I've been putting these updates off. May I catch you up on this month?
TOKYO GORE POLICE (2008): Certified Weird! "With its bordello of freaks, fountains of blood spurting from decapitated heads, and sick jokes at the expense of our fragile human anatomy,
Tokyo Gore Police ticks off all the splatterpunk boxes; heck, it helped draw the boxes."
AT MIDNIGHT I'LL TAKE YOUR SOUL (1964): "A leather gloved hand bloodies a woman’s face, the same hands strangle a man in a bathtub, and a tarantula crawls over a bound victim, all while the wind howls and screams, moans and cackles echo in the background like a soundtrack for a Halloween haunted house. The opening impression is of a cross between a Universal horror and a grindhouse roughie; throw in a bit of Anton LaVey posturing, and that’s a fairly accurate description."
NIGHT OF THE HUNTED (1980): "In the opening, the beautiful amnesiac heroine, Elisabeth (Lahaie), has temporarily escaped captivity, together with a soon-forgotten companion—who is (inexplicably) naked. Robert (Gardère), a kindly motorist, picks her up and takes her—not to a hospital, or the police station—but to his bachelor pad."
THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE (1972): "...there are no pianos full of dead donkeys, but we do get an electrified piano used as an instrument of torture, from which cockroaches stream as the convulsions of the screaming victim create impromptu musique concréte-–an act for which the policeman responsible is first murdered by outraged student radicals (offscreen), and then condemned to return as a gory apparition (onscreen) every Bloody Sergeant’s Day (June 14th, if you’re thinking of throwing a party)."-OB
THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY (1974): "Buñuel gives us glimpses into situations that have no rational explanation whatsoever, and abandons them because any punchline he could possibly provide would be an anticlimax."-OB
LOSING LULU (Louise Brooks tribute): "Cinematically, Lulu was lost, but she returned, in advanced age, to write one of the most charming, erudite, and incisively brilliant of Hollywood memoirs: 'Lulu in Hollywood.' Her autobiography was a series of essays, written with Kenneth Tynan, revealing the actress’ shrewd assessment of herself and her image as an embodiment of sex and death."-AE
SEVEN CHANCES (1925): "News of our shy protagonist's inheritance leads to an epic deluge of wannabe brides pursuing him in a chase of mind-boggling comic inventiveness... Keaton literally seems to be a live action, stone-faced Speedy Gonzalez, fleeing foolish virgins and an avalanche of boulders (a justifiably famous scene that was improvised)."-AE
THE CAMERAMAN (1928) AND FILM (1965): " Keaton and a monkey sidekick (!) manage a daring escape. Naturally, the pretty girl winds up on our hero’s arm, even if she’s not much more than a mannequin. Still,
The Cameraman is a near masterpiece, and it is the last Keaton film worth watching with one strange exception…"-AE
FREE RADICALS: A HISTORY OF EXPERIMENTAL FILM (2012): "The doc begins with footage of the Chodorovs’ home movies: Super 8 footage of a normal looking kid climbing a tree and hugging his mom, except that the celluloid is folded and discolored in random patterns (a result, we are told, of a happy accident—the dog peed on the film). That personal history informs the rest of Free Radicals, and Chodorov’s preferences prevail: at times, he seems to be mainly interviewing his buddies (or his dad’s buddies), sometimes literally over a beer."
SAVAGE WITCHES (2012): "For a 70 minute experimental feature film, Savage Witches is highly entertaining, which may come as a surprise to audiences in the U.S., whose exposure to experimental film is usually in short form and viewed as something to be endured, like a visit to the dentist."-LRH