Recent Viewings, Part 2

[Rev. Powell]

SAINT BERNARD (2013): A conductor moves through a series of surreal situations while carrying the head of a St. Bernard's in a burlap sack. Director Gabriel Bartalos is mainly known for his FX work for horror movies (and for Matthew Barney's "Cremaster" films), and amazing sights like Bernard with his body twisted into a coil and a cigar-chomping goblin police officer team up with some silly humor (Abe Lincoln gives the audience the finger) to make this far more watchable than the usual plotless low-budget surrealist feature film. It's no wonder he didn't direct again, though, this is completely noncommercial. 3/5.

[Jim H]

Skeletonman (2004) - What if you took Predator, but swapped a nifty Stan Winston creature creation with the Grim Reaper, and swapped Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers with Casper Van Dien and Michael Rooker?  You'd get this, I guess.  And wow, what a pile of crap.  The storyline makes no sense, the title monster is never really explained, if it's Native American why does it look like the Grim Reaper, why does it sometimes have visible eyes, why does it randomly teleport, why does its costume look to be made of pure shiny nylon, why does its hood have a big loop in it like a bonnet, why does it have a broadsword, why why why. 

The editing in this is some of the worst I've ever seen in any film, just atrocious.  Tons of continuity errors and jumping around, sequences that are genuinely hard to even follow too.  There's a scene where Casper Van Dien has to drive a semi truck at night on a highway, and they had no cutaway shot of his face inside the truck apparently, so they just used a random close up of him from the woods, complete with visible sunlight, obviously visible trees, badly matched eyeline, and an inappropriate facial expression for the scene - it's genuinely embarrassing. 

I'll say the film has a high bodycount, and some of the kills and attack sequences are unintentionally funny, I appreciated the bits of gore, a couple of silly dummies, and slow mo shots of people going flying.  But otherwise, one of the worst films I've ever seen - 1/10.

If you're really curious, it's free on Tubi.

[Rev. Powell]

WE'RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD'S FAIR (2021): A teenage girl experiences personality changes when she takes the horror-themed "World's Fair" viral Internet challenge. A good, culturally relevant premise and an assured performance by young lead Anna Cobb are unfortunately wasted in a story that fizzles out at the end like a defective firecracker. 2.5/5.

[lester1/2jr]

The Hollow Earth (2021) - documentary about the not very respected theory that the earth is hollow and tall blond people live there in wonderful cities. The great thing about this is its only a half hour long and pretty much every line is another theory. The guy will first present a relatively sound and / or plausible/ interesting idea like astronauts reported that the moon rang like a bell (This is the Hollow Moon Theory ) then the next thing will be "the northern lights are the middle Earth sun shooting out of the North Pole".

It looks like it cost about nothing to make and he recorded the voiceover on his back porch in one take. The drawings of middle Earth are cool and this is certainly everything you could ever want to know about it so f**k it

5/5

[WingedSerpent]

Fiend without a Face.
I loved the stop motion brains in this. Like how they look like cartoon snails. 

Dark Star
John Carpenter's fist movie. Honestly, the only real sympathetic character I felt for was the Beach Ball Alien

[FatFreddysCat]

"And Now For Something Completely Different" (1971)
Monty Python's first theatrical release is essentially a "highlight reel," re-creating some of the best sketches from the first two seasons of "Flying Circus," including the "Lumberjack Song," the "Dead Parrot Sketch," "Hell's Grannies," "The Upper Class Twit of the Year," and more.  
This was the Pythons' introduction to U.S. audiences;  "Flying Circus" didn't begin airing on American TV till 1974. I can only imagine what American movie-goers must have thought when they first saw this!
Fun fact: the film was a production of Playboy Enterprises.  Victor Lownes, an American who was in charge of running the London Playboy Club and Casino, fell in love with "Flying Circus" while living in England and brought the Pythons to Hef's attention.

[Jim H]

Tenement, AKA Game of Survival, AKA Slaughter in the South Bronx.  From 1985.

First Roberta Findlay film I've seen (she was also the DP), who made a bunch of porn and exploitation films.  This is one of the more well known of the latter.  Got an X for violence, and I can see why, it's brutal and harsh with no one spared.  It's about an insane drug gang who gets booted out of the basement they're squatting in, and come back and decide to murder the tenants.  It's shot in what looks like a real scuzzy actual part of New York, similar to something like Basket Case (though not that extreme).  Great locations I will say, some of the visuals are good, Findlay knows how to shoot a film. 

There's some attempt at characterization of the tenants, but it's thin.  The gang is a bit more interesting.  The one named Hector definitely leaves the biggest impression, he's scary and it's a good performance.  I recognized the actor but couldn't place him - turns out he's also in Pulp Fiction, King of New York, Fear the Walking Dead and has a supporting role in Bosch (which is what I knew him best from), where he's quite good too.

