Recent Viewings, Part 2

[M.10rda]

FFC directed THE CONVERSATION. Tony Scott directed ENEMY OF THE STATE starring Hackman and Will Smith. That's an almost great movie - its similarities to THE CONVERSATION made me want to like it more than I ultimately did (it is just a Tony Scott popcorn thriller, really). But Hackman delivers the goods again!

[FatFreddysCat]

"Transylvania Twist" (1990)
An occult expert sends his dorky nephew to Transylvania to recover an ancient book that has the power to "open the door to the other side." Wacky hi-jinks and lots of corny jokes ensue.
Roger Corman produced this cheap "Airplane!" style parody of horror movies, with lots of rapid fire gags, some hot girls, and even a cameo (via stock footage) by Boris Karloff!  Not all of the jokes land, but there are a few good laughs and leading lady Teri Copley (of TV's "We Got it Made") is pure eye candy. Goofy fun.

[Rev. Powell]

ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED (2022): Gallery photographer Nan Golden wages a protest campaign to get the names of the Sackler family (owners of Purdue Pharmaceuticals, developers of Oxycontin) removed from art galleries. There are really two documentaries here that work against each other, as flashbacks to Golden's biography (which might have made an interesting enough doc on its own) impede the development of the more dramatic story of the Sackler's culpability in the opioid crisis. 2.5/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Bigfoot" (2012)
A South Dakota radio DJ (Danny "Partridge Family" Bonaduce) and an environmentalist (Barry "Brady Bunch" Williams) must figure out how to stop a rampage by the legendary forest monster. As you may have guessed from the brilliant stunt casting, this is an Asylum/SyFy co-production. Other familiar faces in the cast include Sherilyn "Twin Peaks" Fenn and Howard "WKRP" Hesseman, and there's even a brief cameo by Alice frickin' Cooper!  Naturally, since it's an Asylum movie,  it's got a ludicrous story, shoddy creature design and CGI, and plot holes galore (why is Bigfoot King Kong sized, and how does something that big keep sneaking up on the puny humans?). Sometimes I miss the days when SyFy premiered a new creature feature like this  every Saturday night. Make no mistake, "Bigfoot" was terrible, but I enjoyed it anyway.

[M.10rda]

Sincerely sounds like a must-see!  King Kong-sized sasquatch? Sold!!!

[lester1/2jr]

Society (1989) - Wow, where to begin with this thing? I guess it's kind of like The Video Dead or Sleepaway Camp in it's off beat 80's creepiness, but when it was over I felt like I'd seen some very different and weird s**t. The very normal lead actor (sort of a a cross between Emilio Estevez and Michael J Fox) must have felt like he was in the Twilight Zone maneuvering his way through this teen comedy meets sordid conspiracy thriller. 

A popular kid in the wealthy suburbs of somewhere has a dark secret: his family are secretly aliens or something, or so he thinks. Things come to a head quickly as there seems to be some sort of plan in motion. He and his goofball friends struggle to connect the dots and figure out what the Hell is going on. Two very cute girls, his sister and his Jessica Alba esque temptress woman, help keep viewers involved. One very odd character is the love interest's mute overweight mother, who acts as demented comedy relief in some key scenes. I would love to know the backstory on her.

I've recently become a born again 80's fanatic and Society has quickly earned "Classic" status in the oddball outsider category. My tubi app was messed up on my roku for a few days so I watched this on Plex.

4.5 /5 I am not surprised to see that there is a documentary of some sort on this. The director did a couple of horror (Bride of Re-Animator) and one comedy (Honey, I Re- Shrunk the Kids or something) sequels later.

[M.10rda]

SOCIETY really frustrated me as a teenager but I should revisit it. Maybe (like WAXWORKS) it has aged well.

THE PENALTY (1920):
Watching WEST OF ZANZIBAR and MAN OF 1K FACES set me up to accept the theory that Lon Chaney was a legitimate Great Actor (instead of just a special effect), and THE PENALTY put me over the top. Unfortunately for Chaney he has to mangle his body in order to be allowed to deliver a tour-de-force lead performance in this, one of his earliest headliners. But I guess that only serves to demonstrate how motivated this poor guy was to do real acting...!  

As a kid Chaney is hit by a car and suffers a concussion, so his quack doctor naturally amputates both his legs.  Automatically one expects THE PENALTY to focus on Chaney's adult revenge on the doctor - but wait. First we need to establish adult Chaney as "Blizzard", the Jokeresque sadistic crime boss who runs his underworld empire with a kill-crazed fist. Absolutely no one f***s w/ Blizzard, even though he's four-and-a-half feet tall, tops (hobbling around w/ half crutches and little mini-peglegs). The cops want to break up his gang, of course, but every time they get a (female!) agent inside his operation, Blizzard sniffs 'em out and snuffs 'em! The clock is ticking because Blizzard has a master plan to take over the entire city during a riot of convicts. But what of the doctor! Oh yeah, he now has an attractive adult daughter who's a sculptress and has advertised for a model who resembles Satan so she can sculpt her masterpiece. What, teen feet tall w/ hooves and giant horns? Nope, as soon as Blizzard staggers in, the sculptress knows on the spot she's got her perfect Satan, and the viewer knows the film has its utterly implausible plot twist. 

THE PENALTY is 90 whole minutes w/ enough story to fill a 160-minute Christopher Nolan thriller. It's actually quite coherently and compellingly directed (particularly for a silent), which is good since the screenplay is wholly bonkers and can't keep the plot remotely on track on its own. Alas, the final 20 minutes or so take the story to an illogical and (worse) anticlimactic place. Ah, early cinema!

But, if there were Oscars in 1920 (there weren't), Chaney surely would've been nominated for Best Actor and should have won, too. (What the heck else was going on in Hollywood in 1920?) He's horrifying (because of his actions, not his body), he's sympathetic, he's magnetic. THE PENALTY is only A Thing because of Chaney. Watching him in wide-shot is hypnotic and appalling. One figures there's no way he could have executed the legless walking w/o extraordinary pain and injury. In fact, research shows Chaney was in agony onscreen and f**ked up his legs permanently w/ this role (though doubled down on its success and kept playing legless man roles  ). Apparently he could only do "the stunt" for a few minutes at a time - but he's onscreen like 80 of 90 minutes and often he's legless, so production must've... taken a while.......  Presumably he did all his close-ups/above the waist stuff while kneeling on a comfy pillow............

I've had surgery on both knees for "deranged meniscus" - the medical term! I did that to myself through "extreme stretches", tennis, and about 15 years of JFW (Jogging While Fat). Lots of mornings it's tough gettin' out of bed and up/down stairs. Never did I ever, however, do anything like the "extreme stretches" that Chaney does in THE PENALTY. Poor guy. Good actor, though!    3.5/5    But WEST OF ZANZIBAR is a better film overall.

[Rev. Powell]

SOCIETY is great. An 80s B-horror squashed together with an obvious but cutting satire ending in an orgy out of a Salvador Dali painting. Ragged, but that's part of its charm.