RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[M.10rda]

I think his best film is THE LAST SEDUCTION, starring the incredible Linda Fiorentino, who was almost universally thought to deserve an Oscar nomination in 1994. Unfortunately TLS first aired on HBO (before it got a little arthouse run), so it was ineligible.  The Oscars originally got over themselves, of course.

[Rev. Powell]

In the 90s Dahl made two excellent neo-noirs back to back, RED ROCK WEST and THE LAST SEDUCTION. Then he made ROUNDERS, which I haven't seen but which has a group of fans. Then he kind of dropped off the map. According to IMDB it looks like he became a successful and in-demand TV show director.

[M.10rda]

ROUNDERS is well-acted - more a character drama than a thriller.

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Nowhere to Hide (2021) / Bianzhong kuang xi(2021)
https://youtu.be/udV93L7B7Q8?si=Gj3T-HhSUOy0fL4c

Somewhere in China, a pair of poacher catch, well, something.... On his way to deliver the goods, one of the poachers hears a news story over the radio about an escaped lab animal... He arrives at a hotel where a pair of bumbling exterminators fog for rats, thus clearing out all of the guests, only to learn they're at the wrong hotel...
Meanwhile, the poacher delivers the ferret like creature to a buyer, only to discover it's turned into a baby dragon that can turn invisible... It turns out, the buyer runs parties for gangsters who like to eat exotic endangered animals....
The dragon escapes & starts eating the party goers....

A comedy from China, most of the jokes are sub-par to a Little Rascals movie....
Still, it's able to get a few giggles outa me....
In Mandarin with English subtitles...

[M.10rda]

HAUNTED SPOOKS (1920):
I guess I should learn (after this and JUST SPOOKS) that if I decide to watch a horror-comedy from the 1920s with "SPOOKS" in the title I'd better buckle up for some racist $#!t. Hal Roach directs this faux-supernatural twist on the classic "Brewster's Millions" premise with Harold Lloyd and his love interest committing to time in a spooky mansion (for a pay-out) while a human adversary schemes to scare them away. The copy on Youtube is unusually crisp and clear for its vintage, allowing one to better appreciate Lloyd's facial expressions and some of the nuance of his physical work. Lloyd leapfrogs over the head of a (short) full-grown man in one impressive shot, and earlier in the film I admit I LOL'd at his unsuccessful attempt to unalive himself (as the kids like to say).

If HAUNTED SPOOKS was both silent and free of intertitles, it might even come off as borderline progressive! True, the moment where a scared Lloyd sticks a handgun in the face of a young African-American child (who is covered in flour, thus apparently passes as a ghost) has not aged well.  But that kid (played by "Sunshine" Sammy Morrison) and the mansion's butler (Blue Washington) are allowed to practically upstage Lloyd narratively and performance-wise. Although both of them are predictably "spooked" about the possibility of the spirits in the mansion, they behave less foolishly frightened than Lloyd does and catch on quicker to the ruse... and Washington busts the con-man and saves the day while Lloyd is busy quaking and blanching.

Unfortunately, Roach couldn't allow the action to speak for itself and instead inserts a parade of forced, aggressively unfunny intertitles, most of which do nothing to advance or clarify the story. At their worst, they actively undermine the action in dumb and insensitive ways. Washington, Morrison, and other black actors in the cast must've appeared too self-assured, competent, and dignified, so Roach splices in sub-literate dialogue cards full of Jar Jar Binksian malaprops. Ugh. 

So yeah, an objectionable movie but one with historical interest. Washington is really impressive - he had a long career, though I suspect most of his roles were less empowered than this one (including a bit part in GONE WITH THE WIND). Morrison grew up and joined the East Side Kids in a number of their entries, including 1941's SPOOKS RUN WILD, which is a dumb movie but not actually a racist one. Hal Roach was about 10 years away from recruiting Stepin Fetchit as a foil for "Our Gang"/"The Little Rascals", which of course also gave the world William "Buckwheat" Thomas. 

2.5/5
Also Lloyd gets scared near the end and his hair stands up in two close-ups and those two shots look startlingly similar to the iconic poster image of ERASERHEAD.