Recent Viewings, Part 2

[Rev. Powell]

ACTIVE MEASURES (2018): Documentary exploring Russia's (more specifically, Vladimir Putin's) use of propaganda, intelligence, and espionage (collectively called "active measures") to influence world events. There's no new revelations here, everything was in the news, it's just organized into a coherent (if complicated) narrative to show how Putin has spread his nefarious plans across the world---including, you guessed it, into the U.S. of A. 3.5/5.

I've now finished everything the studio Neon released in its first 2 years of existence.

[lester1/2jr]

Seven In Darkness (1969) - This was the very first ABC Movie of the Week and also an early version of what would come to be called a disaster movie. 7 blind people, one of whom sings a horrible folk type song while the plane is going through turbulence, are going to some sort of thing and their plane crashes. Pretty soon you have all the stock disaster movie characters: the strong but flawed natural leader, pregnant/helpless (and blind!) lady, and of course my favorite and yours: the guy who is only out for himself.

The image of them with their canes trying to make their way across railroad tracks and cartoon type suspension ( I think?) bridges, all of which are of course in dire need of repair, was memorable if a little over the top. The movie of the week concept ended up being a huge winner for the then perpetually stuck in 3rd place network.

4/5 for historical value. It's solid enough but the trajectory of the whole thing is quite predictable. I'm pretty sure people at the airport would have alerted the relevant authorities about a plane crashing in a given area.

[M.10rda]

That sounds absolutely hilarious and I cannot believe I've never heard of it!

[FatFreddysCat]

"Kill Bill, Volume 2" (2004)
"The Bride" (Uma Thurman) returns to continue her mission of vengeance against the deadly organization headed by the villainous "Bill" (David Carradine). Just like last time, a ton of butts get kicked.
This one was almost as much ultra-violent fun as the first film, but it eventually started to drag around the 3/4 mark.
Plus, I was expecting an epic climactic battle between the Bride and Bill, but (SPOILER ALERT) ... he actually kinda went out like a lil' beeyatch. 
Still, as someone who's never been terribly enamored of Quentin Tarantino's work, I enjoyed both "KB" flicks and will likely revisit them in the future.

[LordGraal]

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

I vaguely remember watching the Dollars films as a teen on TV in the 80's and not really appreciating them.  I rewatched the above recently and really enjoyed it.  Even the dubbing doesn't belittle the performances.  The scenery is spectacular and beautifully filmed.  It's a slow film and some scenes are so drawn out they shouldn't work, but do.  Some of the gun shooting is impossible but the film makes you accept it. 

But what surprised me the most was the background of the American Civil War.  We can go from an intimate story about three characters to scenes on an epic scale that also show the madness of war.  There are some excellent side characters as well (eg the half soldier).  It seems to be a more authentic depiction of the wild west than Hollywood movies with muddy streets, flies everywhere and the general struggle of living.

I watched the 3 hour version which is probably a bit too long but overall highly recommended.

[lester1/2jr]

M.10rda - Don't know if you've ever see Leo Fong's "Blind Rage" but it's even more ridiculous. They train a bunch of blind people to rob a bank because why would anyone suspect they would do that?  999 out of 1000 people would say "why would you train blind people to rob a bank? it will be so hard for them. Why not have people pretend to be blind then take the glasses off and rob the bank?" The 1 out of 1000 was Leo Fong.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood" (1988)
"Tina," a troubled teenage girl with psycho-kinetic powers ala "Carrie," returns to Crystal Lake for the first time since a family tragedy there when she was a child. When her powers accidentally wake up Jason Voorhees, she's the only one able to stop his latest kill spree.
The F13 series was rapidly running out of gas by this time,  but this entry tweaks the formula just enough to make it entertaining. The gore is noticeably tamer in this installment, but Kane Hodder plays Jason for the first time here and the scenes where "Tina" puts him thru the wringer with her psychic powers are great fun.
This re-watch was inspired by the sad news that actress Lar Park Lincoln, who played Tina, passed away this week. R.I.P.

