It amazes me how the British manage to take a small budget to far greater lengths than Americans. Perhaps some research into the workings of the British film industry would shed some light onto this situation, but for now I'll just watch any British B-movie product in awe. This one's kind of a stinker, story-wise, but as per usual the acting holds its own and the cinematography is excellent. Set within the climate of protest and political change that ran throughout the West in the early 60's, we find peace protestor and part-time librarian Frank Jarvis making eyes at continental cutie Rose Margaret Keil, in town as a live-in babysitter, at a swinging coffeehouse. Much to his dismay, she lets suave ad executive Peter Burton have a few dances. Despite protests from her host family, she goes on a peace march with Jarvis but really hates it. Meanwhile, aspiring student David Weston, who looks a bit like Peter Noone, can't wait to marry Linda Marlowe but her uptight dad objects. Naturally, he walks out on her and immediately picks up Keil. They spend their first date skinny-dipping in the Thames and exchanging the dose of the clap she caught when earlier violated by Burton. Before they figure this out, however, the lovely couple get back together and poor innocent Marlowe gets VD as well - funny how the stuff spreads like wildfire in such a purportedly sexually repressed country. The film end with a whirlwind of coming clean, both symbolically and physically. Britain was way ahead of America in shedding the layers of censorship solidified in the previous two decades. Girl contains a number of risqué moments that the MPAA wouldn't dare approve. Indeed, I'm guessing that the print I saw, which contains an interestingly curt strip show, was somewhat censored, especially as it had the American title in the credits. Leave it to the Brits to weave double entendres into just about any spoken or written media; Keil gets an especially good one when she says "When I'm married I'm going to have six," referring to the number of children she hopes to communicate with a twist of the tongue from her accent. Girl also has its fair share of moralistic mumbo-jumbo; doctor John Wood spends all his screen time in the office, lecturing away about the dangers of promiscuous sex. Unlike many cheapo films, this fun flick maintains a breakneck pace throughout, tearing through Keil's woos and woes at a rate best befitting screwball comedy (although the moralistic sermons tend to drag). That said, the story is a total mess and never seems to know which character will be the focus of the next scene until it gets there. My ultimate analysis: a short, preachy but ultimately harmless movie.
Reviews
28 Reviews
Flash Gordon
(1980)
rotten Hollywood dross
28 June 2001
Who the hell approved this project? What a nightmare! Never before has such an easy concept been so totally botched. Star quarterback Sam J. Jones boards a private jet with squeamish travel agent Melody Anderson. Turbulent weather sends them crashing into the greenhouse of mad scientist Topol, who shanghais them into his rocket. On the moon, our heroes find themselves before the very evil emperor Max von Sydow in what must have been the lowest point in his career. Sexy daughter Ornella Muti takes an interest in Jones so she arranges to foil her dad's plans, after which she takes him to her pleasure planet, ruled by fey Timothy Dalton. Anderson flees lecherous von Sydow with Topol, reconvening through a series of unlikely events with Jones on a barbarian craft run by hirsute Brian Blessed. From here, the revolution takes over the story and we're treated to a tedious stream of battles and celebrations. Like many bad big budget pictures, the opening credits - a well-done cartoon panel montage - are Flash's strongest point. From there, it's all downhill. Lorenzo Semple Jr. (who did an excellent job with The Parallax View) and Michael Allin's poorly written dialogue receives yet worse delivery; original Flash creator Alex Raymond died in 1956 and so wasn't around to wince at their script. Flash also boasts some of the least impressive special effects from the last quarter of the 20th century. Don't let the apparent abundance fool you; under any degree of scrutiny, they look rotten beyond rotten's wildest dreams. Danilo Donati's sets and costumes do have something to recommend them, but they mostly get lost in the surrounding nonsense. Some of the battles are surprisingly violent for a PG-rated movie based on a comic strip. A film like this could only be scored by slick long hair howlers Queen, which makes sense in context but would be truly horrifying if hear otherwise. Earlier in Jones's career he appeared as a Playgirl centerfold, and probably impressed far more people with his work therein. In sum: this is some dumb doo-doo. You might as well re-watch Flesh Gordon instead. Rocky Horror Show creator Richard O'Brien shows up as a pal of Dalton's. Cinematographer Gilbert Taylor also worked with Kubrick, Hitchcock, Lester and Polanski and must have been suitably unimpressed.
