Recent Viewings, Part 2

[Senor Citizen]

Blind date (1987)

I remember watching this many times at 80 & 90s and haven`t seen since.

And now that I have seen it...I love it.
It was so Blake Edwards-humor all the time. If your old, give it a watch.

[jimpickens]

Expendables 4 is more like watching a cheesy made-for-TV or cable movie than a big budget action movie

[FatFreddysCat]

"Return to House on Haunted Hill" (2007)
Two rival teams of treasure hunters enter the abandoned insane asylum to search for a priceless artifact hidden somewhere in the building. Naturally, the spirits that haunt the place don't  take kindly to trespassers, and spooky mayhem ensues.
Direct-to-video sequel to the 1999 flick has some decent effects but otherwise it's pretty flat, predictable stuff with none of the atmosphere or style of the previous movie. Skip it.

[M.10rda]

Blind date (1987)

I remember watching this many times at 80 & 90s and haven`t seen since.

And now that I have seen it...I love it.
It was so Blake Edwards-humor all the time. If your old, give it a watch.

I like how you framed this one in terms of generational appeal.

I recall being in 6th grade iirc and having a "young" (25-30yo?) and attractive female teacher (...all the boys liked her...) who told us one day about taking her nephew to see this one and being mortified about all the "bad language", and thus urging us (her students) to avoid it. I'd already seen it with my parents and I thought it was a riot. I must admit that this teacher's negative review impacted my admiration for her! 

Never revisited it but I still think of the one Willis/Larroquette moment and chuckle: "Moon walk! [...] I hate that!!!"

[M.10rda]

HOLLYWOOD AFTER DARK aka WALK THE ANGRY BEACH (196?):
This (figuratively and sometimes literally) dark melodrama unites the director (John Hayes) and star (Tony Vorno) of one of my favorite obscure horror/thrillers of the 60s, HELP WANTED FEMALE, a real weeeeird MULLOLLAND DRIVE kinda' joint that is a lot more fun than the film I'm currently reviewing. HOLLYWOOD AFTER DARK also co-stars Rue McClanahan, "the hot one" from TV's "Golden Girls". To be fair this movie was shot roughly 20 years before "Golden Girls" debuted, so Rue (who showed up in some other nudie-cuties as well) still looks presentable, though it's depressing to consider that I'm now almost the same age that one-half of the "Golden Girls" were when I thought they were a bunch of elderly women in the mid-80s. I digress!

Chronology does seem relevant to a conversation of HAD, however, as I've seen the film variously dated as "1961", "1964", and "1969". (That last one seems fishy, though HELP WANTED FEMALE has a confirmed 1968 vintage.) Hayes and Vorno reportedly had to complete shooting over some span of years, and Vorno visibly ages/regresses and gains/loses weight from some scenes to others. Additional confusion arises from the two heavies offering Vorno a time-sensitive job in the first scene, as a cover for another (bigger, less legal) time sensitive job that is supposed to occur within a week or so. Cut to the next scene/sequence and Vorno is working at the "cover job" but he looks different and the dialogue seems to indicate that he's been working at that job for months or years - in any case, a loooooooong time. But by the film's climax, he's doing the real job that was discussed in the first scene, so only a week or so has passed!  This is classic bad movie shenanigans of the kind often seen in the "exquisite corpse" assemblies committed by Al Adamson, Jess Franco, and Godfrey Ho....... but also David Lynch in MULHOLLAND DRIVE, so hey....... 

Anyway, Vorno has a desk job at a burlesque joint where McClanahan is the newest recruit. He tries to convince her not to take the job, then when she persists, he (rather alarmingly) goes ahead and puts the moves on her. They go to the beach for a weird day-date (hence the film's alternate title) and then Vorno accompanies aspiring actress McClanahan to an "audition", ostensibly to protect her from other creeps besides himself (he fails). Then things get even more depressing for the desperate de facto couple.

HOLLYWOOD AFTER DARK isn't as special as HELP WANTED FEMALE but it has some commendable points. All the best and snappiest writing is in the long first scene, so that grabs your attention quickly. The three strip routines (all probably shot separately or borrowed from other sources) are actually nicely shot and performed (which is to say "not boring", as often is the case), occasionally arousing, and (most importantly) they kinda' help tell the story and establish the stakes of the sordid lifestyle from which Vorno says he wants to protect McClanahan. Significantly, those two actually have chemistry... realistic, depressed chemistry, but still chemistry. And Vorno has one excellent moment of acting early on, where he tells a story about a girl waiting on a street corner and the emotional climax is so startlingly intense and authentic I thought I was watching a real movie for a second! 

3.5/5
Making sense of how this film was shot and edited is a fun mental puzzle. My hunch would be that all the McClanahan stuff was shot first and all the crime stuff much later, but it's possible McClanahan came back years later to shoot the dimly lit finale. This is what I distract myself with when I should grade or plan lessons!

