This film has real "let's make a movie!" vibes - it's more concerned with the fun of making a movie than the actual execution. And, honestly, that's probably OK. I'm sure making movies like ZOMBIE FIGHT CLUB is a lot of fun - what business is it of mine if they convinced people to give them a bunch of money to make something that's barely watchable?
Anyway, the first two-thirds of ZOMBIE FIGHT CLUB features a lot of zombies and…
I really dug Robert Allen Schnitzer's 1976 horror film THE PREMONITION. A mother begins having psychic warnings surrounding a plot to kidnap her daughter from the girl's mentally unhinged biological mother and her carnie boyfriend. The editing is disjointed, the imagery frequently surreal and the performances hysterical. The result is a movie that feels like a nightmare more often than not. Creepy, atmospheric with a pulsating sense of dread. Stream it on Shudder, if you're in the mood for something good.
Last night's movie was THE UNDERTAKER, the 1988 unfinished slasher starring Joe Spinell.
The movie itself is just OK - Spinell plays a mortician who murders his way through a college town - but Spinell is riveting in his performance. Considering his premature death shortly after, I wonder what Spinell might have been on during production. His acting is somewhere between Tommy Wiseau and Vincent Price, with perpetually wet anime eyes and the humanity of a French restaurant waiter. He's…
Young Denzil shows immediate chemistry. The moment he steps out of that pickup truck, you know he's going to be a star.
I watched Doris Wishman's 1977 documentary LET ME DIE A WOMAN tonight. The film - about transgender men and women seeking sex-change surgery - swings like a pendulum between surprisingly progressive and shockingly salacious. Exploitation filmmakers gotta exploit.
Leslie, the main transgender woman interviewed, is fantastic though. She offers a great candid look at her life, her transition, surgery, and her family and community's reaction. If you can stomach some less-than-earnest reenactments, the film is worth watching for Leslie.
Every time I watch POLTERGEIST I am hypnotized with how effortlessly iconic the movie is. The music, the effects, the acting, the script - all of it seems still packs as great a punch now as I’m sure it did 40 years ago. It knows what scares you indeed. I love this movie so much.
Jeff Tremaine could make SEVEN UP! but Paul Almond and Michael Apted could never make JACKASS.
The RESCUE RANGERS movie so so damn good! Like THE NICE GUYS meets WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT. I have no idea how this movie was made, but god bless whatever lunatic at Disney who greenlit it. I expect a sequel or spin-off released every two years from now until society crumbles.
Art takes years of toil and sweat and tears to create. That said, most art is a diversion - a fleeting experience that’ll eventually be lost to time. I feel pretty damn confident Alex Garland’s MEN will be studied by whatever mutants inherit Earth after humanity exits stage left.
I am not completely sure I “get” MEN 100 percent but boy did I love it - an absolutely go for broke artistic statement with an ending so wild I wish…
INLAND EMPIRE was a trip and a half on the big screen. I'd never seen it in one sitting before but the best thing about movie theaters is that they hold you captive by art - you are forced to interact with movies on their own terms. I highly recommend the 4K theatrical screenings happening right now.
The white ruler of a fictional Muslim nation is dying and intrusts a scientist to prolong his life through a brain transplant. The scientist instead puts the man's brain into the body of a deformed simpleton. The Muslim ruler, awakening in America as a seven-foot-tall hulk with acid burns on his face, goes on a rampage across the American countryside. You know, as one does. The movie is a typical Adamson joint - a patchwork of various productions and reshoots cobbled together into a Frankenstein's monster, not unlike the creature the film is playing homage to. Too bad the film isn't particularly fun.