Recent viewings

[indianasmith]

My first movie of 2016 was a low budget Debbie Rochon flick called AXE TO GRIND.  An aging scream queen is phased out by her producer husband in favor of a younger, hotter replacement - so she ties him up, goes to the abandoned hospital where they are filming his next movie, and proceeds to make sushi out of all the starlets who got their roles by sleeping with her X.  Not great but watchable; Debbie will do her best with any role she is given, no matter how bad it is.  3/5

[indianasmith]

I continued my Amazon Prime Video spree tonight with THE HOUSEWIFE SLASHER - another low budget flick in which a group of bored, cheating suburban housewives are strangled and stabbed by an unknown assailant as two bumbling cops try to figure out who the murderer is.  Overall, for a microbudget DTV flick, this one wasn't too bad.  The women were cute, the plot had some nice twists, and one of the cop roles was pretty well acted.  3/5

[claws]

Fiend (1980)

An evil spirit (hand drawn animation inserted into footage) floats above a cemetery and reanimates the dead body of a (I think) musician who then goes by the name of Mr. Longfellow. The ghoul-ish musician buys a house in the suburbs, opens a music academy (with one employee) and teaches music in his damp and dark cellar. In order to prevent his body from deterioration he must inhale the lifeforce of humans. In other words, he must kill to survive, usually done by strangulation or neck snapping. The corpses pile up, and the police is investigating. Neighbor Gary is very suspicious of Longfellow and does his own investigating by snooping around on his property and asking uncomfortable questions. Soon enough Longfellow lures Gary's stay at home wife into his house...

Back in video rental days Fiend was one of our first exposures to crappy film making. I very much disliked this movie as I haven't found fondness for cheesy entertainment yet. Last time I saw this was on tape, so I went into this rewatch a bit excited. Basically it is your typical Don Dohler 16mm dungfest. On a technically level this C-movie is rather solid - but everything else pretty much fails. Poorly scripted and acted and not much to offer in a way of unintentional humor, unless you had a few beers to wash away the dullness of it all. Fiend bares strong similarities to The Demon (1981) and I think both would make for a rather, well, interesting double feature. 2/5

Curse of the Blue Lights (1988)

Seven teenage friends bored to death in their small town do what they usually do every weekend: hang out at the Blue Lights - a creepy place on the outskirts that comes with quite a few tales of the unexplained. Some say Blue Lights is where UFOs buzz about, others think its the dwelling grounds of ghosts. Either way, it is a supernatural hot spot of some sort located near a cemetery. Soon enough the bored teens find an entrance underneath the graveyard inhabited by undead ghoulish people out for revenge and ready to reanimate their devilish leader. The teens interfere with the help of a friendly local witch, and all hell breaks loose.

Cheap, but done with lots of heart and soul regarding practical make up and special effects. Curse of the Blue Lights still remains somewhat overlooked to this day. It's not great by any stretch but offers a bit more than your usual crapfest of the same kind. 2.5/5

[Rev. Powell]

COLOSSUS AND THE AMAZON QUEEN (1960): Two Trojan war veterans are shanghaied and sent to an island ruled by Amazons who treat men as slaves. This mythological epic as gender role reversal comedy is interesting (and amusing) for its quaint chauvinism. Typical dialogue: "It's not our fault if the two best-looking girls in town both want to be Queen." 2/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Superchick" (1973)

http://youtu.be/owmRNoiPxHo
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Brain-dead '70s T&A comedy about a mousy, brown-haired airline stewardess by day who turns into a free-lovin' blonde party girl by night, with a different boyfriend in every city. When she gets mixed up with some gangsters planning a mid-air heist, wacky hi-jinks are supposed to ensue but it takes forever to get to that point...

This is the kind of movie that was considered "racy" in the early 70s but it'll barely raise an eyebrow (or much of anything else) now. The eye candy's nice, but for a modern audience the humor comes mainly from laughing ironically at the corny jokes, the terrible acting, and the outdated fashions, slang and decor.

Useless trivia: "Superchick" is played by the late Joyce Jillson, who retired from acting shortly after this film to become a popular syndicated astrology columnist - who wrote several books and served as a "psychic advisor" to many celebrities, including former President Reagan!

[JaseSF]

The Holiday (2006): Amanda (Cameron Diaz) and Iris (Kate Winslet) are plagued with relationship problems and decide to go on holiday during Christmas, switching homes with British Iris travelling to L.A. and Californian Amanda travelling to Surrey, England. Both are hoping to forget the men who hurt them but inevitably end up in potential new relationships with someone new.

This was decent enough. There did seem to be a bit more focus on Diaz's character than Winslet's which never seems quite right as Winslet seems cast as the lead. Jack Black's character is cool but I feel we should have got to know him a little more and honestly I would like to have seen more of Winslet and a little less of Diaz. Jude Law does quite well here as Diaz's love interest. OK romantic comedy holiday themed movie but overall somewhat predictable. Did really love the cameos that pop up here and the mentions of Babara Stanwyck and Irene Dunne in the dialogue. ***1/2 out of ***** stars.

