Recent viewings

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Horror at 37,000 Feet" (1973)
"Airport" meets "The Exorcist" in this fun slab of early 70s made-for-TV terror. Angry Druid spirits trapped in the cargo hold of a red-eye traveling from London to New York make it a flight from hell for a cast of familiar faces, including William Shatner, Buddy "Barnaby Jones" Ebsen, Chuck "Rifleman" Connors and Russell "The Professor" Johnson, plus a couple of hot stewardesses in thigh high miniskirts and go-go boots. Quality cheez!

[lester1/2jr]

freddy- went to see if it was on youtube. It is and theres also one called Mayday at 40,000 feet. decisions decisions

The Host - not my usual thing but a good movie, kind of like if Syfy channel had less ridiculous monsters and better and more original writing. Scientists dump old formaldahyde or something in the water and it turns into a monster thing. The main character is a man - child sort of guy who I a first thuoght was a kid but he's actually the one little girls Dad. He grows on you as does the rest of the cast. It's charming with a lot of comedy but never in an annoying way and of course theres also a huge monster. pretty cool 3/5

[dean]

freddy- went to see if it was on youtube. It is and theres also one called Mayday at 40,000 feet. decisions decisions

The Host - not my usual thing but a good movie, kind of like if Syfy channel had less ridiculous monsters and better and more original writing. Scientists dump old formaldahyde or something in the water and it turns into a monster thing. The main character is a man - child sort of guy who I a first thuoght was a kid but he's actually the one little girls Dad. He grows on you as does the rest of the cast. It's charming with a lot of comedy but never in an annoying way and of course theres also a huge monster. pretty cool 3/5

I still love the fact that they showed the monster early and in daytime.

[Rev. Powell]

BELLADONNA OF SADNESS (1973): In a medieval kingdom, a lord rapes a peasant woman on her wedding night; she later makes a pact with the Devil and becomes a powerful witch. This graphic, erotic, psychedelic anime was not shown in the U.S. until it was rediscovered in 2015. It's some damned thing you've never seen before: Saturday morning cartoons mixed with high art mixed with hentai, laced with acid. 4.5/5.

[Rev. Powell]

TOKYO DRIFTER (1966): Tetsu (Tetsuya Watari) lives the life of a wanderer when his boss Kurata disbands their yakuza gang and goes straight; a rival leader wants Tetsu dead and covets Kurata's real estate holdings. Broad swatches of vivid color (the important gangsters all have a trademark suit hue) and expressionistic sets highlight this ultra-stylized, operatic adventure that oozes yakuza cool. 4.5/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

With my 9 year old this afternoon...

"See Spot Run" (2001)
http://youtu.be/_IJYzzH7JcY

Cartoonish kid stuff about a dorky mail carrier (David Arquette) who befriends a large dog. At first he thinks the Pooch is a stray, but he's actually a escaped canine FBI agent, who's being pursued by a bunch of inept mobsters. Lots of slapsticky mayhem (ala "Home Alone") mixes with jokes about dog poop, dog farts, and dog bites in tender areas. Dumb as a box of rocks, but harmless.

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Exterminator" (1980)
! No longer available

This cult revenge saga stars Robert Ginty as a shell shocked Vietnam vet who turns New York street vigilante after his friend is paralyzed by muggers. Christopher ("Pieces") George is the NYPD officer trying to track him down.
In other words, this is yet another cheap, ultra-violent variation on the "Death Wish" formula, with a way bigger mean streak. The script and performances are negligible and the direction is occasionally klutzy, but the action is brutal and the late '70s New York mean street location shots are a vivid time capsule of the days when the city was a lot sleazier and scarier than it is now. Essential grindhouse viewing!

[Rev. Powell]

ANTIBIRTH (2016): A hard living party-girl finds herself pregnant, without remembering how. A druggie update of ROSEMARY'S BABY with a bit of surrealism and body horror thrown in; Natasha Lyonne is good, though not likeable, as the woman inflicted with a fetal virus. 2.5/5.

[Rev. Powell]

WOMAN IN THE DUNES (1964): An entomologist on a research trip is tricked into living at the bottom of a pit with a lonely widow, forced to shovel the sand that endlessly fills up the ditch. This absurd allegory for existential frustration and economic exploitation exhausts absolutely every grain of possibility present in its minimal setup. 4.5/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Exterminator 2" (1984)

Robert Ginty's back for another round as Vietnam vet vigilante John Eastland, flame-throwering the living crap out of a vicious New York street gang led by a suitably crazed Mario Van Peebles. Less brutal and more over-the-top cartoonish than the original (think "Death Wish 3") but still an entertaining slab of action trash.

[lester1/2jr]

Two Days, One Night (2014) - the premise of this movie was baffling and I never got over it. A women is laid off from her job at a solar panel company. The situation is she is to be let go and the other employees are to receive bonuses.  there is then a vote to either keep her on OR have their bonuses. She loses but demands a revote and with the support of her husband goes about meeting with all of the people to get them to change their mind. She has two days and one night to do it.