Bedazzled
(2000)
decent comedy but hardly a remake
24 June 2001
Harold Ramis does a decent enough job traipsing into verboten territory in this relatively funny remake of a brilliant piece of cinematic comedy. Loser computer worker Brendan Fraser has a terrible crush on his coworker Frances O'Connor, with whom he's never even spoken. His unfriendly coworkers try to goad him into speaking with her but he instead winds up bumping into the devil, portrayed without much gusto by Elizabeth Hurley. The inevitable pact gets made, and Fraser continually finds himself about three giant steps away from achieving his wish. O'Conner as a sports journalist shows profound interest in towering basketball star Fraser until she gets a peek at his tiny penis. Fraser as a sensitive type proves too much for O'Conner who walks off with a guy that promises to drink beer and ignore her. After a few more tales of missed targets, Fraser learns a lesson and wanders off to find a relatively happy ending. Sadly, Fraser has little comic sensibility, far less than Dudley Moore, who played the character with pathos well beyond his imitator's capabilities. Hurley's role does not even allow for comparison to Peter Cook's devil; she would have been much better suited to portray Lillian Lust (done suitably by Raquel Welch in the original). Her presence makes itself known primarily through her skimpy outfits. Although most criticisms indicates she casts a more striking presence than Cook, I'd much rather see his slightest sarcastic facial expression than Hurley's gaudy sexuality. The original Bedazzled draped its comedy against a wildly anarchistic structure. Not so Harold Ramis's redo, which maintains a very traditional character progression and a horrifyingly facile moral conclusion that seems to indicate without irony that solace can be found in skin-deep beauty. Perhaps my greatest complaint, however, would be the almost nauseating amount of product placement, kicked off by Fraser getting a Burger King meal as his first wish, which gives the movie a distinctly corporate Hollywood flavor. Nevertheless, Ramis tends to craft comedies with decent, occasionally brilliant, success, and this film does indeed have its funny moments. Most of these come from the more outwardly (and pleasantly) offensive story twists, such as the aforementioned small penis episode and when Fraser leads O'Conner to his room, where he suddenly remember that he's gay. Versatile Orlando Jones and Ramis regular Brian Doyle-Murray show up for some pleasantly amusing roles and O'Conner is rapidly becoming the subject of a big crush on my part (I'm of the opinion she's far sexier than the overdone Ms. Hurley). Without a doubt, Ramis has created a perfectly acceptable film, but he would have done much better to come up with an original story to structure the jokes around; the film remakes Cook and Moore's original in name only, and Ramis achieves precious little by utilizing the name.
Little Nicky
(2000)
funny, sick and a great way to distract yourself for an hour and a half
24 June 2001
Good for Adam Sandler; he's gotten back on his feet after some disappointing moves and has created an excellent comedy with Little Nicky. The Devil, played by Harvey Keitel whose presence is felt only marginally, announces to his sons that he plans to continue his reign in Hell. Two of them rebel and situate themselves on earth, while the third, Adam Sandler, remains faithful. However, in order to restore order in Hell, he needs to bring them back. Thus the setup: the son of the Devil needs to not only accomplish an adventurous mission but also adapt to life on earth. A step-by-step analysis of the plot would be pointless, as it's essentially a series of jokes (concluding with Henry Winkler getting covered by bees (twice)) that lead up to the day being saved and a happy ending for all, including Sandler and girlfriend-on-earth Patricia Arquette. Suffice it to say the aforementioned jokes range from clever to brilliant. The cast boasts some excellent cameos and small parts, including Rodney Dangerfield, Jon Lovitz (who goes to hell in the first scene), Reese Witherspoon in a remarkably cute role as Sandler's angel mother, Rob Schneider, Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Schneider. Sandler and co-writers Tim Herlihy and Steve Brill (who also directed) do an excellent job finding a silly premise and filling it with a movie's worth of amusing and offensive material.
darker than dark comedy with no eleventh hour apologies
24 June 2001
Spanish auteur Santiago Segura, who wrote, directed and stars in this film, creates a decent if overly dark comedy about corruption. Segura claims to be a member of the Madrid police force, but his outlandish behavior he drinks before going on duty and forces his wheelchair-bound father to beg to increase his income hardly demonstrates the qualities required of a representative of the law. When sleazy nymphomaniac Neus Asensi moves in next door, he befriends her cousin, extremely nerdy Javier Cámara. When Segura and his new sidekick accidentally discover a drug ring run through a Chinese restaurant, Cámara calls in his loser friends to help. As the cast gets significantly reduced in a flurry of bullets and tragedy, Segura concludes the film with a few plot twists and the unsettling suggestion that sometimes people are as bad as they seem. An inherently unfunny story gets injected with a dose of morbid wit through Segura's approach to the characters. His attitude toward humanity appears quite dark. Everyone in the film either takes advantage of others or finds himself exploited, and no one seems to wind up punished for their wrongdoings. True, a number of maniacal drug dealers get offed, but so do all of Cámara's awkward, endearing friends. Segura follows few conventions in his portrayal of the world of his deluded cop. Chus Lampreave, familiar from several of Pedro Almodóvar's films, has a nice role as Cámara's mother.
Videodrome
(1983)
excellent exploration of the potential horrors of technology and the media
24 June 2001
David Cronenberg clearly stands out as one of the major film auteurs of the last quarter of the 20th century, with Videodrome a strong example of this claim. While most genre movies of the 1980's had fallen into a very formulaic style, this film breaks numerous rules (not unlike the anarchic Hollywood product of the mid to late 1960's) and fits well into Cronenberg's oeuvre. Television executive James Woods searches for entertaining new product and stumbles upon `Videodrome,' a shocking combination of sex, torture and possibly execution. Thinking it'll make a big splash, he has new girlfriend Deborah Harry investigate with an audition from which she fails to return. One of the film's only faults lies in its efforts to appear at the forefront of technology. While this may work on the week of its release, after that, such efforts fail and the film will wind up looking severely dated for example, take the Atari cartridges strewn throughout Woods's apartment. Other filmmakers have had much more success by not emphasizing the technology within the film as all that impressive (WarGames provides an excellent example). Fortunately, unlike a number of producers of science fiction, Cronenberg's interest lies in matters far more complex than a celebration of new technology. Within Videodrome's morbid mood and inventive stories, Cronenberg presents a number of themes he would return to (and, in some cases, improve upon) in 1999's eXistenZ.