[Rev. Powell]

I've only seen HOLLYWOOD AFTER DARK with the Film Crew treatment. Not sure I'd want to tackle it unaided.

THE LUCKIEST MAN IN AMERICA (2024): An ice cream truck driver talks his way onto the TV game show "Press Your Luck" and racks up statistically improbable record winnings---is he cheating somehow? Based on a true story. Cast and crew try their best to inject some drama, and even suspense, into what is basically a television trivia story; it's not exactly an overlooked gem, but the unconventional subject keeps it watchable. RetroRussell (where is he?) would probably like this. 3/5.

[M.10rda]

I've only seen HOLLYWOOD AFTER DARK with the Film Crew treatment. Not sure I'd want to tackle it unaided.

I take these bullets so no one else has to!   

[M.10rda]

THE HYPNOTIC EYE (1960):
Here's another one that doesn't earn Masterpiece status or anything but still surprisingly delivered beyond my expectations. In the opening shot, a leggy blonde enters her kitchen, turns on her stove, and begins washing her hair and face in the open flame.  As the title suggests, there be some hypnosis afoot! All over the city, women are inexplicably mutilating themselves and living to regret it. Quite unfortunately, the investigating detective is the dumbest sack of chauvanistic ignorant incompetent crap this side of Kash Patel... but fortunately the guy in this movie has a much smarter girlfriend and a much, much smarter partner to essentially do his job for him. HYPNOTIC EYE ends up having some Ugly and Bad parts, but also some quite Good ones into the balance.

The Bad: The meatheaded lead cop is almost insufferable, repeatedly putting his girlfriend in danger or letting her put herself in danger but mostly only worrying about her cheating on him with a hunky French hypnotist. 50s and 60s genre flicks are full of men being dullards, but this guy might be one of the worst offenders.

The Ugly: The mutilation FX (and post-mutilation makeup) are grisly for 1960, which is to say PG-13 at best by today's standards, though it's obvious Herschel Gordon Lewis saw this and began imagining how he could up the Yuck Factor in WIZARD OF GORE (which borrows many elements from HYPNOTIC EYE). The most unsettling thing about HYPNOTIC EYE though is how it really leans into its exploitation angle and commits nearly every single scene to the mutilation, abuse, humiliation, degradation, frustration, et al of nearly every character onscreen (at least at one point or another). Naturally exploitation, humiliation, and degradation are all very much stock-in-trade for professional hypnotism, so I can't argue that the filmmakers were being gratuitous. I do wish that the meatheaded cop got it a little (or much!) worse than he does (like almost everyone else), though!

The Good: The cop's girlfriend is appealing and makes you worry about her safety. Her dumb boyfriend's partner is an actually intelligent and quite cool forensic psychologist who lives with a cat (bonus points! ) and lounges around his bachelor pad in a silk kimono playing the piano (so make of that what you will). Unlike many 50s/60s genre flicks, the plot develops in a conscious fashion (with a few twists, even) instead of just strolling from event to event. Thanks to the girlfriend and the partner, the audience is able to piece together what's going on (beyond the obvious) while the meathead just hangs around in the frame ineptly. Naturally the French hypnotist and his sinister sexy assistant (Alison Hayes, most famous as ...THE FIFTY FOOT WOMAN) are responsible, but the precise specifics of their toxic relationship are only revealed in the film's final moments, and then only very subtly/concisely... so that I was still reflecting on their warped yet plausible dynamic twenty-four hours after I finished watching.

HYPNOTIC EYE was written by a married couple, thus 50% of the screenplay can be attributed to a female human, which makes sense in light of how much screen time and sympathy are afforded to the female victims even after they've been victimized and disfigured. Between that touch (still rare to genre flicks!), the dysfunctional relationship between the villains, and the low-key gay sidekick/hero stealing the show from the cis-het meathead, there's a good amount to admire here.

3.5/5
There's also some highly gif-able images of dozens of extras freaking out in unison under hypnosis. (Too bad I've no idea how to gif...)
Oh yeah, the last shot of the film is the sidekick/DL hero speaking directly to the camera (to the in-film audience and the audience watching the film) and warning them to never allow themselves to be hypnotized. 

[lester1/2jr]

I loved that movie. I'm all about those black and white exploitation movies that tested the boundaries like I Eat Your Skin and The Flesh Eaters.

[FatFreddysCat]

"What Have They Done To Your Daughters?" (1974)
The murder of a teenage girl leads a lady D.A. and a police inspector into an underworld of sex trafficking and meat cleaver wielding, murderous motorcyclists. Yes, it's just as weird as it sounds.
This Italian combo of Giallo murder mystery and Poliziotecchi crime thriller may not make a whole lotta sense, but it was certainly sleazy and gory enough to keep my interest for 90 minutes. Spaghetti schlock enthusiasts should give it a look.