Being laid up with a "whopping case of the flu" (I think those were the Navy doc's exact words) made my choice of what to do simple: drowse and watch movies. Did a lot more of the prior activity than the latter, but it still provided food for thought.
The Wicker Man
I had only heard of this movie before and looked forward to the special edition DVD. The singing almost got on my nerves, until I realized it was used so often to imply the island inhabitants' penchant for simple pleasures and ceremony. Then everything fit right in and I started the movie over to get it right. What the ending would be exactly was unclear to me until very close to the finish, so that was quite enjoyable. For those unfamiliar with the story, here goes:
An English police officer flies to Summerisle to investigate the report of a missing girl. The inhabitants are not helpful and, at first, deny that Rowan ever existed. Even the mother! When the officer finally discovers proof of the girl attending school more strangeness crops up, with people saying she turned into a hare or other nonsense. Meanwhile, the Christian Englishman is horrified by various Pagan rituals he witnesses on the island. This is a neat mystery/thriller.
Rats: Night of Terror
David Emery (many thanks to him for all he does to help me with the site) has been after me to see this film for a long time. The DVD finally arrived and seeing people have buckets of live rats dumped over them, time and time again, is actually pretty funny. Almost three centuries after nuclear war devastated Earth a small gang finds a research facility. Inside are hydroponics, potable water, and gnawed corpses. Near the end of the movie they find a voice recorder and the (at that point) survivors must have been thinking, "Why couldn't we have found this yesterday?"
Laser Mission
Are they in Cuba or Africa? Who ever thought that Ernest Borgnine could carry that accent without making the audience laugh? How do the assassins keep finding them in the middle of the desert? Is it just me, or does her thigh holster appear and disappear at random? Last, but not least, the main bad guy has more lives than Jason or Freddy Krueger.
Andrew
Yeah, alot of people REALLY liked the Wickerman and though I liked it I didn't think it was all that and a bag of chips. The music that was not apart of the scene (the folksinging done on camera) really got in the way of me being able to get fully engrossed in the film. Otherwise it was well done for the time period and budget. I never thought I'd see the day Mr Lee would sing, dance all in drag! LOVED IT! And the ending was wonderfully morally ambiguous.
THE WICKER MAN is one of my all time favorites. The more you watch it the more you'll get out of it. There is a lot of terrific symbolism and foreshadowing that goes on. I bought the Anchor Bay special edition DVD in the woodcut box that has both the theatrical and extended cuts of the movie (the latter is the better), and haven't regretted the investment for an instant.
There's a spoiler-free review on my site if anyone is interested:
Review of THE WICKER MANBe very careful of what you read about this film before you see it. You definitely don't want it spoiled for you.
I was laid up in the hospital a few years and got a friend to rent a bunch of my favortie sci-fi flicks for me. You have not seen "Aliens" until you've seen it on morphine! Highly entertaining.
There have been multiple times I've contemplated buying the wicker man but I've always found other movies to get first.
Rats is truly a horrible film from what I've heard. In several parts in Rats they actually used Guinea pigs painted in rat shades. It was made by Bruno Mattei who also did another one of your favorites Andrew, "Night of the Zombies" lol and Zombi 3 (Anchor bay released Night of the zombies as Hell of the Living dead with rats recently) Mattei is a master of crap movies. I have the hell of the living dead dvd and I think he mentions he has done around 80 films, many of which I'm sure I would never want to see.
Rats: Night Of Terror on DVD? There is a God.
Definitely a guilty pleasure of mine, and probably my favorite of the post-apocalyptic genre.
Witness the fake rats on a treadmill!
Feel Kurt's wrath as he puts his friends out of their misery!
Cower from the room with the red light! IT'S FULL OF RATS! TRUST US!
I'm all misty.