Recent Viewings, Part 2

[indianasmith]

CURSE OF THE SIN EATER (2024) - Rick is a down on his luck construction worker who lost his mom to suicide a few years before.  Hired to work on a elderly rich man's estate, he receives an offer he can't refuse:
If he will eat one meal off of the old man's body after he dies, he inherits everything - the house, the multimillion dollar fortune, the servants, all of it.
Little does he know that when he snarfs down that meal, he is eating the old man's sins . . . . and inheriting the ghosts that haunt him!
Marvelous, very creepy film!   4/5

[M.10rda]

READY OR NOT HERE I COME (2026):
No "2" or colon in the title onscreen so none in this review. This was fine, really - we pretty much enjoyed it - but we really enjoyed the original, which stands nicely on its own and didn't require a sequel. The original four writers and directors all return and make an honest, logical attempt to expand the story, yet - eh!

Perhaps one inescapable issue, at least for us but surely for others as well, is RONHIC's implausible and distracting similarity to THEY WILL KILL YOU, which was released in theaters within a week of RONHIC. In terms of plot and characters, the films are very nearly... identical! Granted, RONHIC has better ensemble acting, more consistent production values, and fewer plot holes (though it does have a few). TWKY is a less-well made film in most regards, but it does have two things that RONHIC doesn't. The less important thing is that incredible first fight scene w/ Zazie Beats raining whupass all over the cultists w/ the sawed-off and the sword - RONHIC has no one scene that's quite as much fun.

The more significant advantage is that TWKY, for all its jank and cheez, actually feels like it has something real (and angry) to say about race and class. Comparatively RONHIC is escapist fantasy, and though I feel affinity for Samara Weaving's hapless waitress character, let's face it - she could've spared herself two movies of trouble by not getting engaged to a billionaire satanist.

Just sayin'.    3/5    Shawn Hatosy has become a really good screen creep, however - an even-better one than co-star Elijah Wood, whose entire career now seems to be playing The Creep.

[M.10rda]

I added a couple words to THEY WILL KILL YOU's title in my original post so I guess that doesn't speak highly of that film being memorable, either.       A very quick one:

OH WHAT A KNIGHT! (1928):
Pre-Mickey Disney short w/ Willie's contemporary "Oswald the Rabbit", another proto-Mickey/proto-Bugs. He's just Mickey but he's a rabbit, he's got a mule-ish friend who is sort of Goofy or Pluto, and he has a cute girlfriend who's a cat (so Advantage: Oswald). She's trapped in a tower and protected by a big mean knight ("Pete" in a suit of armor) as well as an enormous lion (her dad, maybe?). This is a refreshing slice of pre-code animation where characters can lose their clothes briefly, the bad guy can get stabbed repeatedly in the @$$, and if Muufy's tail is bitten off by an alligator, he can just pull it right back out to full length again. (Phew.)     3.5/5    Entirely pleasant.

[indianasmith]

THE ST. FRANCISVILLE EXPERIMENT (2000) - This was a found footage style movie that came highly recommended, but I must admit, it bored me to tears.  Six amateur filmmakers locked overnight in a haunted house; they spend most of the time scaring each other silly and trying to carry out cleansing rituals.  One character is so New Age she's downright painful to listen to, another keeps saying "I love all ghosts" over and over.  The payoff, when it comes, is quick, blurry, and inconclusive.  Ditch this garbage; watch GRAVE ENCOUNTERS instead. 1.5/5

[M.10rda]

I watched that one 20 years ago - on VHS! It's long too, right? Like almost 2 hours?

CHARACTER STUDIES (1925):
This is six minutes long and barely a film - it was really a gag made for a Hollywood party. Roscoe Arbuckle had publicly been persona non grata for about 4 years following the Virginia Rappe debacle. He directed this (uncredited) as a favor to Douglas Fairbanks, and in the next 5 years would direct a bunch of other films (also uncredited) before finally he was cleared of all charges.

Stage actor Carter DeHaven (apparently also in THE GREAT DICTATOR) opens a large trunk with the lid facing the camera and sort of fakes that he's putting on wardrobe pieces and make-ups. There are visible (though not egregious) jump cuts before "he" intermittently closes the lid and reveals that "he" has "become" six movie stars, including Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Rudolph Valentino, and Fairbanks. The thing is, they're all small-ish white guys in medium-wide shot, so - though those guys all apparently played themselves - you kind of have to take the stunt on faith.

However, the other two stars that DeHaven "becomes" are Arbuckle himself (who is a big white guy) and child actor Jackie Coogan, who of course was a tiny white kid. Those two "studies" pay off and probably got big laffs @ the party.

3/5    Coogan appeared in some wonderful Bad Movies in the 50s through 80s and eventually obtained immortality as the original "Uncle Fester".

[indianasmith]

PLAY DEAD (2022) - This was a freaking BRILLIANT movie. Chloe is a medical student who has had to drop out of school and is about to lose her home due to her father's life insurance company refusing to pay his policy when he killed himself.  Her little brother TJ decides to help get them some money by joining up with her ex to rob a pawn shop.  But the robbery goes south, the ex is killed (or is he?), and TJ is now a wanted man - since the incriminating evidence is in his partner's cell phone.  So Chloe decides to fake her own death to get into the morgue and nab the cell phone before the police pick it up.  But . . . something is screwy in this morgue, and the coroner isn't all he seems.  I'll leave it at that, but trust me, this one is TOTALLY worth the watch!

