MOVIES - PART 44

RECENTLY RE/WATCHED

MINI TWO SENTENCE REVIEWS

Terrific suspenseful crime movie from 1954. Robbery, border towns, singing in bars, messenger boys, cop killing and more starring the sterling Sterling Hayden & the glorious Gloria Grahame.

George Segal is an incredibly convincing charismatic junkie & Karen Black is his charming girlfriend in 1970 NYC pre Mean Streets (1973). I recommend.

A low key yet devastating 1970 cult film with ageing Gregory Peck as a sheriff & Tuesday Weld as the daughter of a bootlegger somewhere down south. A fed arrives in town ensuring things in this small town will go awry. Highly recommended.

Excellent debut feature for Paul Thomas Anderson about shenanigans in the underbelly of Las Vegas with great performances from Philip Baker Hall, John C Reilly, Gwyneth Paltrow & Sammy Jackson. 

A dude with ptsd from WWII gets angry with a dude with ptsd from the Vietnam War at a secluded lake resort plus a rape revenge subplot. Fine entertainment.

A prisoner escapes and is out for revenge in this brilliantly suspenseful late in the cycle film noir. Directed by the legendary Budd Boetticher.

Dude pretends to be another dude. How do you reckon that works out? Very eerie ending. Fantastic 1975 Antonioni film.

Melodramatic colour desert noir somewhat lacking in the good story department starring the wonderful Lizabeth Scott who seems to just drive up and down the street. Also stars the undeniable Burt Lancaster and the ever reliable Wendell Corey. Nobody calls their kid Wendell any more.

Pretty weird 1970 movie where a mother (An ageing but still fabulous Rita Hayworth) believes some strange dude is her long lost son. Peculiar events unfold. Tops.

Phil Karlson doesn't make bad movies. All the right ingredients are here in this 1953 crime flick: Jewel thieves, boxers, murder, framing & escaping the country. 

Too wordy and trying to be too smart for its own good. One of Hitchcock's worst & most dated films despite its two fabulous leads.

Ace opening with the an incredible car chase followed by the great train robbery that becomes a snooze fest, worth a look though if only for the outstanding chase sequence. Robbery is directed by Peter Yates who would direct the far superior Bullitt (1968) the following year.

Casinos, mobsters, robberies, murder and false identities: What more do you need from a 40s crime movie? Joan Bennett you say...well she's here too.

Boring 2008 Aussie horror movie that everybody else seems to like. Gimme The Loved Ones (2009) any day!

Top noir murder mystery where the great Elisha Cook Jr doesn't even get his name on the poster.

Excellent Spaghetti Western with Franco Nero & George Hamilton, directed by Lucio Fulci need I say more?!

Everybody loves this 1946 crime flick that goes on a bit too long. It's alright but overrated in my book. It wouldn't make my top 50 Film Noir list.

Great 70s bleak neo noir starring iconic couple Burt Reynolds as a cop & Cathy Deneuve as a sex worker. 70s films don't get much better than this.

90s thriller masterpiece that verges into horror. A yuppie's wife goes missing after their car breaks down in the desert. 90s movies don't get better than this.

Paranoid 1952 heist flick of the highest order where a criminal crew of strangers are assembled by Mr Big. Sound familiar? You'd have to think Tarantino took plenty of ideas from here for Reservoir Dogs (1992). Directed by the wonderful Phil Karlson.

Don't go to the county fair in Kansas City. Demented 1972 film about a rivalry between two Irish Mobsters, Lee Marvin & Gene Hackman. Sissy Spacek's plays a sex slave in her debut film role. 

In 1949 an ageing boxer must decide between his marriage or boxing. I was thinking "I hate boxing movies. Boxing is a very odd stupid sport. Why did they ever come up with that?" Then halfway through the film you're going "Yeah this is awesome. Plus Raging Bull (1980) & Fat City (1972) are two of my favourite movies!"

Ben Gazzara is at the top of his game in this choice Peter Bogdanovich 1979 character study set in Singapore about an American pimp with a some kind of heart. Don't go in expecting anything too plot driven, it's all about the vibe which is perfectly realised.

MOVIES PART 43

ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS OF RECENTLY RE/WATCHED MOVIES

Despite the poster & title (Well the Italian title makes perfect sense, properly translating as Those Who Sing) this is a primo OTT Italian Mob war between two families.

 

Even though Jane Fonda gets top billing this 1962 Edward Dmytryk film really belongs to the love story between Capucine and Laurence Harvey's characters that's set in a New Orleans Brothel.