Overall though, the movie is very rough.  The characters and story are thin and it's structurally poor, and there are numerous sequences where the geography is hard to follow and character reactions barely make sense, like when one guy is shot at and runs away and no one else even reacts to the gun shot literally ten feet from them.  Action sequences are poor, and there's little sense of tension building - Assault on Precinct 13 this is not.  Again, I found it hard not to compare this a bit to Basket Case again (very different genres, I know, just similar vibe and era/geography), which is even cheaper and scuzzier looking but has much better story and character writing and thus is a far superior film.

But, if you like that grimy, gross, 80s New York gang vibe, this is one worth checking out.  5/10 on a bad day, 6/10 on a good day.

It's also free on Tubi.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Trick" (2019)
An FBI agent (Omar Epps of "House") leads a bunch of small town cops in pursuit of a masked killer known only as "Trick," who only strikes once a year - on Halloween night (sound familiar?).
This fast moving, seasonal horror flick from director Patrick Lussier (of "Drive Angry" and the "My Bloody Valentine 3D" remake) certainly isn't boring - it starts piling up bodies from the get-go and keeps the ultra-violent action going for most of its run time. Of course, like most post-"Scream" slasher flicks, there's a mid-point "plot twist" that most viewers will see coming from a mile away, and it drags on a little longer than it really needs to, but overall I was pleasantly surprised by this one. Not bad for a random DVD from Dollar Tree.

[lester1/2jr]

The Raven (1963) - I've never read the Edgar Allen Poe story, but I have a feeling this isn't very true to it. Vincent Price is a wizard guy who has some sort of beef with another one played by Boris Karloff. Peter Lorre is a comic relief/ not as good wizard and there are two busty Hammer horror women who hold down their parts well. The lighter but still sinister tone definitely works and all 3 legends of screen get good lines in. I've been experimenting with edibles lately so that might have helped, but in general this was as good it could possibly be. There's nothing like a wizards duel, I wonder if Shaw Brothers were influenced by this. The finger laser beams look very similar.

5/5

[RCMerchant]

^ No mention of Jack Nicholson?  
As far as the Poe's ' the Raven', it's a poem, not a story per se.
And yes- the movie has zero connection to the poem. Except the name 'Lenore'. Oh yeah, and a raven.

If you enjoyed the RAVEN, you'd love COMEDY OF TERRORS (1963), which also features Price, Lorre, Karloff, and Basil Rathbone!

http://youtu.be/8ARUKfGB6wc

[lester1/2jr]

Jack Nicholson was in it? Was he Peter Lorre's son wow I didn't even notice

[RCMerchant]

^  Yeah. Well, with all the old timers hamming it up, Jack is very much over shadowed.


Jack paid his dues with Corman...

including-
the CRY BABY KILLER (1960)
the LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1960)
THE TERROR (1963) with Karloff
...and of course a number of biker films as well!

[FatFreddysCat]

"You Might Be The Killer" (2018)
The entire staff of a summer camp has been killed by a masked maniac. One of the survivors holes up in a cabin and calls his best friend (Alyson Hannigan of "Buffy" and "How I Met Your Mother"), who works in a comic book/video store and is therefore an expert in such matters, for help. Together the pair work through the events of the previous evening and eventually come to the conclusion that ... he might be the murderer, acting under the influence of a possessed mask the counselors found in the forest.
This witty, gory parody of "Friday the 13th" style summer camp slashers lovingly skewers all of the genre's cliches. As horror spoofs go, it's not as laugh out loud hilarious as, say, "Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil" but it's a cut above crap like the "Scary Movie" series. Well worth the buck and a quarter I paid for the DVD at Dollar Tree. :D

[Rev. Powell]

THE MADS ARE BACK: THE CHOPPERS: The movie is an Arch Hall Jr. + Sr. vehicle about a gang of juvenile delinquents who chop up cars for parts. Although there's a lot of goofiness and stupid characters doing stupid things, it's actually well-paced and easy to follow which makes it very riffable. Bonus: lots of dead teenagers at the end! The Q&A guest is Carolina Hidalgo, who used to host a podcast with Frank and Trace. 3/5. 

[FatFreddysCat]

Diving back into my pile of Dollar Tree DVDs:

"Satanic Panic" (aka "Panic," 2019)
A pizza delivery girl's last run of the evening takes her to a swanky estate in a wealthy neighborhood, where it turns out the residents are all members of a Satanic cult. She arrives in the middle of a ceremony to awaken the dark god Baphomet, and they need a virgin sacrifice in order to make it happen. You can probably figure out the rest -- Pizza Girl gets put through the wringer in this very funny, tongue in cheek horror/surivival comedy with a generous amount of splatter. The still-gorgeous Rebecca Romijn is an absolute hoot as the head of the housewife coven, she's like a Satanic Martha Stewart.