Christmas in Connecticut (1945): Speaking of Stanwyck, revisited this Christmas classic. Stanwyck steals the show as a modern thinking single woman who writes a popular food column in a magazine where she poses as the then more public friendly image of Elizabeth Lane - happy homemaker, farm housewife. However when a returning war hero and her boss decide to visit her on her "farm" for Christmas, she finds herself having to pose as something she's not hoping to save her job. However things take another unexpected turn when sparks fly between her and soldier Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan).

Stanwyck is so good in this one and the scenes between her and Morgan are great as are the sequences between her and her overbearing boss Alexander Yardley (Sydney Greenstreet) especially when she finally stands up to him. Also good here is    Reginald Gardiner as John Sloan, a friend of Elizabeth's who wants to marry her, even though she doesn't feel the same about him, and who she uses in order to pose as a farm wife. S.Z. Sakall also provides a memorable character here as Elizabeth's friend Felix, who owns a restaurant and is her source for fantastic food recipes. Stanwyck's the main reason this one remains so enjoyable though and it's become something of a Christmas favorite over time. **** out of ***** stars.

[indianasmith]

Continued my Amazon Prime viewing spree with THE BABYSITTER MASSACRE.  Again, virtually no budget with this one, but the acting was a notch above most of these films, and the twist ending was different and even caught me by surprise.  A group of babysitters are throwing a Halloween party to commemorate the death of their friend April seven years before.  Now the same masked figure that killed April is stalking all of them, and the bodies are piling up in a hurry. Who is he? What does he want?   Lots of gore and nudity, overall a pretty interesting little film. 4/5

[javakoala]

Continued my Amazon Prime viewing spree with THE CHEERLEADER MASSACRE.  Again, virtually no budget with this one, but the acting was a notch above most of these films, and the twist ending was different and even caught me by surprise.  A group of babysitters are throwing a Halloween party to commemorate the death of their friend April seven years before.  Now the same masked figure that killed April is stalking all of them, and the bodies are piling up in a hurry. Who is he? What does he want?   Lots of gore and nudity, overall a pretty interesting little film. 4/5

If you liked that, you should try "Cheerleader Ninjas". Very low-budget film with loopy humor that works often in spite of itself. Nothing major, but good to shift your brain to idle and just let it happen. Kinda like a far less gory, less aggressively stupid Troma film with a few cute ladies.

[Rev. Powell]

THE GUY WITH SECRET KUNG FU (1980): Two guys, neither of whom make any secret of their kung fu, fight a corrupt gang (and its demon/zombie henchman) in a Chinese town. Dumb fun with more attention paid to the ridiculous fight choreography than to Ji-Shang Lu's "sreenplal" [sic]. If you like chopsockies, this is one. 3/5.

[lester1/2jr]

I saw Elysium I don't really have anything to say about it except it was good.

4/5

[indianasmith]

Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I've seen CHEERLEADER NINJAS.

[javakoala]

Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I've seen CHEERLEADER NINJAS.

Keep in mind that there is another film out there called "Ninja Cheerleaders". It has a slightly higher budget, but only 3 cheerleaders who are ninjas, according to the description on the DVD cover.

[indianasmith]

The one I really want to see is ZOMBIE CHEERLEADING CAMP!


Anyway, tonight I chose another Amazon Prime freebie - this one is called AFTER SCHOOL MASSACRE.
It takes a spectacularly bad movie to mess  up the plot of six hot high school girls being stalked by a killer at a drunken slumber party and make it boring, but this one succeeds.  The dialogue is incredibly lame, the subplot about a girl who committed suicide at their last sleepover is both unbelievable and utterly pointless, and the victims are the most clueless bunch ever.  The psychotic history teacher who is the killer manages to off every girl there before the final one realizes that there is a killer in the house. Badly shot, blurry, and poorly written, the pretty girls are the only redeeming feature in this one. 2/5

[FatFreddysCat]

With my son this afternoon...

"Toy Story 2" (1999)

http://youtu.be/3VbOLGJZNWk
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Buzz, Slinky and the gang must ride to the rescue when Woody the Cowboy is stolen by a vintage toy collector who wants to ship him to a museum... in Japan!
The second installment in the Pixar saga is (as usual) fast moving, funny stuff with a great voice cast.

[Rev. Powell]

FANDO Y LIS (1968): Fando and his paralyzed lover Lis journey across a surreal post-apocalyptic desert landscape looking for the legendary city of Tar. Alejandro Jodorowsky's debut adaptation of Fernando Arrabal's play has some fun set pieces---a piano on fire, bowling dominatrices, a blood beggar---but is essentially a trial run for his more structured experiments in EL TOPO and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN. 3/5.