 

This crazy 1989 Japanese flick is like David Lynch on crystal Meth!

Girl clowns come under the spell of rapey & torturous Vampires in this 70s Jean Rollin movie.

A demented fangirl of an 80s electro pop band in Germany goes mental in this transgressive horror film.

Academy award winning Jules Dassin directs cop noir shot on location in NYC about the investigation of a model's murder and then some. 

A very entertaining Jail break picture with Burt Lancaster as the the main protagonist that goes gloriously bananas! 

Mixed up teen girls including a young Dianne Lane accidentally become famous in a punk band but then realise they sold out. Also includes a very young Ray Winstone, the even younger Laura Dern, Steve Jones & Paul Cook of The Sex Pistols plus Paul Simonon from The Clash! 1982's cultiest cult film.

Cops, gangsters & murder in this top Fritz Lang noir starring two icons of the genre Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame.

One of the most most fun delirious giallo flicks with Edwidge Fenech and George Hilton. Classic.

An International bunch of beautiful young female uni students get slain in a small picture-esque town in Italy. Lovely.

Murder, prostitutes, cops, madames, murder in balmy entertaining Giallo with Bogey look-a-likey & sound-a-likey.

More insane giallo shenanigans with a female ex-con in a strange mansion. 

Lazy Legs (Joan Bennett) leads hapless old dude (Edward G Robinson) to wrack and ruin with her seductive charms in Fritz Lang's masterpiece noir.

Dreamy noir favourite where the woman in the window (Joan Bennett) comes to life and Professor Wanley's (Edward G Robinson) dreams come true until things go murderously awry in this Fritz Lang classic.

Dick Powell gets out of prison ends up in a trailer park and starts looking for his share of the loot but he gets set up, shot at and fucked over several times in one of my favourite American crime/noir flicks!

Richard Conte & Victor Mature star as Robert Siodmak directs this richly detailed and beautifully crafted depiction of Italian-American life in the 1948 which contains mirroring, mania, mafia, matriarchs, madonnas, malevolence and murder. 40s crime films don't get better than this!

Glossy but very disturbing 1976 rape revenge drama with two Hemingways.

MOVIES Part 42

 ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS OF MOSTLY REWATCHES 

Criss Cross (1949)

Ex cons, mobsters, armoured truck robberies and femme fatales in choice 40s crime flick from legendary noir director Robert Siodmak.

Angel (1983)

Underage high school girl becomes a hooker due to bad financial circumstances.

Too Late For Tears (1949)

A bag of cash is thrown into a couple's car by mistake, noir shenanigans ensue.

Walking The Edge (1983/5)

Taxi driver gets embroiled in one woman revenge odyssey. 

The Black Marble (1980)

Strange cops and an even stranger dog show groomer Philo Skinner aka The Terrier King (Harry Dean Stanton) in dog mystery.

Squeeze (1976)

Ex-cop alcoholic Stacey Keach tries to stop kidnapping from becoming a disaster.

The Killer Inside Me (1976)

Seemingly anodyne cop Stacey Keach has bad thoughts leading to even badder circumstances.

The Undercover Man (1949)

I reckon this is the only bad film I've ever seen Glenn Ford in. 

Possible Worlds (2000)

Man picks up same woman several times in different dimensions in quite possibly this century's best film. 

Woman On The Run (1950)

Ace noir with mucho seedy seaside carnival action.

Pay Day (1973)

Rip Torn stars in the country & western Mean Streets.

The Last American Hero (1973)

All American underdog wins a car race.

White lightning (1973)

Good old boy Burt involved in grass cutting, bootlegging and revenge.

Carny (1980)

Bunch of lost souls degenerate into worse lost souls.

Cruising (1980)

Straight cop goes undercover as leather gay man to solve a series of murders in seedy NYC era but does he become gay & a murderer himself?

KID FROST - TERMINATOR

SPACE DEBRIS GOES TO THE ELECTRO DISCO AGAIN!

Tuuuuune! Is this Kid Frost dancefloor killah the best electro jam ever? Many agree, there's a lotta love out there for TERMINATOR! What's the point of words! Crank this sucker up to 11 and the truth will reveal itself to you!

Best trivia about this tune is that it's produced by David Storrs! Yes all you new age heads heard that right. Champion Valley Of The Sun New Age recording artist, composer and producer extraordinaire made this music right here. That might explain the incredibly adept use of atmosphere on this trak.

