RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[zombie no.one]

BASKET CASE (1981)

question: how have I been a badmovie fan since forever, especially bad movies that lean towards horror, especially ones from the late 70s / early 80s... and yet somehow I had never seen this? never even seen the trailer.

I was aware of this film's existence back in primary school!

 anyway finally watched... vaguely as expected, kind of has a bit of Troma style atmosphere but thankfully is not too heavy on the OTT comedy / wacky stuff....

it really suffers in terms of pacing though... a lot of not much goes on from scene to scene  sometimes... a contemplative meditation piece then, clearly outside my wheelhouse.

2.75/5... glad I saw it at last but won't be watching again.

[Senor Citizen]

The Concorde... Airport '79

I give up, couldn't make it to the end.
I just watched 3 Airplane-movies first time ever and, my god, it was a chore.

Now it`s time for Die Hard 2-laserdisc. Don`t want to brag but.....

[M.10rda]

A laserdisc collection is brag-worthy. 

[M.10rda]

ANYBODY'S WOMAN aka THE BETTER WIFE? (1930):
This was part one of a recent Ruth Chatterton double feature. It's so early in the Sound era that it often looks and sounds like an ancient transmission from another dimension or something. Some of the dialogue is a little hard to decipher at times but most is coherent and dated and sometimes clever and mostly ideologically outre.

A millionaire who is also a profound alcoholic sits around a hotel room bemoaning that his wife just left him for a much wealthier man. He and his buddy grow aware of two cute dames in the hotel room directly across from theirs and invite them over to party with them. One of them is depressed, demoralized-by-men Chatterton, and even though the millionaire is an even more depressed (and depressing) sloppy drunk, this is a pre-code "comedy", so in no time he and Chatterton are hitched. (He actually wakes up from the bender and doesn't even realize he's said 'I Do'...)

Hungarian Paul Lukas plays the millionaire's attorney (or something) who falls in love w/ Chatterton and is really nice to her. Lukas' performance is pretty decent/charming but his accent just makes me wish his character was played by Bela Lugosi, who was probably more dashing circa '30 than Lukas. Clive Brook plays the millionaire in the most broad way imaginable and in spite of his serious dependency on liquor I couldn't feel much sympathy or warmth for him. This makes the sincere yet rather counterintuitive denouement come off as entirely tone deaf... like PRETTY IN PINK/SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL ending tone deaf, but probably worse.

A'S W/TBW? was written by two women (though adapted from a novel by a man) and directed by a woman, but it still stinks a bit of early 30s misogyny and unenlightened attitudes about women. (Maybe the distaff authors just couldn't overcome the source material or the era they lived within.) Chatterton is sharp at comedy and formidable at drama, but the material is mostly too glib to be earnest and too bleak to be funny. (I did laugh once at an early Chatterton line.)

2.5/5    Other reviewers have acknowledged director Dorothy Arzner's uncertain tone here. Arzner was likely the primary inspiration for "Ruth Adler", the character played (very well) by Olivia Hamilton in her husband Damien Chazelle's 2022 film BABYLON. I wish I could find a better Dorothy Arzner movie than this one to watch.

[Dr. Whom]

Bunny The Killer Thing (2015)

A bunch of Finnish twenty somethings mixed up with some British gangsters being chased by a giant mutant bunny with comically large genitals, sounds like fun.

It isn't. The whole thing is played as a slapstick, with the gore being on Monty Python level, but it is dreadfully unfunny. Performances are poor and the humour doesn't rise above juvenile dirty jokes where waving genitals about counts as the hight of sophistication. In fairness, there are a couple of good ideas, but nowhere near enough to save the movie. Avoid.