Spooks Run Wild
(1941)
pleasant entry in suitably entertaining series
24 June 2001
Bowery Boys meet Bela Lugosi for the first (of two) collaborative efforts. In this standard entry in the comedy horror genre (in which the stereotypically evil character proves to be a good guy), the Boys this time including Leo Gorcey and brother David, Huntz Hall and good old `Sunshine' Sammy (Ernest) Morrison are shipped off to summer camp for the needy. On the way, they hear radio reports of a serial murder in the area, by which the boys pretend not to be affected. The camp escorts, played in an excessively understated manner by Dave O'Brien and Dorothy Short, are. When the Boys (who seem to be the only attendees of the camp) try to sneak into town for a collective hot date, they attempt a shortcut through the cemetery only to find a riled up graveyard attendant who grants the younger Gorcey a leg full of buckshot. They seek help at the ominous house on the hill, currently housing Lugosi and his dwarf assistant Angelo Rossitto. The Boys are scared shirtless (although they try to play it cool) as they wander through the haunted house, get lost and find secret passages etc etc etc. Somehow O'Brien emerges as the hero after he saves our mostly absent heroine and everything's okay, presumably for the rest of the disadvantaged summer. Veteran director Phil Rosen could claim scores of credits to his name, although this low-budget entry in a long-running series leaves little room for any cinematic flair he may have picked up over the years. Gorcey and Hall put in standard yet enjoyable performances, but Morrison, cast in a typically racist role but doing a good job of it, steals the show.
Plan 10 from Outer Space
(1995)
inventive conspiracy theory comedy with Mormons and aliens
21 June 2001
Good for Trent Harris, who against all odds and commercial interests managed to make a small handful of truly unusual films in the 1990's. Plan 10, though nowhere near as good as Rubin and Ed, defies categorization, touching on parody, surrealism and a wee bit of spirituality. Young Salt Lake City resident Stefene Russell aspires to become a writer, although she's somewhat held back by the unusual characters in her life. Her panty-sniffing brother Patrick Michael Collins receiving messages from space, which sends him to a mental institution; father Alex Caldiero, who reads experimental poetry in wheat fields for tourists, doesn't really seem to care. Worst of all is neighbor Curtis James, who spends all his time dancing with his shirt off in front of a window, clearly visible from Russell's typewriter. While sunning at the lake, Russell stumbles upon a metal plaque with some strange inscriptions. Determined to decipher, she brings them to a series of experts, eventually landing her in James's swinging pad. Together they find a book which explains a confusing conspiracy theory: feminist aliens started the Mormon church in order to impregnate humans. Her story ends her up at the insane asylum, from which she soon escapes to finish translating an ancient alien text, hopefully in time to save Salt Lake City from interstellar attack. Early in the film, Harris includes a brilliant, mostly true documentary on the Mormons, to not only give a little background but also show off his ability to mimic other genres. He's clearly an adept director, and the parts that feel awkward or unusual may well be completely intentional. Plan 10 occasional clunkiness comes from a highly unconventional approach to storytelling, very much in the mold of American comedy yet created from a maverick perspective. The cast is made up entirely of no-names; I'm guessing that Harris put all his friends in the movie. Indeed, some of the characters seem so superfluous that I wonder if he wrote in small parts for pals. Head alien Karen Black stands out as an exception, but I'm guessing her scenes were shot in a day. Harris has a keen sense of the absurd. While not quite a genius, he's certainly a visionary, and the world would be a better place if he kept on making movies.
Sir Henry at Rawlinson End
(1980)
brilliant low-budget absurdism
3 June 2001
I've seen this movie twice and yet still can't make head or tail of it. However, that doesn't prevent it from being near on brilliant, perhaps the lamentably late Vivian Stanshall's masterpiece. Trevor Howard as Sir Henry rambles on pompously (and nonsensically) and maintains a bunker which houses two guys who pretend it's still World War II for Howard's sake. There's some sort of plot involving exorcising Howard's brother's ghost (played by Stanshall) and a sub-plot involving Patrick Magee as a Reverend up to no good (can't figure out what sort of no good, however). The extremely low production values add to the feeling of run-down old money that make this dada narrative so damn funny. It's also got some good music and Howard in blackface on a unicycle. Director Steve Roberts was responsible for writing the Max Headroom TV show, of which I have extremely fond but vague memories.
Werewolves on Wheels
(1971)
extremely entertaining exploitation fun
3 June 2001
While shaky in premise, Werewolves on Wheels contains all the absurdity, excess and self-awareness necessary to maintain interest. The plot roams all over the place, the actors mumble a lot of their lines and the ending is distinctly dissatisfying - but nevertheless it's well worth 85 minutes of your time. A rowdy gang of bikers who call themselves the Devil's Advocates shows up at a gas station in the middle of the desert to terrorizes the attendant, then proceeds to stumble upon a monastery while partying in a nearby forest. The ominous monks share suspect bread and wine, greedily indulged upon by the rowdy gang. When they're too drunk to notice, head monk `One,' an interesting role for the usually funny Severn Darden, plucks a hair from one of their heads and places it in a bat buckle. He then prays to Satan and kills a cat. The fun begins at this point, and biker lady D. J. Anderson materializes for some sort of dark ritual. When the bikers realize she's gone missing, they seek out the monks and beat the living pulp out of them. The bikers think little of the events that have transpired, but the following night at the campfire Anderson seems to suck head biker Stephen Oliver's blood, and a mock Satanic dance culminates in the grisly deaths of two members of the gang. After terrorizing another gas station they roam around the desert pretending to make a movie, creating a distinctly self-reflective mood. Nonsense-preaching Duece Berry (whose character is named `Tarot') tries to warn Oliver that something's in the air but he'll have none of his buddy's mystic mumbo-jumbo. They burn a pile of old cars and Anderson sees foreboding signs in the flames. Much of the same insanity carries the film right up to its vague conclusion. Writer-director Michael Levesque, who worked on a couple of Russ Meyer films, is a decent enough filmmaker and the camera work and editing and enjoyable, but the film suffers from over-abuse of the zoom. At least three cast members also appeared in The Last Movie, also made in 1971, and folk singer Barry McGuire appears as a member of the bike gang. Most of the rest of the cast are stunt performers, including a number of the leads. Don Gere provides an excellent psychedelic soundtrack, by far the best of any biker movie I've seen. The unusually diverse cast and enthusiastic amateur creative spirit create an atmosphere more exciting than the majority of contemporary genre filmmaking. What it all comes down to is that this a movie for people who like to drink in the morning, like myself.
