The Metrosquad, which were a really underrated LA band that, as far as I know, there's very little footage of. Under everything there's overt messages of female empowerment, individuality and remaining true to yourself in the face of greedy shitheels. If this movie is the reason that a bunch of females got off their asses and had fun making some silly punk music I'm glad it exists.
I've been trying to see this movie for a few years now and finally caught it in a theatrical showing last night. It was definitely worth the wait. The film manages to mix a revenge plot with a slasher film mentality and it does this with enough cheesy over-the-top elements that you never ask yourself how all these ridiculous murders and hijinks are going on with almost no parents or authorities being brought into the storyline to ruin all the action. No police at all are seen until the explosive finale.
I feel like movies of this type that show bullies getting what they deserve have such a high recognition factor with almost anyone who suffered through high-school that it's almost impossible not to enjoy them on some level. Except, of course, if you were one of the asshole bully-types depicted and then you're probably not watching obscure 70's cult films in the first place. Another reason I really liked this film is that there aren't really any good guys and I'm not totally sure who you're supposed to root for. I did especially like Robert Carradine's swastika-painting, hippie character Spoony but like everyone else in this flick he also had a selfish-jackass side that he had to be punished for by our homicidal, psychopathic loner main character.
Strangely enough while this is a mostly very silly movie it contains in it a very real political message about how when we remove bad people from power they inevitably get replaced by an equal or worse version of themselves. Power corrupts and all that. Of course any message is enveloped in a sea of violence, groovy vans and nude 70's chicks that makes this flick a great time for any fans of real drive-in/exploitation epics. Check it out if you can find it and I would strongly recommend the shitty film print that I saw it on for extra ambiance.
What appears to be a claymation dinosaur(who also sometimes just looks like a puppet-head) terrorizes a lakeside town after getting awakened by a meteor. You get a couple of stupid hillbilly characters as comic relief, a mostly incompetent sheriff, a couple of scientists and a bunch of throwaway characters that just serve as dinosaur food. Some scenes are obviously supposed to remind us of JAWS. It's weird that this came out in the late 70's since it would fit right into the 50's if it were in black and white. It was rated PG so there's very little blood, no nudity and really not much to offer to anyone besides fans of really cheesy stop-motion monster flicks or fans of redneck Laurel & Hardy impersonators. A bulldozer becomes the hero at the end. The director went on to do nothing else after this.
It's been my experience that, as a general rule, women-in-prison movies are always way more entertaining than men-in-prison movies. The male films though are usually done with a somewhat more serious approach. This Hollywood classic really only uses the setting to convey a tale of rebellion in the face of a hopeless situation. It's very noticeably a product of the 60's mentality and has a stark anti-establishment message. Most modern audiences would probably find the movie a bit slow, and it does drag at times, but it's a compelling story and a beautifully shot film to look at. You get Paul Newman eating 50 eggs in an hour as our loner hero. This was way before he started selling salad dressing and whatnot so he was still at the top of his game as far as acting goes. There are a couple of scenes which are supposed to remind us of Jesus for some reason or another. You also get Strother Martin with the famous "What we've got here is a failure to communicate" line as the warden, George Kennedy as the jailhouse bully, Harry Dean Stanton as the lazy guy, Dennis Hopper as the crazy guy(not much of a stretch there) and the dad from The Waltons amongst other familiar faces. There's also an unexpected gratuitous car washing scene with a very busty hot sixties chick that comes out of nowhere. Worth checking out if you dig the 60's classics and don't suffer from ADD.
This short film is part of a project of filmmakers that have come together to make movies about the future of American society. This one is about the life of a lonely plastic bag who outlives the human race. It proves to me that Werner Herzog could narrate anything and make it interesting. It's not all Herzog though as the film is beautifully shot by Ramin Bahrani who is a guy who has made a few of these artsy type films that I know nothing about. The fact that he could make you care about a stupid fucking bag is pretty amazing though and I would recommend it to anyone with any sorta heart which I think rules out a big chunk of the human race that I encounter on a daily basis. There's also an obvious environmental message thrown in there so if you dislike the environment don't watch.
Personally the fact that plastic bags take 500 to 1,000 years to decompose is probably not gonna effect my life all that much since I'm not gonna be around to worry about the mess and theoretically in the future isn't it possible that scientists will create some process for dealing with this problem? That is also assuming that the world is even still here by that time. All questions I'll leave to the pot-smoking philosophers to ponder.
A film that's been both hated and praised by feminists and critics everywhere. There isn't really any middle ground and I've had many arguments with various girlfriends trying to defend the virtues of this sleazy spectacle. To me this is the highpoint of rape/revenge films. Seeing this movie in a theater recently was an interesting experience. I recall Roger Ebert's original review where he said 42nd street audience members cheered on the rapists. While I didn't experience that I did realize there are a few funny bits in places that originally watching this alone in a dark room I didn't find all that amusing. The semi-retarded character of Matthew with his stupid Gilligan hat is just too goofy of a fuck not to laugh at even while the most horrendous scenes are unfolding.
I don't feel any need to go into a plot synopsis on this here since rape/revenge tells you everything you need to know. Yes, it's as simplistic as that but also as purely emotional as that. This movie disturbed me upon my first viewing back in the VHS days and I'll never forget that feeling no matter how many times I revisit it. This movie is supposed to disturb, that's the point that Ebert missed or disregards. This movie has a power that few films live up to and for that it will always be one of the best examples of a classic 70's exploitation movie.
As far as the remake goes, I haven't seen it but everything I've read makes it seem like they turned the revenge part of the film into an excuse for showcasing elaborate SAW-like traps which seems like a terrible idea. Our victim, Jennifer, wasn't a survival expert or an advanced engineer. She was just a writer, just a normal person who is brutalized by her fellow human beings and that's why we can relate.
