Tim Thomerson was absolutely the right person to cast for his part as written and he makes the movie. While Helen Hunt was absolutely the wrong person to cast for her part as written and yet she makes the movie!
Show me a low budget independent scifi/noir/horror from 2000 on that looks this good on 4K. Bet ya can’t. Talk about time travel; these types of films used to have charm for days (or decades, even).
I’m still due to see more of his stuff, but Switchblade Sisters is quite possibly the best thing Jack Hill directed. He pulls out all the stops, going for stark melodrama, unabashed pulp, and unfettered noir as he deploys everything from moody close-ups to Nicholas Ray-levels of unselfconscious emotion. The story itself plays like a classic Cagney-era gangster picture but with two women at the center and a high school setting that becomes so improbable it may do for genre satire…
Like some unholy bastard child of French New Wave, underground American independent cinema, sexsploitation, First Wave Feminism, hot rod flicks and gritty noir. Russ Meyer makes the images (as well as the boobies) pop off the screen and does it using black & white, making the thing look and move like some kinda Roy Lichtenstein doodle that you found in the trash. The thing even starts like an episode of “The Outer Limits,” and pays that off by depicting a world…
What begins as a hoary old English soap-opera/melodrama takes a quick left turn into Atomic Age sci-fi (one which presages director and co-writer Terence Fisher’s near-future with The Curse of Frankenstein) but, instead of going full Gothic Horror, turns back again into melodrama with a new, sci-fi twist. While its time period and country of origin is likely to blame for it not delving too far into the depths of depravity that it could have done, it’s nonetheless a fascinating peanut-butter-and-chocolate combination of genre thriller and navel-gazing romance.
In which Darren Aaronofsky brings a Tsukamoto-soaked punk vibe to NYC in service of a story that isn’t so much about obsession as it is warning against the dangers of looking too closely at, well, everything. Humans are pattern recognition machines, and if everything has meaning then there might be An Answer. Yet, if there is also cosmic insignificance, then how can any one person be worthy of such An Answer? Don’t contradictions tell us something, too? Best not to look for patterns too much.
Said the film critic.
Girlbossing Zodiac should’ve been better than this. Watch She Said instead (and hey, why not check out the far more engaging, fascinating and compelling The Boston Strangler from ‘68, too?).
For those who don’t care if their zombies don’t have a point (besides incest)
[35mm]