The Rage of Paris
(1938)
passable screwball comedy with strong cast
3 June 2001
A decent enough screwball comedy, Rage owes more than a little to The Awful Truth. Danielle Darieux wants a modeling job and accidentally winds up stripping for businessman Douglas Fairbanks Jr (thinking he's a photographer; he's not). She then gets involved in a complex ploy to marry rich Canadian Louis Hayward, in the process helping head waiter Mischa Auer get his own restaurant. Turns out that Hayward and Fairbanks are friends and Fairbanks thinks she's a cheap trollop and so tries to stop it all from happening with decent enough comic results. A few decent French jokes but terrible last minute romance between Darrieux and Fairbanks leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the discerning viewer. Helen Broderick's role as Darrieux's protector comes off as endearing at first but eventually feels pathetic, as she remains uncoupled at the end of this comic work, never a particularly fortunate place to be.
The Outer Gate
(1937)
forgettable second-feature prodigal tale
3 June 2001
A typically thin Monogram production. Good guy Ben Alexander becomes a bad guy when boss Ralph Morgan puts him in prison for years for an embezzlement crime he didn't commit. Released upon the suicide confession of the guilty party, Alexander turns to a life of vengeance. His former boss feels guilty about having had a fine employee put away for so long and lets him live in his spacious house and spend quality time with his (not so) lovely daughter Kay Linaker. The bad guy helps his criminal friends steal a quarter of a million dollars from the house safe and then almost has Morgan put away for the same crime with which he had been wrongly pinned. An eleventh hour prodigal son conclusion leaves the viewer a little confused about the proceedings (but probably ready to start another, more satisfying movie). Overlong at 64 minutes.
The Return of Count Yorga
(1971)
an unsurprisingly unimpressive follow-up
1 June 2001
It comes as no surprise that by the early 70's sequels were being made from movies in which the protagonist of the second film dies in the first. I do wonder, however, what sequel did this first - I'd hesitate to suggest the Dracula or Frankenstein series as those characters were more concepts than distinct personae. Yorga, however, was a clear case of capitalistic resurrection. Count Yorga, Vampire left him decidedly dead, yet he shows up here with little explanation. But, when push comes to shove, who really cares? I care more about the fact that despite the presence of many of the same names, including director Kelljan, from the first highly entertaining installment, Return fails on any number of accounts. Robert Quarry, back as Yorga, makes his reappearance at a masquerade at the local orphanage put together by kind-hearted if unimpressive Mariette Hartley. He likes what he sees, so he has his harem of decaying ladies abduct her and bite many members of her good-natured family. Mute coworker Yvonne Wilder finds the bodies; when the police arrive, however, they've mysteriously disappeared and frustrated Wilder can't locate a pen to inscribe what she witnessed. Roger Perry, back in his role as vampire investigator and apparently in the process of establishing himself as a modern Van Helsing, spearheads an investigation that apparently involves quite a bit of conversations shown in unexciting long shot. While Quarry's out on the town, Hartley has some pretty intense vampire hallucinations that provide some distraction from the mundane story. Three beers and two mojitos into the film, my notes and memory are illegible, but the conclusion involves a lot of vampire converts. Return is nowhere near as frightening as its predecessor, nor does it boast a clever story, suggestive acting and passable dialogue. With a story like this enacted by a cast like this, it's difficult to determine where the bad screenplay ends and where the bad acting begins. Regardless of where to place blame, Hartley has some horrible lines, many of which she lolls out like so much porridge. One of the only attributes similar to the first film is Kelljan's clever use of color. While Yorga featured a symphony of shades of brown contrasted with the occasional burst of red, Return's understated color scheme includes some extremely well placed shots, including a sequence with some striking purple. I found the video in the Horror Comedy section of the video store but did no laughing with, only at. The funniest part of the movie to me is that the co-writer Wilder didn't give herself any lines in the movie, preferring instead to hop around, point and gesture than to pronounce any of her clunky dialogue. Mel Brooks actor/writer Rudy De Luca has a role as a police investigator; Craig T. Nelson, the dad from Poltergeist, also plays a detective. George Macready returns from the previous film (which he narrated) for his last film role, as does ugly Edward Walsh in the same role as Quarry's gatekeeper.