Questions:

1. What kind of insane Battle Royale esque company is this? Who's ever heard of a boss having employees vote on whether someone gets fired or not? or presenting them with the lose/lose scenerio of either essentially firing someone themselves or lose out on money they want/ need?

2. Why doesn't anyone suggest that she FIND ANOTHER JOB? or offer to help her do so

I don't know what the labor market is like in France but as an American this movie made no sense. It's just not how business is run here and the whole thing seemed ridiculous. If the boss made the decision to lay somebody off why would he bother having a vote about it? its his company


at any rate, the acting was good and there were a few surprises. When the whole scenerio wasn't excrutiatingly awkward it was sort of interesting in a "just for the sake of the argument" sort of way. I never was able to suspend my disbelief that this would ever occur though. at least not where I'm from

2/5

[claws]

Had me a George Chung triple feature of some sorts yesterday. George who? He was a martial artists who used to date Cynthia Rothrock in the late 1980s, resulting in acting in and directing a few movies:

Fight to Win (1987)

George is a member of a martial arts school out to find a stolen statue. On his mission he must fight rivaling martial artists (Richard Norton). Cynthia Rothrock is brought in to whip George back into shape and George eventually falls in love with Cynthia.

I didn't expect ending up enjoying this movie. It's not awful, rather corny but charming. George is sympathetic and likeable, and the comedy is silly but not painfully so. Other than that there is heavy usage of pop music and "MTV" style editing, showing George in training where he incorporates a bit of dancing as well. 3.5/5

Blood Street (1988)

Leo Fong plays a traumatised P.I. with martial arts skills, hired to find a missing husband. This one is set in a drug infested San Francisco in 1990, with Leo caught between two rivaling drug lords (one of them is Richard Norton who hosts cage fighting tournaments at his house).

Leo is a cool cat and probably one of the most underrated acting martial artists from the 1980s. This whole feature plays out like a Mike Hammer episode, except there's nudity and graphic violence. Even though the low budget shows with every scene this was still entertaining enough. George was the co-director and has a small uncredited cameo where he gets beat up by Richard Norton. 3.5/5

Hawkeye (1988)

George plays a super-cocky L.A. Cop from Texas teamed with new partner Chuck Jeffreys. Together they must track down Japanese mobsters.

Not only does Chuck Jeffreys look like Eddie Murphy, he also acts like Eddie Murphy. This pre-Rush Hour-esque Lethal Weapon type of comedy is too silly for its own good, and it certainly didn't help talking directly into the camera like Ferris Bueller did. It is still watchable but can get annoying rather quickly. 2/5

All three movies were self-released to video. Only Blood Street had a DVD release so far.

[dean]

Last House on the left 2009 version:

This remake actually caught me by surprise. It's not a great film by any stretch, but it was better than most remakes and starred an unusual amount of comedy actors playing serious roles.

Basic plot if you don't know: a gang involving 2 brothers, one of their girlfriends and a reluctant son are on the run after killing a couple of cops. These bad people kidnap and do stuff to a couple of girls and through a twist of circumstance find themselves at the holiday house of one of the kidnapped girls family's home.

Never got into the motivations of the 'killers' but if they pumped up the back half and trimmed out the front half [or just had the killers be a bit more awful more often] then I would have liked it more. As it is, the saving grace is a pretty decent amount of gore and a couple of potential victims who are actually clued in pretty early on as to their new guests intentions and generally handle it pretty well.

Solid 2.5/5. Doesn't seem like a good grade, as I did actually enjoy it, but it suffers from being a somewhat watered down, but classier version of the original so could've done with some more bite.

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Day the Earth Moved" (1974)

A pair of aerial photographers (Jackie Cooper and Cleavon Little) shooting pix in the Nevada desert determine that a massive earthquake is about to hit a tiny town in the middle of nowhere - but in tried and true disaster-movie fashion, the town's residents don't believe them till it's too late, requiring them to fly back on a last minute rescue mission. An entertainingly cheap, but ultimately forgettable made-for-TV movie that was obviously trying to ride on the coat tails of the then-current big budget flick "Earthquake!"

[FatFreddysCat]

"Screamers" (aka "Island of the Fishmen," 1979)

19th century shipwreck survivors wash ashore on an uncharted tropical island, which they soon learn is populated by former Bond girl Barbara Bach, a mad scientist, and a horde of mutant half man/half fish creatures. Waterlogged mayhem ensues.

Roger Corman's New World Pictures purchased this 1979 Italian sci-fi/horror adventure mish mash and subjected it to major re-editing (even shooting an entirely new prologue) before they finally released it in the U.S. in 1981. It's somewhat infamous for its misleading ads which promised that viewers would see "men turned inside out," even though no such scene occurs in the film. Schlocky, trashy fun!