A Japanese anthology film based on the works of weirdo writer Edogawa Rampo. Each segment was directed by a different person so it is a bit uneven. I can't say I found this all that interesting as it just seemed like something that was weird for the sake of being weird. Sort of like an Asian version of something David Lynch would do. BLIND BEAST was a far superior example of a film written by Rampo but that was made back in the 70's so naturally it was better. Breaking down the segments they include MARS CANAL which has a naked guy running around which makes no sense, MIRROR HELL: about a guy who makes mirrors that I guess lead to hell or something(this one has a crazy wax-dripping bondage scene that the Japanese love to throw into a lot of their more edgy movies), CATERPILLAR: this one is probably my favorite part. It's about a lady who chops off her husband's arms and legs making him a human caterpillar(she also whips him, slices off a nipple and gouges out an eye for fun). This part didn't really make any sense either but it almost sorta did. The guy was a war hero and I think there was some kinda statement about that but I may be wrong. Then there's CRAWLING BUGS which had an itchy crazy man who kills a chick and makes her into a work of art. At over 2 hours this whole thing is way too long to sit and watch in one sitting and far too pretentious for my liking. It was visually pretty striking and might appeal to the more artistically inclined who don't mind the more disgusting aspects of it all.
Out of all the Italian giallos I've seen this has got to be the one with the most naked flesh on display. It's chock full of euro-bush and borders on the hardcore in its display of sexy times. On the violence side it features a killer who kills with a large dildo or "kildo" if you will and leaves their victims very dead and very bloody in the crotch area. There's also one throat slashing but I think the abundant sex scenes make the movie seem more like a soft-core thriller than anything else. There's also a little dash of supernatural hijinks going on. The mystery aspect of the film isn't too hard to figure out to anyone awake but I do recommend this movie just for its sleazy appeal and very classy camera shots if for nothing else.
In the annals of bizarre 70's made-for-T.V. movies this one sits pretty high up. The basic idea is that Patty Duke(who starred in that silly show in the 60's where she played identical cousins) gets bitten by spiders when she was an infant and instead of getting super powers like SPIDER-MAN she ends up turning into a murdering giant spider-lady monster whenever the moon is full. The monster looks like it might have been made out of paper-mache but it roars just like RODAN so that's sorta cool. Our hero who's investigating these suspicious spider murders is Anthony Franciosa who would go on to star in Dario Argento's great TENEBRE. It also features a bunch of other familiar television faces including the mom from LOST IN SPACE, Pinky Tuscadero from HAPPY DAYS, that guy from BARNEY MILLER, that lady from KNOTS LANDING and probably a few others that I didn't recognize. This was directed by Dan Curtis who also did that DARK SHADOWS show that all the goth types love. While this is not a particularly good film on any level it does work as a silly B-movie and reminded me of a 60's Roger Corman monster flick a whole lot and is goofy fun.
Apparently Brazil has made some of the world's most bizarre adult films. This is definitely one of the weirdest ones I've ever seen. I'm not exactly sure who thought it would be a good idea to mix a porno flick with a midget vampire movie and who exactly that would appeal to but I'm glad they did it just so I can say I've seen a Brazillian midget vampire porn. I've only seen this in its original language so I may have missed some of the finer plot points but I'm pretty sure that doesn't matter. Basically you get a little guy with a cape running around interrupting sex scenes and sucking blood. Mostly vagina blood and sometimes from big old maxi pads which is pretty nasty. Our hero is played by Chumbinho who's also appropriately known as Fuk Fuk and he is a real creepy looking little guy which works great for this role. He's sorta like Brazils version of Weng Weng but not quite as classy as that little Filipino fellow. This movie steals all kinds of music from stuff like ROCKY and THE LONE RANGER and it's just chock full of strange scenes like the one where a chubby guy jerks off to pictures of horses. A penis gets bitten off in one blowjob scene thanks to our little bloodsucking perv and everyone in this seems like they need a good washing. Check it out for some unique foreign sleaze.
This is probably one of the shittiest, shit-ass werewolf movies! Right from the start it's just a boring voice-over narration that leads into a dull story mixing all the excitement of Washington D.C. politics with a stupid looking Wolfman in a suit and tie played by Dean Stockwell who would go on to be that fucking suave guy in BLUE VELVET. I imagine since this came out around the time of the Watergate scandal that it's supposed to be some sort of a commentary on that but it's all played pretty straight(except for one scene where our hero gets his fingers stuck in a bowling ball) that it's never really clear what the comment is supposed to be. On the plus side there is a midget mad scientist named Dr. Kiss and midgets always make things better. There's also a racist aide to the president who wears some killer shades that seemed like he woulda been a more interesting werewolf but sadly this was not to be. Also disappointingly our monster never wears that stupid Uncle Sam hat in the poster.
This is a pretty interesting documentary about gangs in the South Bronx in the late 70's. It was such a weird time looking back at it today since we're talking about a world before rap music and the whole hip-hop culture changed everything. Also if you ever thought that the gangs from THE WARRIORS were a complete Hollywood fabrication this film might make you rethink that a bit. Of course you don't get any Baseball Furies type silly gangs but the two groups interviewed, The Savage Nomads and The Savage Skulls, have interracial members which is something I had really only ever seen in movies like DEATH WISH and THE EXTERMINATOR before this. It's also extremely odd to see black and Puerto-Rican inner-city gang bangers wearing German war helmets and standing in front of swastika flags. It's as if their whole motif was lifted from 60's biker clubs and transported to a burnt out cityscape. The whole thing really just consists of interviews of gang members and a couple of reenactments of their criminal hijinks but it was a worthwhile look back at a time and place that I probably wouldn't ever want to be stuck in.