Madam Kitty
(1976)
almost classy sleaze with marginal prurient appeal
30 May 2001
Up until things got ugly, war-torn Europe must have been an interesting place to be, if we're to believe the environment presented in Salon Kitty: sex, debauchery and feasting in full force, with little care for tomorrow. Looks OK to me. The curtains open to nasty Nazi Helmut Berger overseeing medical experiments in the name of racial purity; then, in the name of the Fuhrer, he gathers an excellent sample of pretty young things to put into action an orgy of epic proportions. All this would appear to be in the name of having a good time, but their claim is that they've got the future of their nation on their minds. Berger then subjects the ladies to degrading acts to weed out the weak; this treats the audience to scenes of intimacy with a brutish monster, a humpback, a corpulent, a gypsy and of course a Jew. Well-paid, free spirited Ingrid Thulin celebrates the war on Poland at her house of sin until Berger has it shut down. The Nazis give her new girls to work with, in the name of Adolf, but she finds them too dull and pure. Nevertheless, she goes to work, unaware that the Nazis are using the bordello to eavesdrop on their officers. Innocent upper-class recruit Teresa Ann Savoy begins to develop a relationship with officer John Steiner, unfortunately shot as a traitor after her Nazis learn of their conversations. This brings her to Berger's attention, who forces her to indulge in moral misbehavior with his wife Tina Aumont. The girls begin to revolt against the oppressive Nazis as the film concludes in a flurry of sex, death and steambaths. I can't think of any non-pornographic film that contains quite so much nudity as Salon Kitty. As accomplished in Salo with notably greater ease, Brass tries to inundate his film with enough conceptual content and political intrigue to avoid being sequestered in the nudie film ghetto . Unlike standard erotically charged cinema, it starts off slow, relying primarily on suggestion and gore. However, once Berger parades the line of young ladies into their headquarters, the sex doesn't stop. Surprisingly little of the nudity is appealing. Salon Kitty appears far more interested in the connotations of the bare flesh than in the prurient appeal of women's bodies. Some symbolism reeks of the obvious; few self-respecting filmmakers would put a shot of pigs being slaughtered early in a film about Nazi debauchery. Brass seems more at home relishing in the visual appeal than criticizing the activities. Much of the sex will not appeal to fans of straightforward erotica, or even pornography. The image of a woman humiliating a man for wearing a pubic wig may have its audience, but it's a relatively minor, fetish-inclined one.
Fun with Dick and Jane
(1977)
creative comedy with questionable moral standards
20 May 2001
Fun with Dick and Jane serves as an entertaining satire on the upper middle class standards of living, produced in the presumably stifling corporate environment of the mid-1970's. A drunken Ed McMahon lays off overpaid executive George Segal. Lovely wife Jane Fonda, who handles matters fairly well when their landscapers tear up all their unpaid work, finds herself forced to find some source of income to maintain their expensive lifestyles it would seem Segal's unemployment only takes them so far. Fonda secures a job as a model while Segal manages to lose his benefits when a gay unemployment officer spots him working as a bit character in the opera. When Fonda loses her apparently not very secure job, the now poor couple head out to get a loan. There they stumble upon a holdup, get taken hostage, and somehow wind up with all the loot. Enjoying their first taste of crime, the pair bungles their way through a series of hold-ups and eventually become near pros. They manage to restore their house to its previous splendor, cockily inviting McMahon to a chic pool party so he can have a gander at their newfound success. Of course, a sip only gets you thirsty, so the greedy couple find themselves faced with the quest for the Big Gulp. The story is funny for the most part, with memorable moments akin to Segal discussing music with a record store clerk during a robbery. There's healthy dose of anarchy for good measure, with destruction happily joining hands with the nouveau pauvre and the will to get back what has been lost. By having its characters steal primarily from the allegedly greedy or malevolent the phone company, loan sharks, the Climax Court Motel the film does maintains some shaky moral standards. In addition, Fun contains a few instances of dated racism, with jabs at homosexuals, Hispanics and African-Americans (who hold a pajama dance party in McMahon's office as Segal and Fonda crack his safe, their loud drill protected by the celebrants' louder music). A startlingly racist part goes to Hank Garcia, as an unemployed cleaner who works a bad influence on Segal. Nevertheless, the film on the whole manages to function well as a thoroughly entertaining comedy, with an ample dose of anarchism for good measure.
Cold Eyes of Fear
(1971)
less than amazing giallo -- but a great soundtrack!
20 May 2001
By no means the best giallo I've seen, this Enzo Castellari tale of ___ drags horribly and maintains little suspense. Set in Swinging London (but filmed primarily in Rome), the movie finds young lawyer Gianni Garko about to seduce prostitute Giovanna Ralli at his swank house. They stumble upon the butler's dead body, undoubtedly a victim of temperate ruffian Julián Mateos, who then terrorizes the couple with his gun and leather suit. Judge Fernando Rey, who keep a cat on his desk, calls nephew Garko to ask for legal assistance and sends constable Frank Wolff over with a missive. The sleazy couple assumes the cop to be a deus ex machine, but he proves to be in on the racket. After sending Rey a secret plea for help (in Latin no less), our hopeful gets haughty and gives the sneering tough guy a good pounding. While Ralli fails to seduce Mateos with a shower, Rey puzzles out the message and sends some genuine although ineffectual police. Some may wonder what will happen to the unlovable couple besieged by this complicated plot; others may not. Castellari fills Cold Eyes with similarly absurd post-nouvelle vague editing, and I suspect this was a strictly commissioned affair for the veteran writer, producer and actor who can claim over 40 films to his credit. His failure as director really displays itself in the overdone, montage-heavy finale. Despite its lack of flesh and gore, Cold Eyes is shockingly exploitative. Wolff murders a policeman in flashback during a gratuitously cruel story diversion, only to illustrate his already obviously violent side. The violence throughout comes off as unnecessarily brutal, as well as distinctly European in flavor. None of the male characters treat the unimpressive prostitute much like a human, her unsurprised response perhaps suggesting they're correct to do so. Easily the best part of the movie is Ennio Morricone's amazing score, would fit better in a well-paced environment. If you want to see a decent film with Rey, who doesn't actually appear in shot with any of the main cast and probably only showed up for a day's worth of filming, check out the same year's French Connection.
