Recent Viewings, Part 2

[lester1/2jr]

I watched a bunch of Crimson Ghost serials.



There are some decent, if a little overcranked, stunts and sinister vibes. It is, of course, also the logo for The Misfits, a somewhat venerated American rock n roll combo unit. If you can hang with Fu Manchu and stuff like that, check it out. (basically RC and no one else)

[Dr. Whom]

Back to the Future (1985)

Hadn't seen this since it came out and I was surprised how much I still remembered. It still is an object lesson in setup and payoff, and the main cast is giving a brilliant performance. However, I didn't enjoy it as much because I already knew most of the jokes, and for me they didn't work the second time round. That is just me, of course.
To think that Lea Thompson went from Michael J Fox to Howard T Duck.

[M.10rda]

She married a guy named Howard! He's the same joker who somehow screwed up the endings to PRETTY IN PINK and SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL in diametrically opposite ways. Lea Thompson has some questionable judgment! 

She appeared in the recent-ish DINNER IN AMERICA, still playing a "MILF" 35 years after BTTF.

[Rev. Powell]

RIFFTRAX: HAND-CRAFTED ARTISANAL SHORTS: 10 shorts, over 100 minutes, so a good value. Most are aimed at kids and look like their from the late 60s and 70s, with one b&w number from the 50s. This collection was released on DVD back in the early days of Rifftrax, when they were near their peak (they've declined lately), and I always think they do a good job on shorts. Laughed out loud several times, more than most of their feature work. Includes the infamous (?) short about grass, which asks the intriguing question, "is corn grass?", then never answers it (spoiler: corn is grass). 3.5/5.

[M.10rda]

Includes the infamous (?) short about grass, which asks the intriguing question, "is corn grass?", then never answers it (spoiler: corn is grass). 3.5/5.

Don't tell my students about this one or I'll catch them in the privy smoking corn.

[indianasmith]

THEY WILL KILL YOU (2026) - Saw this one in the theater tonight with my daughter.  A well done dark comedy with lots of gore and some fun twists along the way, slightly reminiscent of READY OR NOT but not a copycat. A young woman, Asia, recently released from prison, tries to track down her younger sister whom she'd abandoned. The sister, Maria, was last reported working at a super-private, ritzy hotel called the Virgil, so  Asia gets a job there - only to find the hotel's exclusive guests are a bunch of immortal, unkillable, devil-worshiping cannibals.  Mayhem ensues.  Deserves an Oscar nod for "Best use of a severed pig head!"  4.5/5

[FatFreddysCat]

"Cyborg 2: Glass Shadow" (1993)
A teen-aged Angelina Jolie made her film debut in this direct-to-video, mostly-unrelated sequel to the Jean-Claude Van Damme surprise hit. (The only connection is a few brief, random shots of JCVD's character shown on video screens.) She plays a human-like android built by an unscrupulous corporation, who expect her to self-destruct at a meeting with the competition. When she learns the truth about her mission, she goes rogue and runs off with her handler/love interest (Elias Koteas, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"). A variety of bad guys (incl. the always welcome Billy Drago, creepy as usual) pursue the pair across post-apocalypse L.A. as they try to reach the "free zone."
This cheapie sci-fi action flick is way better than it has any right to be. Angelina's action-heroine chops are already in place, and the the sets are pretty effective in a "dollar store Blade Runner" kind of way.
A 3rd movie was released in '95 with a different girl playing Jolie's role, but it was god-awful and can safely be ignored.

[Rev. Powell]

ROBOTRIX (1991): A female detective's mind is transferred into a cyborg body so she can hunt down the evil cyborg that killed her. This sexy ROBOCOP ripoff is silly and earnest, and delivers the nudity and robot kung fu that exploitation fans demand. Fun but forgettable. 3/5. This is as close to nude as Amy Yip gets---a bit of side boob---but the rest of the cast (even the male lead) goes full-frontal. That completes the "Supernatural Shockers" box set!

[Alex]

Anaconda.

We thought that Jack Black and Paul Rudd were playing themselves in this one, a la My Name Is Bruce or the Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, but it turned out not to be. Very few comedies make me laugh out loud, tending to just vaguely amuse me instead and this certainly wasn't any different. I did enjoy it, but I am very glad that we bought a DVD copy of it for £10 rather than renting it on Amazon for twice that.

Pretty sure it would have been a much better movie if they had just played themselves though.

[M.10rda]

NEVER TAKE SWEETS FROM A STRANGER (1960):
Hammer Studios produced this in Canada (presumably - at least it's set there and many of the actors are convincingly Canadian) and while it superficially appears like more of a social issue melodrama, it eventually reveals its Horror heritage. Two 9/10 year old girls play blithely while an elderly Canadian bald man leers ghoulishly at them from the window. Cut to the home of a British married couple and the wife's mum. One of the little girls - the couple's daughter - returns home and reveals that Creepy Canuck lured her and her little friend into his house w/ the promise of candy    then made them strip nekkid     and dance for him.     Mom immediately wants to call the police while Dad and Granny urge caution... they're new to "the neighborhood"/the country, after all, and don't want to make waves in the community.  WTF, right? Well, the bald man happens to be Dad's boss' father...

Unfortunately, Dad and Granny have the right [sic] idea, 'cause as soon as the family presses charges, they are instantly ostracized by their neighbors and the poor little girl is subjected to a brutal, infuriating (though realistic) grilling in a long mid-film courtroom sequence. Of course, the British family was right to press charges... as is eventually clarified in the film's final act. Wait, is this film suggesting that the U.K. is more enlightened than North America when it comes to prosecuting sex crimes against children???        (Quickly does the Epstein/Mountbatten-Windsor/POTUS math...) ...Okay, checks out!   

NTSFAS is well-made if a bit slow and obvious for its duration. Maybe Hammer intended it as its all-white answer to TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (which is very similar in structure) or something. What makes it worthwhile is the final 20 or so minutes, which take a nerve-wracking turn into NIGHT OF THE HUNTER terrain. It helps that the creepy old bald man looks like an undead Donald Pleasance and staggers bug-eyed after the little girls like Christopher Lee's FrankMon or Mummy. Honestly this loathesome kid-toucher might be the scariest of all Hammer monsters.

3/5    There is one thing that is more unnerving to me about this film than its antagonist. The two prepubescent girls have long hair and dress feminine; every other woman in the movie looks like sexless elderly mannequins. The British mother is clearly supposed to be 35ish but presents as 60+ and her senior citizen mom looks only a decade or less older. There appear to be no vital, sex-positive adult women in this version of Canada. So intentionally or otherwise (hopefully "otherwise"), the film projects a queasy binary for femininity: look like a museum exhibit and live, look like a pretty girl and be monster-bait. Actually that's a pretty common horror movie message but it's unusually stark here.

[Jim H]

The Hidden - hadn't seen this since I was a teenager, have to say I enjoyed it even more now.  Well-written, good action scenes, good effects, excellent pacing start to finish, and I gel with the humor of it a lot more.  Kyle MacLachlan is perfect in his slightly off weirdness. 

I am a little surprised by the ambiguity of the ending, kind of an interesting choice and I did not remember it.  That long hold with the daughter, what's going on there?