[M.10rda]

MERCY, THE MUMMY MUMBLED (1918):
This is another silent short that almost defies rating. It seems really quite good for about seven of its eleven minutes, but most of the ending is all but unwatchable due to extreme decomposition. You see parts of the characters' bodies around the perimeter of the frame but everything in the middle is water-damaged, discolored, melted, etc.  I suppose that would add to the nightmarecore nature of a Mummy movie if this Mummy movie were actually a Horror film, but it's a wacky comedy.

Another all-African-American cast does very lively, highly specific work, as similar casts have done in other films from the roaring teens. A mad scientist wants to revive an Egyptian mummy with a hypodermic full of special potion, and a local con man thinks he can help the scientist out by wrapping himself up in bandages and leaping to life et cetera. (Or something, it is a short silent film.) The real antics probably begin in the moment right after the mad sticks the faux mummy w/ the syringe and he reacts in Warner Bros fashion....... which also happens to be the moment when the film spontaneously deteriorates. 

Ah well. 3/5?    Surprised this was never remade as a Kevin Hart or Wayans Bros project.

[Rev. Powell]

^^^ No idea about the movie, but I love the title!

[lester1/2jr]

Taoism Drunkard (1984) - This is the non dubbed version of Drunken Wutang. The Watermelon monster's voice isn't as Funny and the subtitles aren't as funny as the dubbed voices, but the print is better. I wasn't sure if the running times were the same. In searching this, I ran into this 20 year old thread by Andrew that says the same thing I just said. https://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php?topic=112276.0

"
Old Devil: "Give me the book or I'll kill you all."
Monk: "Don't threaten us and get off our roof!"

Another good exchange in this scene was when two badly beaten background guys look over at the Taoism drunkard and his friend. One goes "Why aren't they hurt?" and the other one goes "We aren't the main actors."


Basically, if you haven't seen Drunken Wutang in a while it is, as Fat Freddy's Cat would say, a nice trip down memory lane. 

5/5

[Jim H]

Went to a friend's house and watched two Bruce Lee knock off films...

Goodbye Bruce Lee: His Last Game of Death (1975) - What a shameless godawful cash grab of a film.  Just embarrassingly badly made, horribly shot, terrible fight scenes, awful introduction, boring as hell.  It's the worst Bruce Lee knockoff I've seen BY FAR.  But the song that plays several times in the film, King of Kung Fu - really catchy and fun, and I swear I'm not lying, Rebecca De Mornay wrote it when she was 16.

Bruce And The Iron Finger - This one is MUCH better, and actually has two or three different copycat Bruce actors, many likely recognize Bruce Leung from Kung Fu Hustle or the legendary Dragon Lives Again.  Pretty good fight scenes, lots of them, much better shot and edited too.  Bruce Leung is a side character but has better screen presence and charisma here I thought than Li - his character is also more likable, which is kind of funny.  The plot is silly and reminds me of the later American-made but Hong Kong crewed Blood Moon.  The final freeze frame gag is hilarious.  Worth watching for sure.

[Alex]

Trap.

Thought this had a solid enough premise: a serial killer who is taking his daughter to a concert realises that the police and FBI are there to capture him. It plays well enough until the final third, where the singer they went to see suddenly gets more involved in the plot, but while mostly ok does lack the acting skills to really carry off the part. Her involvement felt like a jarring twist. After I watched the film, I googled to see if she was a real singer, which it turns out she was, as well as being the director's daughter. Played slightly differently, this would have been a solid 4, maybe even pushing to a 5 if I was in the right mood.

[M.10rda]

I liked TRAP though I agree that it feels very much like an excuse for MNS to promote the musical career of his (otherwise unknown) daughter. 

MOONSHINE (1918):
Another example from what seems to be the peak period of Roscoe Arbuckle films. Like OUT WEST, this has distinct characters and a reasonably complicated plot (especially for a 20-minute short), as well as a plethora of gags that I feel like I saw countless times as a child in cartoons and sitcoms of the 30s-60s. Given the vintage of writer/director Arbuckle's films, I'm increasingly inclined to credit him with laying the foundation for a lot of 20th century comedy. 

Roscoe is a gun-toting IRS agent (like in THE UNTOUCHABLES!) and Buster Keaton is his earnest partner; they travel to mountain-country to bust up a hillbilly moonshine operation. Al St. John - perennially the Yuen Biao to Roscoe's Sammo and Buster's Jackie - plays the main hillbilly henchman. He and Buster get up to some really impressive physical business, including an eye-popping chase around, up, and through a tree. Roscoe also falls off a cliff and down a steep hill, gets thrown into and floats down a large creek, and at one point picks up Buster and hangs him upside down from a tree limb. Like their later Chinese Opera counterparts, these guys were actual athletes.

There's also a classic "clown car" gag that is executed seemingly w/o stopping the camera thus must've involved a tunnel underground in a large field.  There's also also another large secret hideout entrance automatic door opening in the side of a hill, a tiny impoverished moonshiner shack with a secret dungeon decked out like a parlor in a mansion, an exploding (and reverse assembling) house, a fake suicide gag, a gunfight where Roscoe gets shot in his @$$, and a ton of meta-comedy where characters and even the narrative intertitles acknowledge that this is a movie. There is even a self-consciously gratuitous and underdeveloped romance subplot, involving Alice Lake being objectified and physically abused, which is of course totally problematic, but the intertitles even acknowledge the gratuity and objectionable nature of the scenario.

4/5    Roscoe was honestly some kind of savant.