Monday, January 10, 2022

Updated, Browsable List of All Reviews: January 2022

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BALTIKA EXTRA 9 (2008, Russia)BANANAS (1971, Woody Allen)THE BAND WAGON (1953, Vincente Minnelli)BARB WIRE (1996, David Hogan)
BARFLY (1987, Barbet Schroeder)
BASKET CASE (1982, Frank Henenlotter)BAT OUT OF HELL: THE MUSICAL (2019, Jay Scheib) BATMAN RETURNS (1992, Tim Burton)
BATTLE IN HEAVEN (2005, Carlos Reygadas)THE BEACH (2000, Danny Boyle)
BEAT GIRL (1959, Edmond T. Gréville)
BEAT STREET (1984, Stan Lathan)BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1991, Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise)
THE BEGUILED (1971, Don Siegel)BEST OF THE BEST (1989, Robert Radler)
BEST WORST MOVIE (2009, Michael Stephenson)BETRAYAL (2003, Mark L. Lester) BEVERLY HILLS COP II (1987, Tony Scott) BIG (1988, Penny Marshall)
BIG BLOW (2000, United States)
THE BIG CLEAN (198?, Michael Ironside)THE BIG EASY (1986, Jim McBride)
BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (1986, John Carpenter)
"BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA" (1986, The Coup de Villes)
BIGGER THAN LIFE (1956, Nicholas Ray)
BILL AND COO (1948, Dean Riesner)
THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (1970, Dario Argento)
BLACK BOOK (2006, Paul Verhoeven)THE BLACK CAT (1981, Lucio Fulci)
THE BLACK CAT (2007, Stuart Gordon)
BLACK MOON RISING (1986, Harley Cokliss)BLACK ROSES (1988, John Fasano) THE BLACK WINDMILL (1974, Don Siegel)A BLADE IN THE DARK (1983, Lamberto Bava) BLADE RUNNER (1982, Ridley Scott)BLADE: TRINITY (2004, David S. Goyer) BLIND FURY (1989, Philip Noyce)BLINDSIDE (1987, Paul Lynch) BLOOD BATH (1966, Jack Hill & Stephanie Rothman)
THE BLOOD OF HEROES (1989, David Webb Peoples)
BLOODSPORT (1988, Newt Arnold)BLOODSPORT 2: THE NEXT KUMITE (1996, Alan Mehrez)BLOODSPORT III (1996, Alan Mehrez) BLOODSPORT 4: THE DARK KUMITE (1999, Elvis Restaino)BLUE CHIPS (1994, William Friedkin)
BLUE COLLAR (1978, Paul Schrader)
BLUE DIAMOND BEER (2005, China)
BLUE STEEL (1989, Kathryn Bigelow)BLUE THUNDER (1983, John Badham)
THE BLOB (1988, Chuck Russell)
BLOOD WORK (2002, Clint Eastwood)
BOARDING GATE (2008, Olivier Assayas)BOB ROBERTS (1992, Tim Robbins)
BODY DOUBLE (1984, Brian De Palma)BODY BAGS (1993, John Carpenter & Tobe Hooper)
BODY OF EVIDENCE (1993, Uli Edel)
BODY PARTS (1991, Eric Red)THE BODYGUARD (1992, Mick Jackson)BONE TOMAHAWK (2015, S. Craig Zahler) BOOMERANG (1992, Reginald Hudlin) BORDELLO OF BLOOD (1996, Gilbert Adler)
BORDERLINE (1980, Jerrold Freedman)
BOXING HELENA (1993, Jennifer Chambers Lynch)
THE BOY WHO COULD FLY (1986, Nick Castle)THE BOYFRIEND SCHOOL (1990, Malcolm Mowbray) BOYZ N THE HOOD (1991, John Singleton)THE BRAIN (1988, Ed Hunt) BRAIN DEAD (1990, Adam Simon)
BRAINSCAN (1994, John Flynn)BRASS TARGET (1978, John Hough) BRAZIL (1985, Terry Gilliam)BREAKING GLASS (1980, Brian Gibson)
BROKEN ARROW (1996, John Woo)BRONCO BILLY (1980, Clint Eastwood)
BRONX WARRIORS (1982, Enzo G. Castellari)BREWSTER'S MILLIONS (1985, Walter Hill) THE BROOD (1979, David Cronenberg)
THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY (1978, Steve Rash)
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (1992, Fran Rubel Kazui)BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: "HALLOWEEN" (1997, Bruce Seth Green)
BUIO OMEGA (1979, Joe D'Amato)BULLET TO THE HEAD (2013, Walter Hill)
BULLETPROOF (1988, Steve Carver)BUNNY O'HARE (1971, Gerd Oswald)
THE BURNING (1981, Tony Maylam)
BURNT OFFERINGS (1976, Dan Curtis)BURYING THE EX (2014, Joe Dante) BUSINESS IS BUSINESS (1971, Paul Verhoeven) THE BUTLER (2013, Lee Daniels)
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Friday, December 24, 2021

Only now does it occur to me... DIAL CODE SANTA CLAUS (1989)

Only now does it occur to me... that there's more to say about DIAL CODE SANTA CLAUS, a.k.a. DEADLY GAMES, a.k.a. 3615 CODE PÉRE NOËL, a.k.a. HIDE AND FREAK than merely, "it's the basis for HOME ALONE."