[Rev. Powell]

THE OUTCASTS (1982): An Irish girl who is bullied and shunned finds a friend in the mysterious wandering fiddler (and local boogeyman) Scarf Michael, which leads to her being accused of witchcraft. Although it features an eerie faerie atmosphere and a fine performance by Mary Ryan, it's easy to see why this leisurely drama-horror hybrid from Robert "Blood on Satan's Claw" Wynne-Simmons was nearly forgotten; it takes 45-minutes of scene-setting just to get to the first real plot point, and the Irish accents are at times nearly impenetrable for non-natives. 2.5/5.

[M.10rda]

Lester, I haven't heard of BLIND RAGE either and now must check it out.

The second half of KILL BILL 2 is a huge let-down. I liked Part 1 so much, and liked the first half of 2 w/ Madsen as "Budd" so much, that I put on a happy face at the time and pretended it was just Tarantino being Tarantino, but after he pulled the same crap in DEATH PROOF and INGLORIOUS BASTERDS I stopped cutting him that kind of slack. Having Bill go out in seconds, particularly following the epic fight w/ O-Ren Ishii at the end of Part 1, simply makes no narrative sense and is poor showmanship in extremis.

F13: THE NEW BLOOD isn't one of my favorite F13s but I do get a huge kick out of the extraordinarily b***hy mean girl "Melissa".

[M.10rda]

SPARTACUS (1960):
First-time viewing! I always like to watch a nice classic 3+ hour epic @ Easter and this one was more seasonally appropriate than many. Although it looks nice and is well-directed, SPARTACUS is only tertiarily a Stanley Kubrick film - and the director himself seemed to acknowledge this and distance himself from the project in later life.

The two biggest selling points of SPARTACUS are its screenplay and the acting. Blacklist victim Dalton Trumbo hadn't written a screenplay for about 8 years prior to SPARTACUS, and he had a lot to say about defiance and human dignity in the face of tyranny, all of which ends up communicated with surprising eloquence and discretion. The eponymous main character has an unusually small amount of dialogue (and barely speaks at all for maybe the first hour!), and when he is moved to say motivational things to the army he will assemble, he never shouts, instead speaking in a quiet conversational tone or sometimes even a whisper. This understated approach very much suits Kirk Douglas, who doesn't attempt any kind of European affect yet manages to underplay his gravelly Northeastern accent and come across essentially as a simple, decent Everyman. It's ultimately a smarter strategy for this kind of film, I think, than the bombast of BRAVEHEART and GLADIATOR.

Lawrence Olivier made his name for playing great Shakespearean roles onstage but ironically these roles always represented his weakest screen work. (He was a little better Hamlet than Branagh or Hawke, which is to say not mortifyingly bad, but a significantly weaker one than Gibson - which says something!) Olivier's performance as the villain here reflects a great deal more thought and care with Trumbo's text than Olivier ever seemed to invest in Shakespeare's. His Crassus is reprehensible in many ways but also pitiful in a few, and Olivier really illuminates how scared, corrupt little men can smartly wield authority for their own advantage. In contrast to Olivier's very serious and complex performance, you have the great Charles Laughton doing very little to very major effect as Gracchus, Crassus' arch-nemesis in the Roman Senate. I feel this befits a legendary actor (and one of my favorites) two years from his final role and passing. Laughton also gets to play scenes with Peter Ustinov, who like Olivier is working hard for his paycheck (and got an Oscar for his efforts!). It's a study of comparisons and contrasts when Laughton and Ustinov are together - two jolly, cunning, rather fey character actors, but one young and hungry, the other old, patient, and endlessly wise.

John Gavin from PSYCHO gets very little love from Kubrick's camera (only one quick medium shot!) as Julius Caesar... maybe his charismatic, almost Shatneresque performance didn't sit well w/ the director of 2001 and BARRY LYNDON! It's also nice to see John Dall, an underutilized actor who was great as the smarter and more evil killer in ROPE, as Crassus' protege. Jean Simmons does more with her role than many actresses could, though almost has to do too much in the very final scene, a rare misstep in Trumbo's tasteful tapestry. Woody Strode is only onscreen for maybe 10 minutes, which surprised me, because his strong presence in the film has endured almost as vividly and culturally as "I am Spartacus!" And finally there's  perhaps the least proud SPARTACUS meme, Tony Curtis' accent, which is not really too much more anachronistic than Kirk Douglas' accent, except Curtis just speaks in a higher volume.

