A CAREFUL CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF 20TH CENTURY FILM AND ITS PSYCHOMETAPHYSICAL RAMIFICATIONS UPON POPULAR CULTURE. AND SHIT LIKE THAT.

Monday, May 2, 2011

THE GIRL SLAVES OF MORGANA LE FAY (1971)

VERY NICE PERIOD COSTUMES. AND BY PERIOD COSTUMES I MEAN TITS.



Ask yourself before renting this one - why do I wanna watch this? For the hot swingin' 70's action? There ain't none. This thing crawls like a baby on fly paper. For the groovy 70's backdrops? Go rent "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" instead, it's a much more entertaining film. And sorry, if you're just here to check out the ample T&A, that's Strike 3 - there ain't that much, and what there is ain't worth it. Imagine the worst Skinemax After Dark movie from 1975 and then take out the hardcore (if they haven't already). Morgana Le Fay now hawks Wrinkle Cream on QVC at 3 in the morning, and her Girl Slaves now tour with Englebert Humperdinck. They were both good career moves.



ODD THAT CPR SHOULD GIVE ME A BONER.

Monday, April 18, 2011

LATHE OF HEAVEN (1980)


Sorry, LeGuin fans. It ain't the lack of special effects that destroy this one. It's the lack of coherent thought. Every time this guy dreams of something (and his dreams come true, you see, now there's a novel idea), he screws it up! You'd think he'd be just a tad more careful what he dreams about after, oh, the third or fourth screwup, but he's not, and neither is the doofus scientist who's controlling the experiment. So things just get worse and worse until Professor Brainless decides to harness Dreamboy's power for himself, and golly gee I wonder what's gonna happen next? I like Ursula LeGuin. She seems like a sweet old lady. But if this is her finest hour, she better look into getting a show on the Cooking Channel or something.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE (1977)


I'LL ASK YOU ONE MORE TIME. WHERE DID YOU HIDE THE FURBIES?

Hey, a cross between Funny Games and All In The Family! William Sanderson reads from the Racial Epithet Thesaurus while his genuinely crazed Asian friend rips a blouse off a white girl and takes a brick to the head of a young boy, and some Latino dude panics alot and wears authentic 70's pimp shirts. This is a film made in a time when men were men, goddammit. They drove Mercurys with 8-cylinder engines. They smoked cigarettes proudly and blew smoke in the face of any pansy ass who dared to object. And they lusted after full-bodied women like Lynda Carter and Raquel Welch and Pam Grier - little crack whores like Natalie Portman and Bijou Philips and Sela Ward just won't cut it for these men. Sure, the racial slurs are meant to offend, but if anyone out there thinks the violence toward children, women and old people in this movie was also designed to get a reaction, you missed the point. That's just the way we rolled back in 1977.

Monday, March 28, 2011

LOOK (2007)


HEATHER HOGAN ON THE RIGHT. ASHLEY "MACHO MAN" SAVAGE ON THE LEFT. I THINK.


I liked it. A lot of different, seemingly unrelated stories that do eventually tie in together in a Gus Van Sant Elephant-like way. Some stories are played for laughs and don't get much screen time, others are deadly serious (and ultimately devastingly tragic) and make up the bulk of the film. Like real life, there aren't always happy endings to these stories, and the absence of any Hollywood stars makes you believe these characters are real. Well, no stars yet. But let me be the first to start an appreciation society for Heather Hogan, who starts the film off with a bang (no pun intended) and I pray isn't at all related to Brooke and the Hulkster.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

BABY BLOOD (1990)

AND YOU THOUGHT THAT BIG DUMP YOU TOOK LAST NIGHT WAS ROUGH!


BABY BLOOD, quite simply, is so bad, it's good. Woman with David Letterman teeth goes on murderous rampage because her squid-baby needs blood, attacks driver who picked her up hitch-hiking and crashes Benny Hill-style into a wall. Mom follows goopy trail of Baby Calamari into a bus of soccer hooligans, COVERED IN BLOOD AND GRUE FROM THE CRASH. Bus driver doesn't seem to notice and welcomes strange girl onto bus, but warns her not to wake the soccer punks because they tend to get "rowdy" around women. Bus driver never questions why mom's drenched in human carnage. Needless to say, soccer boys wake up, get instantly aroused by the sight of a bloody mama with a dental gap the size of Cleveland, while Octobaby attacks driver in what might be the single most hilarious baby attack since the plastic hand puppet in ITS ALIVE. Really, this movie is so inexplicable that you stop looking for plot holes 30 minutes in and start questioning why you're watching this fucking thing sober. A half dozen Black Russians and I'm sure BABY BLOOD looks like BLADE RUNNER. And it might even start to make sense.

HOW THE HELL DID THEY GET RAE DAWN CHONG IN THIS MOVIE?

Friday, December 10, 2010

IT'S ALIVE! (1974)

CHANCES ARE IF YOU SPENT GOOD MONEY ON THIS FILM, YOU DID WATCH IT ALONE.

Elisabeth Hasselback is pregnant again. Now that's a baby that scares me a thousand times more than the sock puppet in ITS ALIVE. Not a good sign when the DVD cover is scarier than the actual movie. Followed quickly by ITS ALIVE 2 - PLACENTA OF DEATH.

JESUS CHRIST, ANOTHER FUCKING KARDASHIAN?!?

Monday, November 15, 2010

CANNIBAL FEROX (1981)


NOT NEARLY AS SEXY AS IT SHOULD BE.

Umberto Lenzi must HATE New York. Or New Yorkers, I should say. Here are four and a half of the most reprehensible, self-absorbed and downright STUPID people you've ever seen outside of a Pauly Shore movie, and they're all "New Yorkers" (though they sure don't LOOK like it, with their mullets and bad perms). Needless to say, these Sarah Palin wannabees pretty much have to PROVOKE the cannibals into doing what they do, and it all really makes NO sense at all. They HANG OUT in the cannibal village, forgodsake, and then act SHOCKED when the men return. If you like gore, there's plenty of it here, though most of the violence and dismemberment toward the humans is very fake looking (freeze frame the castration scene - whatever latex was used looks NOTHING like what it's meant to be). But yes, like the other reviewers said, there are several animal deaths, some very cruelly staged and THOSE are hard to watch if you like small woodland creatures. I do, but at the same time, I REALLY hate stupid people, so CANNIBAL FEROX was kind of a toss-up. Animal killings bad, stupid people dismemberments really satisfying. Some decent nudity by the blonde, and thank God the brunette keeps her clothes on. Three stars then, right down the middle. With a MACHETE.

HEY, CAN I GET A HAND HERE? NO, I MEAN LITERALLY.