or The Oestrogenization of Malachai
Bad seed Thunberg pulls on some sick cowskins and hits the rows in another obligatory cornboot, with nothing to stand in her way but a correctly proportioned deb with Barrymore-frown. Best yr villain preference is for the type of mean-ass, precocious little girl straight outta Problem Child 2 bc she's in every frame. This is her movie, 'kay. She's not a fan of anyone of voting age, although what that means in Nebraska is anyone's…
The Call of the Wild spins a harrowing tale of a Native American man, assimilated as a star of war and football, who crosses the prescriptive line by falling in love with a white society woman who rejects him. The film then shows him in the various stages of mourning - turning to the bottle, defiant return to nature and tribal living, then stalking and abducting the apple of his eye - before he finally transitions into hard acceptance of…
Somewhat agreeable Greek island sex-melo cum murder mystery about a city nymph on vacay with her folks who turns local heads with her loose urban morals and openly gay relationship with her conniving stepmother. Kostas the lotharian fisherman gets in over his head with Christina, and her mother and his wife are both riddled with jealousy and out for blood.
Fraught with all the usual issues of 70s sexploi, mostly its lack of credibility due to casting, execution and soapy…
Early creeper-core, or reverse ageism depending on yr view, wherein blue-balled pops decides to get back 'out there', gets queer-eyed then hits the streets to cut other men's grass and show these whippersnappers how it's done, making sure to get the most out of the last laugh. Can be a bit hard to follow as all the men look the same in their top hats and suits, but when it lands shit is funny. Why isn't Griffith mentioned in the same breath as Chaplin and Keaton? Oh, that's right...
If The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots heralded cinema as an instrument of violence upon women, here cinema begins with child abduction. Continues the xenophobic hi-jinx of The Adventures of Dollie by transposing the Wild West fear of the 'savage' to Africa, though where Dollie's salvation was due to her gypsy assailants being not only malicious but downright negligent, the Boer girl manages to wrest the sympathies of a Good Zulu by presenting him her doll, which to me…
The first chronologically of the painstaking Griff Biograph restos to show up in sharp hd, perhaps bc it's the most directly engaging, and conveniently free of the ubiquitous ethnotypes.
A silly domino effect is triggered by how incredibly fetching Mrs Bibbs' posterior looks in a spiffy new dress. The maid covets that hourglass relief for herself and her man and so plots a dress heist. Mr Bibbs counters the conspiracy by climbing into the chimney (?), a plan not terribly…
Working up to first base with a belle in his cinematic slumber, Georges is suddenly terrorized by a black minstrel, a panto clown and a lunar pacman elemental. At surface the early demonstration of the medium's conduciveness to phantasmic dread grows more interesting upon the revelation of Georges' true feelings in the final frames, that this is no regular nightmare. The camera may lie sometimes, but morning glory never.
Italy strikes again in this post-Bava titillator. Hot-as-hell Arabella ventures into the eurosleaze hinterland, looking for leather and guy-on-guy, since her cranky author husband was crippled in a convertible accident, only on their wedding day (spoiler: cuz she blew him in the car.) He's a dishy him who makes wheelchairs a kink and is destined to be played by James Spader in the inevitable h'wood remake. Problem is some rando is scissoring up whatever talent is on their menu, entailing…
Medical science goes to the head of a respected surgeon so now we've got a basic dead pit on our hands. 20yrs on in the nearby psych unit a mysterious babe with no name and no past psychokinetically resurrects Dr Crackpot along with an army of his dissatisfied human experiments for an all-out hospital zombie rampage. Fkn medical science.
When assessed as a whole, this very 89-typical fare caves in due largely to a sluggish middle and excess duration. Brett…
Klein's chaotic space-eating set design was brilliantly congruous with Caligari's centralizing theme of mesmerism, a powerful self-symbol of cinema as totalitarian mind control. Its reuse in the inevitable follow-up however lacks this steganographic alignment and so comes off a bit token and for-itself. This combined with Genuine being not a vampire but a vamp, and less compelling and sympathetic an icon than Cesare the somnambulist, is most likely why the film is less known, a Moorish manservant whose knees all…