Very little battlefield! The rolling/flaming ramparts were a nice touch, and having Douglas chop off a Roman's arm in the foreground of one shot (in 1960!) is a strong enough effect that more mayhem probably wasn't necessary. Understatement in epic gladiatorial/war movies! What a concept!!!

4.5/5
I truly appreciated the Laughton/Ustinov scenes. As a stage actor in high school, adults would often tell me I reminded them of both those old heavyset campy British actors, which was a difficult pill to swallow as a teenager but I've come to embrace it.

[lester1/2jr]

The Screaming Woman (1972) - This is pretty far down the list as far as Ray Bradbury adaptions go. Olivia De Havilland is a rich old lady who is kind of nuts but also her son and his one dimensional plotting wife just want to declare her nuts so they can take her money. It's the "Nightmare at 20,000 feet" plot with her hearing a women's voice no one else can hear in the garden. They aren't at 20,000 feet though, so it's missing a lot of the tension. In general, it does an at best rudimentary job of setting up the plot and it's like Fantasy Island level disposable acting/ writing/ etc.

One reason to see this is the all too brief appearance of future Playboy model Alexandra Hay who looks absolutely incredible. She's only in a in a couple scenes ( https://youtu.be/oKkhCI98RAw?si=TEJTdWyQXbezjCiz&t=4037 at 1:07:24 here ) but completely steals the show. It's the only thing I'll remember from this.

2.75 /5 Most reviews are much more positive. I can definitely get in to some classic horror, but this is just missing a level of tension/ mystery/ something to bring it in to the realm of like serious stuff. about as creepy as Scooby Doo

[M.10rda]

BUTCHER BOYS (2013):
When someone eventually gets around to writing a book about regional/independent exploitation filmmakers of the 21st Century (which would be a big book indeed!), a section needs to be devoted to Duane Graves and Justin Meeks, the directing duo who made the (recently reviewed on this site) Texarcana quasi-Bigfoot thriller WILD MAN OF THE NAVIDAD (co-written by Kim Henkel) and followed it up with this urban TX horror film. Also written by Henkel, it's an updating (and in some ways almost a remake) of his masterpiece collaboration with Tobe Hooper, 1974's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. It's also similar to, yet fortunately a lot better than, Hooper's non-Henkel urban sequel TCM2 and Henkel's completely bat$#!t-stoopid directorial effort TCM: THE NEXT GENERATION.

Stop me if you've heard this one: Four kids on a nighttime joyride through the San Antonio industrial wasteland run afoul of five toxic meth-head dude-bros and spend two-thirds of the movie frantically trying to elude them. In the final stretch, the survivor/s (or what's left of them, ahem) end up in the basement of a fancy downtown restaurant, where it becomes increasingly clear that these "butcher boys" are addicted to more than just amphetamines. Also inhabiting that basement is a faux French weenie, a barking mad British guy, an insane surgeon who might actually be The Chef of 'SAW lore, and a shaggy hulking deformed maniac chained up in the corner and screaming for dinner. Oh, there's also an old dude sneaking around the restaurant looking for vengeance, and he makes Dennis Hopper's dual chainsaw-wielding Texas Ranger from TCM2 look extremely well-adjusted.

