Recent Viewings, Part 2

[Trevor]

SUPERFUZZ was such an early 80s HBO staple. I have no actual proof of this but I feel like it must've been a big enough hit in the U.S. to inspire "The Greatest American Hero" starring Terence Hill lookalike William Katt and Robert Culp well-cast as Ernest Borgnine.

It was released here as SUPER SNOOPER and as with almost all Terence Hill films, either him alone or together with Bud Spencer, did well. 😊🐢

[M.10rda]

SEVEN FOOTPRINTS TO SATAN (1929):
A late era silent from the director of the very good MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, the quite bad BLIND JUSTICE, and the famously interesting HAXAN. A wealthy four-eyed Poindexter and his hapless galpal get shanghaied to an Old Dark House where weirdo servants inform them they must be the guests of "Mister Satan" (or else) and other guests alternately frolic or scamper about in terror. 7FTS seems at first like a ROCKY HORROR precedent but actually ends up a lot closer in spirit to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. 

Doors are constantly being thrown open; hulking figures lurch out, grab hysterical victims, and pull them into passageways; and then the doors slam shut again. Everyone is constantly screaming their heads off - and yes, it's a silent film, but the performances and staging and cinematography are so intense, I felt like I could hear the screams. After the twenty minutes or so it takes to get going, this thing never stops. Guns go off; characters appear to shift allegiances without explanation; there's a dwarf (young Angelo Rossito!), a fairly convincing rampaging gorilla-thing, two Fu Manchus (actually played by Asian dudes, fortunately), and a congenial wolfman named "Professor Moriarty". There are also some nice-looking ladies. One of them gets tied up (by the gorilla!) and whipped (tastefully, off-camera). Also, 7FTS is a comedy. 

At the end, the wimpy hero has to walk the "Seven Steps To Satan", a reality game-show challenge that would stress me out if I was confronted with it! Creighton Hale is the protagonist and, though he isn't terribly compelling, he does some pretty funny acting with his eyeballs and executes the "Seven Steps" stunt nicely. (He went on to play uncredited bit parts in CASABLANCA, MALTESE FALCON, and tons of other huge films.) Doomed starlet Thelma Todd is pleasant enough as Hale's girlfriend. Honestly I thought 7FTS was a full-scale riot. Because it's a comedy, there's a twist at the end similar to that in Fincher's THE GAME - except it's actually scarier to think about the backstory that would make such a charade possible.    4/5    Totally bonkers movie.

[indianasmith]

UNDERTONE (2025) - Watched this late last night, and it is one of the best slow burn horror films I've seen in a while.  Minimal effects, very limited cast, and yet it managed to get under my skin enough that I had a hard time going to sleep afterward!  Highly recomended!  4.5/5

THE WINDIGO (2024) - Came in from the lake today and my daughter asked if I would watch this one with her.  Maybe it was my fatigue, but this one struggled to hold my interest.  Two native American teens run afoul of some nasty redneck meth cookers, and are threatened so much that the boy asks his grandmother's assistance in summoning a Windigo to protect him and his family - but the aid of the Windigo comes with a price!  Well done monster effects, story could have been much better. 3/5

[M.10rda]

THE SET-UP (1949):
The weakest thing about this early Robert Wise film is that it's a 40s Boxing Noir and therefore nothing that happens will possibly surprise you unless maybe you are 3 years old and have never seen a movie before. Therefore it's slow to get started, though the first half does build up a respectable aura of foreboding and dread. Robert Ryan plays an over-the-hill (35yo!  ) boxer who (of course) takes a longshot match against an up-and-coming young tyro, even though (obv) his long-suffering lady is begging him to give up the gloves permanently, and also (it goes w/o saying!) his manager has agreed that Ryan will throw the match....... though (in one small novel twist) he's so positive that Ryan will lose hopelessly to the kid that he doesn't even bother to let Ryan know that he's supposed to go down!  Ah well, what's an angry mobster between a manager and his palooka?

Wise stages and shoots the whole thing very well, and many shots (particularly towards the end) look like gorgeous stark panels straight out of Frank Miller's "Sin City" or Jim Steranko's "Red Tide". Ryan is, of course, the ideal actor to play a depressed, doomed, yet defiant noir hero. He automatically exudes authenticity onscreen w/o doing much of anything.

But, he does do a lot - if absolutely nothing else, he commits to a grueling central boxing match that commands something like a third of the film's running time and leaves both opponents (but Ryan especially) mauled to a gooey sweaty pulp. I think boxing isn't like other choreographed onscreen violence - an actor can pull a punch but the other actor is still getting clipped or socked in the ear and face and breadbasket over and over - in this case for 25 minutes. Although I have no interest in athletics IRL, often sports look like fun onscreen - not here. Watching THE SET-UP reminds me I'd never want to go 6 rounds in an actual ring.

The supporting cast all look people you've seen in a dozen other movies, but I only recognized two names - Audrey Totten and Darryl Hickman. There are two fun cameos, though - infamous crime scene photographer "Weegee" as the timekeeper and Leo's Dad Bernard Gorcey, who played Louie the dime store clerk in scores of Bowery Boys flicks, exchanging a couple lines w/ Totten.     3.5/5    I therefore clocked THE SET-UP as far and away the best film Gorcey Sr ever appeared in - then was reminded he was also in THE GREAT DICTATOR!

[indianasmith]

SUMALA (2024) - My daughter spotted this Indonesian horror flick in her feed and we watched it together last night.  Gory, dark, and breaking some of the rules of American horror, this was a pretty wild film!  Quick synopsis: the wife of an ambitions Indonesian businessman has failed to give him an heir after 11 years of marriage, so he puts her on notice: One more year, and if she does not get pregnant, he will divorce her.  So she goes to the local witch doctor and cuts a deal with the devil: She will bear twins, one of whom will be a child of light, the other a child of evil.  She must raise them both to maturity, and on their tenth birthday the devil will claim his own and leave them with the good child. 
   But when she brings the twins into the world, one of them looks normal; the other is grossly deformed - SO HER HUSBAND KILLS IT!  As a result, the good child - Kumala - grows up twisted, crippled, and mentally disabled.  Her father scorns her, her mother ignores her, the village children taunt her, and her only friend is her imaginary twin sister, Sumala. Who, it turns out, is not imaginary at all. . . .

Dark and twisted, this one was a fun watch if you have a strong stomach. 4/5

[lester1/2jr]

The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane (1977) - I recently read all the recent viewings reviews in both the old and the new threads. When I finished...I started over again and this was one from the second round, or maybe I didn't go back far enough the first time. At any rate, it was my own review and I liked it more this time. It's generally a "creepy kid" horror like Devil Times 5 or The Omen, but much more of a drama and the evil is more debatable (maybe just "quite resourceful kid"? )

Jodie Foster, Martin Sheen, and Matthew Modine lend their talents to this low budget, (mostly takes place in the living room of a house) dank, and unpredictable tale of a young (Jewish?) girl and her struggle to survive in some random town while being bothered by adults who want her to do stuff like attend school. It's hard to have an interesting movie that takes place just in a living room, so some fairly jaw dropping stuff happens, aided by the excellent acting talent.

Jodie Foster is somehow always obviously a lesbian, but so enigmatic and brainiac seeming that it somehow doesn't matter. She would, of course, reach a much bigger audience in Taxi Driver soon after this.

4.5 / 5

[M.10rda]

That's a great movie - I think TAXI DRIVER came first. And Scott Jacoby is her buddy trapped in the friendzone, right? He does look a bit like Matthew Modine.