RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[Rev. Powell]

DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN (1971)
 
Why watch this movie?
Maybe for the Dracula with a Mike Brady perm and an echo box voice.

Show more respect for the great Zandor Vorkov!

[RCMerchant]

^Hey- that is the first film I ever saw and thought- "This is really BAD!" And I was only 10!
Now it's gotta be one of my favorite 'BAD' movies.

[Dr. Whom]

Bilitis (1977)

This came out when I was at an impressionable age, and I think I can speak for many of my generation when I say that the poster fueled a lot of fantasies. So I had to check it out after all these years.

It is story of a schoolgirl finding love. Ostensibly based on the pseudo ancient Greek poems of Pierre Louys, it has very little to do with the source material. For one thing, it is set in the South of France in a strange period that is halfway the 1930s and the 1970s, which is mainly notable for the near universal absence of bras.

It is hard to comment on the performance of the actors, as the whole thing is so inane, it makes your average Jean Rollin movie look like oscar material. But that is not why one watches it, however, it is because of the pretty pictures of naked girls. In this, it does not disappoint. You are barely five minutes in when an entire class of school girls (in their twenties) go skinny dipping, and the movie keeps up this pace.

Whether that is enough to keep your interest for 95 minutes, I leave up to you.

[RCMerchant]

FACE OF THE SCREAMING WEREWOLF (1959/1964)

A woman is regressed hypnotically to her previous life as an Aztec Princess by some looney doctors. She leads them to an ancient temple that contains the Aztec Mummy and...Lon Chaney Jr. in mummy garb!
The docs take Lon back to their wax museum (?) lab and revive him courtsy of some high voltage ala Frankenstein and he turns into a werewolf! The Aztec Mummy briefly shows up and then promptly disappers again. Lon Grabs a woman, climbs up the side of a building with her like a mini Kong, goes through a window and runs down the stairs to ground level again. After mauling the doctors, he's set on fire and changes back to Lon .
"He was just a regular guy." The End.
This was a mash up of an Aztec Mummy film and a Mexican comedy film with all the (intentional) comedy cut out titled LA CASA DEL TERROR. Enter Jerry Warren who butchered both and threw them together to make this travesty.


Lon as a hefty mummy-






and in his last foray as a Wolf Man-

[zombie no.one]

DISCLOSURE (1994)

Schlock-fest disguised as hard hitting drama... tries too hard to be all sassy and contemporary (for '94) and so therefore looks incredibly dated now. (and not just cause of the heavy reliance on dawn-of-the-internet tech)

There was definitely a particular style of acting / scriptwriting / directing from this early to mid 90s era which tried to come off as vaguely snarky, sarcastic, 'witty'... it's not convincing. Got the same vibe from SWIMMING WITH SHARKS, which I watched fairly recently (also made in 1994).

Michael Douglas is a bit of a fluffball. I think he could've been a great actor in the right circumstances, but seemed to punch below his weight in terms of roles? maybe that's just my perception. Never quite hopped on the Demi Moore bandwagon either... bit too Hollywood(en) for me.

5/10

[M.10rda]

ACT OF VENGEANCE (1973):
This r*pe/revenge flick gets some things very right and tries to get other things right (maybe?) but fails outrageously, which ends up making the entire affair even sleazier than many such films, in spite of it being less graphic than most. An alarming serial maniac in a hockey mask (!7 years before the original F13!) stalks and assaults a series of victims, urging them to fight back then getting rough when they do, before finally demanding that they sing "Jingle Bells" to help him to completion. These scenes are completely horrifying, which is commendable, I guess. There's a little nudity but no onscreen sexual violence - just close-ups of faces as Jason 0.99 slaps and punches the ladies and threatens them w/ worse violence - and that's plenty!

Early on the Final Girl goes to the police for a humiliating interview, medical exam, and some condescension from coffee-swigging background pigs. AOV is co-written by a woman and she (presumably) got this whole sequence totally on-the-nose. But she has a male writing partner and a male director and the film was produced by AIP, so there was no way AOV was ever going to play out like THE ACCUSED. The FG recruits Jason's other victims and they decide to go learn martial arts together, then unwind in a topless sauna and hot tub    which I'm sure is how most victims of assault like to overcome their trauma.      Then, naturally, they decide to form a "r*pe squad", where the FG puts herself repeatedly in more sexual danger      in order for the other ladies to show up and save her.    Yes, ACT OF VENGEANCE takes place 100,000% in Hollywood fantasyland.

On one hand, the first scene where they royally mess up a repeat date r*pist is extremely entertaining and satisfying. On the other hand, the film stalls out when they quickly run out of dangerous targets and begin to pick on pimps and pathetic obscene phone callers. At last we arrive at the final act, where Jason lures them into an elaborate (or ridiculous) trap in a zoo (!), which puts the Squad in danger yet again, which is the opposite of what I was interested in seeing. There are a few absurd twists and the film ends on something of an anti-climax. (Maybe playing "Jingle Bells" on the soundtrack would've helped...?)

2.5/5
Another one of those Almost Good Enough It's A Shame It Wasn't Better/Smarter kinda' sleaze flicks.