I didn't like BUTCHER BOYS much when I first watched it 8-10 years ago. I (accurately) found it crass, mean-spirited, strident, and often senselessly overwrought. Still it lingered in my mind for many years (as some films tend to do) until it popped up free on Prime and I figured I'd try it again. Indeed it is all those things I mentioned, and somehow all those unflattering elements combine harmoniously as they did very similarly in the original TCM. That's not to say that BUTCHER BOYS is executed w/ anything close to the artfulness of o.g. TCM, but it does maintain the same dizzying heights of shrill mania for just as  long as TCM, which is some kind of authentic accomplishment. It's also commendable that TCM has about 9 characters in a single location in the middle of nowhere and BUTCHER BOYS has at least twice as many major characters plus it essentially recreates the nearly precise ending from the original only on a city street with a huge crowd of extras and a missile launcher... which is preposterous, of course, and doesn't quite work, but it sure is something to behold!

Both Marilyn Burns and Ed Neal have cameos, which is nice.
3.5/5 for sheer guts and gusto!

Graves and Meeks made one more ambitious low-budget feature, a grisly Cormac McCarthy-type western called KILL OR BE KILLED, then disappeared. Hope that speculative regional indie book explains what happened to 'em.

[M.10rda]

THE DRACULA SAGA aka SAGA OF THE DRACULAS (1972):
Leon Klimovsky directed some of Paul Naschy's cheesiest epics, like HORROR RISES FROM THE TOMB and WEREWOLF VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMEN, both discussed in the past year on this site. When I read that he was capable of directing a pretty decent horror when separated from Naschy, I scarcely could believe it, but indeed THE DRACULA SAGA is almost a serious/good movie in the vein  of late Hammer films... when they decided to increase the bloodflow and add a bunch of gratuitous topless scenes to their product. Who am I to argue with that formula?

A young bride named Berta has nightmares where she is pursued by a legitimately weird and freaky-looking bat monster. Yes, Klimovsky had an actual budget for FX for this flick, and he could afford writers to pen halfway-decent dialogue, too. Through not entirely deadening exposition we learn that Berta is traveling through the European countryside with her new husband to visit her ancestral home and long-lost family, the Draculas. Don't be too surprised when Berta and hubby Han stumble upon the body of a topless maiden with two holes in her neck and another two in her left breast(!). Do be surprised at how many times the local villagers cover and then uncover the maiden's bosom to examine the wounds!

Berta's Grandpa Vlad lives with three hot redheads, a staff of eager henchmen, and a bastard son that they keep locked up who srsly looks like an early Carlo Rambaldi demo for the squid monster from POSSESSION. (Again, Klimovsky had $$$ here!) In an interesting James Bond-like twist on Dracula lore, they all want Berta's unborn child to assume the "County" so that Vlad can finally kick the bucket. (Apparently being Dracula isn't so hot in spite of the redheaded harem and all the breast-biting.) The second-half of the film has a real ROSEMARY'S BABY feel, except (unlike the Satanists) I kinda' sympathized w/ the Dracula family, and also (unlike wimpy Mia Farrow) wimpy Berta finally snaps out of it near the end for a grand guignol finale.

3/5 The final shot is a real corker - the kind of thing you only get from 70s Eurohorror.

Also there's a dead body dummy (a Klimovsky staple) that isn't hilariously fake-looking!

[FatFreddysCat]

"Enemy Territory" (1987)
A dorky insurance salesman's visit to a New York ghetto apartment building becomes a fight for survival when he becomes the target of a murderous street gang called "The Vampires."
A cheap but effective urban exploitation flick, with an impressive cast that includes Ray Parker Jr. (yes, of "Ghostbusters" theme song  fame), a teenaged Stacey Dash, and a young Tony "Candyman" Todd, who chews the scenery for all it's worth as the gang's maniacal leader. A solid but seemingly forgotten "B" action movie that's worth checking out.

[Dr. Whom]

The Unholy Night (1929)

Someone is murdering the officers of a regiment that fought at Gallipolli, using the London fog as a cover. So Scotland Yard assembles all the surviving ones in a manor to draw the killer out;

A very convoluted murder mystery. This is an early talking movie, and by God, is it talky! Most of the scenes are just people talking and rushing from one set to another to see that something has happened off screen. The officers also start singing drinking songs at the drop of a hat. All in all more of filmed stage play.
As a melodrama with a needless complicated plot, this is very much only of historical interest. It does have some moments, though. Directed by Lionel Barrymore.