brilliant fable of adolescent awakening
20 May 2001
A masterpiece of erotic confusion, Valerie comes as a delightful introduction to prolific Czechoslovakian director Jaromil Jires, whose career spans five decades. Jires blends reality and illusion to the extent that a synopsis does a disservice to the film, yet the literary story would work quite well on its own. Jaroslava Schallerovà, only 14 years old at the time, plays Valerie, a pretty young girl who lives with her grandmother in a beautiful yet antiseptic house. Her boyfriend (or perhaps brother), who goes by the name Eagle, sets off a chain of unusual events when he steals her earrings. A troupe of actors, or perhaps a wedding procession, comes into town, bringing with it a man who may be a monstrous vampire but may also be Valerie's father. Soon after Valerie's grandmother either disappears or dies, her Cousin Else shows up at the house and bears more than a striking resemblance to the grandmother (indeed, I believe these characters are played by the same actress). Things progress much along these lines, with eventually Valerie experiencing a major reawakening. Jires films in an impressively sensual manner, creating a mood through imagery rather than plot point. At times, however, the details get rather confusing, which can unfortunately shift attention from the beautiful composition and editing to deducing narrative developments. Many sequences appear to occur within the story but then end with the suggestion that they have just been imagined, introducing a need to constantly second-guess one's perceptions. Schallerovà plays the role with stunning (perhaps genuine) innocence. Without overindulged serenity, Valerie mystifies and befuddles through an agenda of symbol-soaked imagery and fantastic storytelling.
Revolution
(1968)
bad filmmaking, good documentation
20 May 2001
Revolution, an interesting quasi-documentary on the hippie experience in San Francisco, presents a day in the life of Today Malone, an attractive blond hippie (who might just be an attractive young actress playing a hippie). As with many of such films from the era, we're treated to lengthy pro- and anti-hippie banter, hallucination scenes, free-love themed nudity and excellent music (in this case, Country Joe and the Fish, The Steve Miller Band and Quicksilver Messenger Service, all at the creative peak of their careers). While at times absurd, this film nevertheless provides a fascinating document of the environment of hippie San Francisco, even if seen through exploitative eyes. As with the garbage on eBay, one needs simply to filter out the garbage to find the invaluable treasure.
Skidoo
(1968)
a classic Hollywood/acid combo
13 May 2001
A much-maligned classic, this psychedelic gem came late in the career of director Otto Preminger, possibly at a time during which he was hoping to find a new niche. Clearly, this wasn't it, as the films he went on to do became far slower and subdued. Too bad, really, as there's some great stuff herein. An excellent cast weaves its way through a confusing plot, as follows: Jackie Gleason has retired from the mob and lives happily enough with wife Carol Channing and turtle-faced lackey Arnold Stang, the latter of whom gets iced (and prematurely, I say let Stang stay in the picture!) when George Romero and Frankie Avalon try to persuade Gleason to pull a hit for the mob leader (`God' Groucho Marx living in luxury on a boat with skinny Donyale Luna). Gleason finally agrees, and disappears to prison, cellmates with a peace-speaking mad scientist-looking Austin Pendelton. Meanwhile, Channing, pretty teenage daughter Alexandra Hay and her hippie boyfriend John Philip Law (who goes by `Stash') all become close friends when mom lets his hippie commune live in their house. Channing and Fay go (separately) to seduce Avalon to find out to where Gleason has gone. In prison, Gleason accidentally lets on to his hit, potential squealer (and squeal he does) Mickey Rooney (at the time in his sixth decade of filmmaking!), and further blunders when he writes a letter home and licks one of Pendelton's LSD-soaked envelopes. After a mesmerizing yet stupid trip sequence, Gleason decides not to make the hit and goes into conference with Pendelton. It's right around here that things get very manic, with an acid party in jail on the day that warden Burgess Meredith stops by to eat with the prisoners. Gleason and company make their escape while everybody's tripping their ears off (including tower guard Harry Nilsson and switchboard operator Slim Pickens), and the cast assembles for a bizarre conclusion on Marx's boat. No easy whodunit, this. That Paramount would make a production with a cast and crew like this clearly indicates that the rule-less environment of 1968 sent the studios scrambling. Furthermore, the gimmick of presenting some of Hollywood's best known faces feigning acid trips acts as evidence that in the ensuing hubbub, producers showed heart in making vehement attempts to pander to a difficult target audience. Two serious low points may leave people with a rotten taste in their ears: Channing has a musical number near the end of the film that advocates a free-wheeling hippie lifestyle, and Nilsson sings each and every word of the credits, down to the copyright.