While it indeed shares a few similarities with that 1990 John Hughes/Chris Columbus film––both center on a kid staving off a Christmasy home invasion with a variety of toy-inspired booby traps and Rube Goldberg devices––this is a much darker film, a brutal slice of survival horror by way of SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT and CHRISTMAS EVIL, and a paean to R-rated '80s action flicks, from COMMANDO to DIE HARD to RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II.




 

In DIAL CODE SANTA CLAUS, our hero is spoiled rich kid Thomas (Alain Lalanne, who went on to not to act, but to become a VFX producer on everything from THE DARK KNIGHT to THE REVENANT), son of a widowed mother who owns France's biggest department store (Brigitte Fossey, whose career was originally launched as one of the two child leads of René Clément's 1952 classic FORBIDDEN GAMES, which is not an action movie). Thomas spends his days wandering the family mansion, playing RAMBO-inspired games with his dog and nearly blind/diabetic grandpa (Louis Ducreux). It must be noted that even before there is a home invasion, the kid has a series of trap doors, a CCTV system he can access from a Power Glove-looking device, working handcuffs, secret wings straight outta BLUEBEARD (but filled with extra toys and weapons, not dead wives), and an extremely indulgent family who allows his fantasies to bleed into their day-to-day lives. With mom stuck at the office on Christmas Eve, a psychotic man-child dressed as Santa Claus (who was "fired" from his mother's department store earlier that day) launches a full-chimney assault on Thomas' home. 


 

Killer Santa's opening salvo is murdering the kid's dog, and it only gets more savage and complex from there. Along the way, we have montages set to a copyright-skirting clone of "Eye of the Tiger" and more fully-juiced gear-up sequences than in COMMANDO. (I'd almost go as far as to say this is more of an influence on HOOK than HOME ALONE.)


 

 There're cat-and-mouse chases that feel culled from THE SHINING

and an original Bonnie Tyler song which plays throughout called "Merry Christmas." Its lyrics are all over the place and the perfect, head-scratching accompaniment to this violent and existential film. "Happy birthday, Christmas!" sings Bonnie Tyler. "Wanted, Mr. Christmas," she sings. "Help me, Santa Claus." "Welcome holy Jesus." "Kids don't grow up like us, you can change the plan, here comes the darkness." What is this song about?! Who is Mr. Christmas? Is it his birthday? Never mind, here comes the darkness!

Director René Manzor brings a lot of visual panache to the proceedings. He has a real filmmaking joie de vivre which recalls early Sam Raimi or George Miller or Richard Rush. It's very kinetic and beautifully shot, full of unexpected images

 and well-orchestrated action.


I'm curious to check out more of Manzor's work, which includes episodes of HIGHLANDER: THE SERIES and THE YOUNG INDIANA JONES CHRONICLES.

In the end, this is a strong holiday recommend––a strange concoction of dreamlike imagery, hard-hitting action, unhinged 80s madness, and, finally, and perhaps most realistically, a meditation on PTSD.

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Tuesday, December 14, 2021

"Six Authors in Search of a Character, Part 1: Stephen King" in ZYZZYVA

I'm very excited to premiere the first installment of a new essay series in ZYZZYVA Literary Magazine––it's called "Six Authors in Search of a Character" and it will explore the unusual and complicated psychology of writers portraying on screen characters they created in print. Part 1 tackles Stephen King's appearance as "Jordy Verrill" in CREEPSHOW, a role which grapples with identity, addiction, and a "meteoric" rise.
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Friday, December 10, 2021

Only now does it occur to me... THAT'S THE WAY OF THE WORLD (1975)

Only now does it occur to me... first off, that there even was an Earth, Wind, & Fire movie. Nice! Secondly, only now does it occur to me... that the Earth, Wind, & Fire movie stars... Harvey Keitel.
 
Er...what?

That's right: THAT'S THE WAY OF THE WORLD has about fifteen minutes of screen-time for EW&F––the audience's key draw to this film in the first place.

Keitel, who plays "Buckmaster" the record exec (this is mumbled on many occasions and definitely sounds more like the BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD-esque "Buttmuncher"), butts heads with his superiors as he tries to bring Earth, Wind, and Fire mainstream success (in the film, they are referred to as "The Group"). I get that the film's "project" is to realistically show the white stranglehold on the music industry, but so much of the film is just boring dudes chatting in stuffy offices and cocktail parties. EW&F gets, essentially, two concert setpieces––one at a roller disco,

and an arena show meant as the grand finale. The latter, however, is mostly just Keitel bobbing his head awkwardly while he watches EW&F play.