Smashing Time
(1967)
strong swinging London pic with a hefty dose of anarchy
13 May 2001
Swinging London produced more good music than film, if you ask me, but this anarchistic comedy falls among the better productions of the era. Writer George Melly (who apparently also appeared in Makaveyev's Sweet Movie) presents a wild series of episodes structured around a marginal narrative. Gum snapping Lynn Redgrave and big-eyed Rita Tushingham relocate from their small rural town to happening London and instantly their life savings get stolen. When they're unable to pay for their slap-up breakfast, Tushingham quickly secures a job washing dishes and just as quickly loses it after an impromptu paint and food fight. Meanwhile, Redgrave has secured jobs as nightclub hostesses. Seedy customer Ian Carmichael picks up Redgrave but Tushingham succeeds in saving her friends' chastity. Trendy fashion photographer Michael York somehow enters the scene by capitalizing off a humiliating picture of Redgrave, then instigating a pie fight at her new workplace (a restaurant that only serves pies, natch). When the girls return to their house, they find it has been destroyed as part of a TV prank and fortuitously receive 10,000 pounds in return. And this is when the story really explodes. Redgrave uses the money to sponsor her career as pop artist, which explodes overnight. There's a brilliant recording studio sequence that takes a hefty stab at prefabricated artistic product: Redgrave's song sounds terrible while recorded but excellent in playback. Concurrent to Redgrave's rise to stardom, awkward Tushingham achieves equal fame as a fashion model for new boyfriend York, and the two friends begin to despise one another. Smashing Time proceeds with a number of parties, destructive humor and a passable conclusion. Throughout the film, non-diagetic narrative songs document the characters' moods. This unusual device and other creative moments, including a dandy so distraught by getting pied that he commits suicide, evidence an adventurous force behind the script. Indeed, director Desmond Davis barely makes his presence felt. Unlike most films driven by the written word, this film's script would allow for a great finished product with any director with an adequate budget. Storytelling, after all, needs act as film's primary purpose and thus occasionally a film such as Smashing Time indicates that the director does not necessarily need to act as a film's primary author. This film also offers a valuable historic treatment of London during a particularly unique phase. Then well-known psych group Tomorrow show up all over the film, possibly as a stab at authenticity but effective if so. Nevertheless, their music does not actually appear in the movie; we're treated instead to a few songs by the undeservedly less famous group Skip Bifferty.
Nurse Betty
(2000)
uninteresting escapism from a hateful director
12 May 2001
After unintelligent waitress Renée Zellweger witnesses the dramatic scalping and murder of her unpleasant husband Aaron Eckhart, she hits the road believing TV soap opera star Greg Kinnear sent her a message to do so in a recent episode. Hired killers Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock reluctantly track her down as the former becomes slightly obsessed with her. The completely unqualified small-town crazy winds up getting a job at a hospital by saving a wounded man's life, also landing a room with the patient's sister Tia Texada. After Zellweger stars up a confused relationship with the man she's essentially stalking, matters get very confused and therein we find the meat of the matter. While cute on the surface, LaBute tends not to genuinely dabble with such lighthearted emotions. Tucked under a sheet-thin sweetness, we find some extremely negative takes on his characters. Zellweger's delusional infatuation makes light of someone genuinely insanity, and LaBute encourages us to laugh at he. The very presence of laughter in such a dark drama indicates a strong distaste for the characters. Worse yet are sudden switches to a more objective portrayal of Zegweller's delusions. Her conversations in a bar with a woman gradually realizing Zegweller is out of her nut offer more genuine fear than sympathy. I've never enjoyed any of Neil LaBute's movie on the whole, I find him negative to excess, relying strongly of whines when anger could have proved a more useful tone. Freeman, who started his acting career on `The Electric Company,' has a character lifted right out of Pulp Fiction, and gives him extremely little room in which to work. Rock, meanwhile, tries very hard to make up for all that space but fails to pull it off.
Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam
(1995 TV Movie)
elevated sensationalism
12 May 2001
It's hard not to enjoy Heidi Fleiss, a work clearly superior to rote television sensationalism. Never fear, sensationalism is present in abundance and obviously drives the movie. Broomfield hops from madam to druggie to porn-star with gleeful excess, intent on shocking and disgusting as much as possible within the confines of broadcast-quality material. However, he tends to show us a little more, material that run of the mill documentarians wouldn't show. We see, for example, LA Chief of Police Daryl Gates accepting a surprisingly large sum of money for his appearance in the film, apparently unconcerned that he's being filmed doing so. Before interviewing a former porn actress about her connections with Heidi, he establishes the fact that she's appearing to get some quick cash to fund her drug habit. Bloomfield's obvious mean-spirited approach to each and every character - with the blatant exception of the fetishized Fleiss - leaves no room for casual viewer identification. Broomfield himself constantly appears to add to the sense that none of these people, including the filmmaker, spends their time doing kind, humane things. The two people suggested as major influences on Fleiss's road to ruin would make an ideal harpie and Cyclops. Elderly Madam Alex, who died shortly after her scenes were shot, gossips rampantly for two visits but starts cursing Broomfield out when he refuses to pay for follow-up visits. Possibly not entirely evil Ivan Nagy, writer/director of a number of unimpressive features, does all he can to convince Broomfield's cameraman (when Broomfield's not having any of it) that he's just a good guy and could never have done all the things proven to be true about him. Victoria Sellers - Peter and Britt Ekland's daughter - grants Broomfield an interview right out of rehab, clearly at the end of her rope. Conceptually, this all would be difficult to absorb due to the daunting amount of pain all these people are going for, but Broomfield's nasty spirit finds a way to make it all fun. Always welcome porn star Ron Jeremy appears in a sleazy hotel room.
Shatter
(1974)
passable Hammer action flick with strange sense of morality
12 May 2001
Hammer helped define the gothic vampire genre, for which we should be thankful, but they also found need to dabble in other fields with mixed results. Shatter did not have the most inspired mixture and doesn't stand the test of time very well. Perpetually grouchy killer for hire Stuart Whitman fails goes to Hong Kong where he fails to collect from disreputable banker Anton Diffring. Corrupt government official Peter Cushing has his men beat the pulp out of Whitman, who stumbles off to a massage parlor where kung fu master Lung Ti treats him to a freebie from adorable Li-Li Li (whose name sounds like the refrain to a doo-wop song). Whitman finds his apartment blown up so he takes refuge at his new friends' dojo. He slips underground for a while but gets attacked at a martial arts invitational won by understated Ti. Without questioning the moral validity of his instincts, they help him in his quest to extort a mil from Diffring. International affairs gets somewhat sticky from here, and the bullets fly freely until the predictable climax. Carreras tries his best to present Whitman as a then-prevalent philosopher killer, but the weak introspective sequences that show Whitman roaming around his apartment fail to do the trick. The apparently sensitive regret he feels for his victims comes off as a brooding doom with little real emotion backing it up. Shatter's intolerance for international culture makes a few unexpected peeps from its veneer of acceptance. Snooty references to eating snakes evidence a discomfort with the behavior of a foreign country. The background story sets this attitude in stone: Whitman's being tracked down for getting involved with political affairs in Badawi, a corrupt puppet country in Africa in which brothers contentedly murder brothers for money and power. Such situations may perhaps at time truly occur, but the same can be found in Shakespeare with less disapproval asked of the audience. The degree of acceptance present can be seen as a sense of tragedy, completely disconnected with the random slaying of evil black or Asian characters. I don't mean to push the point, but I found it odd that both major black characters were played no-name Yemi Ajibade in an otherwise internationally well-known cast. Cult director Monte Hellman apparently assisted Carreras, far more experienced as a producer, but did not receive credit. Writer Don Houghton produced the other Shaw/Hammer co-production, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires and also takes credit for the awful but amusing Dracula AD 1972. Scenes allegedly shot in Badawi, a country that does not exist, were probably done in Hong Kong.
Requiem for a Vampire
(1972)
decent enough Rollin from his peak period
12 May 2001
One of Rollin's best, although lacking the stylish gaudiness of his earlier masterpieces. However, considered as the work of an impressively productive director with about as many misses as hits, this film holds a high ranking in his oeuvre. He starts smash dab in the middle of obviously complicated unexplained criminal events, with the two female protagonists done up in ludicrous clown costumes. After the death of their fellow fugitive, they set fire to their car and wander off into the woods. Dark, young beauty Mireille Dargent stumbles into an open grave and ends up covered in opened dirt as nearby Marie-Pierre Castle watches, too scared to speak. Once unearthed, she and her friend find a seemingly abandoned castle with a decomposing body in the basement. Some uninspired vampires bring the girls to their dungeon of depravity. Dying vamp Philippe Gasté, the last of his kind in great need to make more with the help of vamp pal Anne-Dominique Toussaint, gives them a wee bite. They're somewhat uncertain about this idea of slowing turning into the blood-sucking undead, but things head in unexpected directions from here in typical Rollin style, if typical can be described as such. Although many of Rollin's women find themselves thrust unexpectedly into a world of evil, a close inspection of their characters from the beginning suggest a previous loss of innocence. Rollin's women do not succumb to these influences - indeed, they generally escape from their perilous situations - but it's important to remember that this sort of behavior may well not be old hat to them. Requiem uses extremely effective pacing, which many mistake as boring. Some extremely long takes contain little distinguishable action, denying the audience a passive film experience. This style of filmmaking instead demands total audience involvement, with only occasional instances of the glossy seduction suggested by the film's pretext. Rollin's decision to spend so much screen time on seemingly aimless wandering evokes a misguided spiritual quest, with obvious sexual connotations in the form of vampires. The experimental score by Pierre Raph, who worked with Rollin on the notorious Démoniaques, compliments this uncertain, possibly confused journey. In stark contrast to these rather profound elements stands the unnecessarily graphic sexual torture that goes on the castle's dungeon. This goes to an unnecessary extreme - I can't, for example, imagine anyone enjoying the image of a bat nestling in a woman's vagina. However, movies do need a target audience and Rollin could easily have chosen a worse genre into which to work his ideas. After this film, Toussaint began her career as a producer.. Dargent and Castle, prototypical Rollin girls, appeared in several other of his films.
Steckler makes good, kiddie-style
11 May 2001
Ray Dennis Steckler put together a trilogy of comic shorts modeled on the Bowery Boys series, with impressive results if you're not expecting any sort of masterpiece. In the first story, the kids, a motley bunch of toddlers and adults dressed as teenagers, head to Coleman Francis's house to do some housework. Extraterrestrials start picking them off, a green grasshopper in a flying saucers claiming the main kid, so it's up to doofy Steckler (acting as Cash Flagg) to find a way to save the day.. In the second part, the kids get a job doing housework for falling star Carolyn Brandt. Some bumbling villains kidnap her, but her sleazy agent says she's not worth the ransom. Thus it falls to Steckler once again to intervene and rescue both Brandt and her career. This episode also features a very annoying adult who spends a little too much time with the kids and sings remarkably uninspired songs about them on an acoustic guitar. Not a person I would trust with my own offspring, but Steckler probably couldn't afford high-end babysitters. In the final part of the trilogy, Steckler heads into the wrong side of town to buy some sodas on a hot afternoon, instigating a rumble. They decide to settle their differences with a cross-country race. A funny French saboteur, hired by the rival team, does their best to put the Kids' star athlete out of the ahem running, and somehow we're led into a startling monster attack sequence. This conclusion seals tight the possibility that Steckler was having a grand time making these shorts, possibly never intended for theatrical release. In a way, Lemon Grove Kids exists as an interesting home-movie documenting the styles and culture of the early 1960's made by a barely experienced filmmaker, who had only been in the business for a few years. Although I enjoyed this film quite a bit, I'd only show it to children I really hated. Some of the women-children boast some surprisingly sexy outfits, plus a certain amount of the humor veers toward the sophisticated. Brandt appeared in a number of Steckler's films. Steckler fans with be happy to see hero Ray Pfink in a cameo.
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