Imagine if CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC was just Steve Guttenberg and no Village People. If A HARD DAY'S NIGHT was entirely Paul's creepy grandfather with a couple Beatles songs. I guess that's the way of the world, or something. As the saying goes:

"Where were you when the stardust hit the fan?"
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Friday, November 19, 2021

Only now does it occur to me... MACABRE (1980)

Only now does it occur to me... what would happen if Lamberto "son of Mario" Bava took inspiration from Tennessee Williams to make his own Southern Gothic Italotrash horror saga? And what if all he actually remembered from Tennessee Williams was the ghoulishly nutty finale of SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER? And what if the lead character was, for some reason, named "Robert Duval," just one letter's separation from the iconic actor? Well we don't have to wonder about any of this, because we have... MACABRE.


Based on a true story, yeah, okay.

I'm gonna tell ya right off the bat––this review will be full of spoilers. And I don't feel bad about that because there's nothing in this movie that feels "motivated." It's a collection of crazy things that happen without dramatic rhyme or reason. You do you, Lamberto. And for my Italo-Horror enthusiasts, let me tell you that this is way closer to "bottom-tier Fulci" or Joe D'Amato than Mario Bava or Dario Argento. The two movies of which it reminds me the most are probably BUIO OMEGA and CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Within the first twelve minutes, we have some of the sleaziest saxophone and worst child dubbing in the history of Italian film, which is absolutely an achievement. We have an unhappy woman stumbling around in heels and DYNASTY dresses (CITY OF WOMEN and XTRO's Bernice Stegers)

who is having an affair with a guy named Fred. This upsets her––aforementioned, poorly dubbed––daughter (Veronica Zinny)

who acts out by smoking a bunch of cigarettes and drowning her little brother in a bathtub.

The unsighted landlord, Robert Duval (Stanko Molnar, doing some of the best/worst/offensive blind 'schmacting' I have ever seen) 

lazily assembles brass instruments while awkwardly listening to extramarital sex with, uh, "ZATOICHI-esque augmented hearing."

When mom receives the phone call that her son has drowned, she rushes to the hospital with her lover but, unfortunately, they get in a car accident in which Fred is decapitated.

This is already more melodrama than I can shake a stick at and we're fewer than fifteen minutes into this bad boy! Madness, absolute madness.

Mom soon builds a Hobby Lobby shrine to her ex-lover

which I think would get maybe a C+ at my science fair. Comically, she has included his credit cards among the dead man's relics. 

The next hour is where this film really bogs down. She moves into the blind man's boarding house and there's a whole lot of lame tension building about the source of the orgasmic noises coming from her room, where she is the sole occupant. Much hay is made about this mystery.

This was mostly shot in a studio in Italy, but the crew traveled to New Orleans (for three days) to shoot exteriors. This is a nice documentary look at the city in 1979, and visually impressive in some instances:



but usually Lamberto Bava is out here making sure he got his money's worth out of those expensive shoot dates. Generally speaking, every time someone goes from point A to point B, we she them open the car door, get out, slam the car door,

 

walk up to the gate, unlatch the gate, mess around with the gate, open the gate,


 

relatch the gate, walk up to the stoop,

ring the doorbell, wait around for the door to be answered, etc.


It's pretty spectacular, actually, though indicative of how bogged down this movie gets in its middle hour.

Anyway, the secret is finally revealed: mom has apparently been masturbating, nightly, with Fred's severed head.

I really like the placement of the ice tray there. I feel like the thinking was "how's the audience gonna know it's a freezer if there's no ice tray?," but instead you're left with even more questions, like "I get that somebody who masturbates with a severed head every night is not very squeamish about hygiene, but does she really not care when she gets hairs in the cubes?"  

 

 Really goin' to town, I wonder if they used this clip in the Oscar reel


The beauty of all of this is that I've excised no great subtext or rationale; Bava presents it more like: "hey, she loved the guy, so obviously she would love... his head."

This all leads to Robert Duval discovering her secret, whereupon the severed head gains the power of flight and bites him on the neck until he dies!

It is my belief that this scene inspired  ZOMBI 3's greatest moment (a film by Bruno Mattei, Claudio Fragasso, and Lucio Fulci), one I have described as "The Ol' Zombie Head in the Fridge." 

Though the flying severed head in that context at least makes a little more sense because it's in a zombie movie. Later, this ground would be revisited by Michele Soavi in CEMETERY MAN (1994).

 Anyway. MACABRE, ladies and gentlemen.

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Tuesday, November 9, 2021

R.I.P., Dean Stockwell

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