Sylvia - Sweet Stuff

SPACE DISCO GOES TO THE DISCO FOR THE CLOSING TIME TUNE

Sylvia's Sweet Stuff (1974) must have been a final tune at closing time of many a disco back in the day. The last chance to pair off and as we like to say in Australia "Pull a root!" If I was a DJ in a club today I reckon this would still be my closing tune. 

The production on this (pun intended) is sweet stuff. It's sonically delectable. As seductive as its lyrics. That bass with those drums along with the keys and strings are right on the money, making the magic music! Then Sylvia Robinson's sultry vocals are the soul candy on the top of the cake. 

"I’m not trying to be fresh
Please understand where I’m coming from
But I like what I see
And hope you like me
Mother Nature will do the rest"

She's not trying to be fresh. She just can't help being a human woman being with all the natural desires, impulses and mating rituals that that entails.

"I’ve got a crib with a water bed
And a bottle of wine on ice
So what do you say we go over to my pad
Bet you it could be really nice"

She probably didn't need to do the hard sell as she was well foxy but hey a water bed and wine on ice sounds fucking awesome so yes please. Although anyone who's ever had a go of waterbed knows that they are much better in theory.

Sylvia co-wrote and co-produced this with Al Goodman & Harry Ray from The Moments. Harry also plays the choice electric piano. That rhythm section is damn fine and correct me if I'm wrong but it's Frank Prescod on that extraordinary bass while Clarence Oliver is the astounding drummer. The luxuriant strings make me wanna stay inside this aural world and keep rewinding. I'm guessing the string arrangements are courtesy of Robinson and Sammy Lowe. The Sweet Stuff 7" was issued in 1974 on Sylvia's very own record label Vibration. Confusingly this tune was not included on her 1975 LP that was also called Sweet Stuff. However it turned up on her 1976 LP Sylvia. 

Sylvia Robinson's Vibration, Stang & All Platinum record labels would close later in the decade to make way for the paradigm shift defining Sugar Hill Records which she owned and operated with her husband Joe. Sylvia produced two just slightly legendary early hip-hop tunes you might know Rapper's Delight & The Message.

LEGEND!

MAN PARISH - BOOGIE DOWN BRONX

SPACE DEBRIS GOES TO THE 80S ELECTRO DISCO

MAN PARISH - BOOGIE DOWN BRONX (1984)

80s 80s 80s!!! 

I heard this yesterday and thought I'd had it on a compilation (?) unless it used to just get played at discos when I was a kid. I couldn't name it though until I figured out what the vocodered vocals were chanting. So I've been trawling the interweb tonight and violà here 'tis. Now I wanna spray paint a train!  Haha... it's not bloody Mantronix (who I also love) it's MAN PARISH. GET DOWN & BOOGIE. PUT ON SOME ROLLER SKATES! ALL ABOARD FOR FUN TIMES!!!

Shout out to the beautiful people who used to make your life better, and still do, by bringing fun, joy and dancing into your life!!! These are gifts of LOVE and need to be cherished. Even adults need to play for the nourishment of their souls. 

EVERYBODY GET DOWN & PARTAY!!!

*Don't let the un-fun political thought police beat you down with their hateful trickery and deceit designed to schizophrenia-ize your mind! 

The Assembled Minds - Dirty Workshop Magick

Mathew 'Patterned Air' Saunders released a bunch of stuff recently under his fabulous moniker The Assembled Minds onto bandcamp. I've known for a while that he's had a stack of unreleased material waiting around have I? I think I even told some people to sign him up or was that Position Normal? Perhaps both*. My influence can't be that far reaching though as Mathew has released these himself. Hey I gave it a go! Anyway after purchasing all the everything which is both old & new, I'm just stuck on the first digital album I put through the bluetooth speakers. 

That's this terrific compilation DIRTY WORKSHOP MAGICK. First of all: Best album title in the haunty-logic game since Mordant Music's Dead Air. This compilation contains tracks that The Assembled Minds contributed to other compilations over the last seven years. So we get six trax from 2015 to 2020. Assembled Minds came to CardroosManiac2 prominence in 2016 with their brilliant LP Creaking Haze & Other Rave Ghosts which was a Top 10 LP in my end of year list. The brilliant second track The Face In The Mirror Is Not Mine made my 2016 Top 5 tunes list. So if you're across the goodness of this fine music you're in luck here.

"...a half remembered misty rural rave among blurry faced dancers with only their teeth shining bright in a marsh that might not have even existed, where you never belonged. Suddenly your brain connected 'ardcore to the sinister/anodyne conjured by the brown British world of 70s homemade telly where Radiophonica was surreptitiously squished in. In this moment library theme tunes mutated into hardcore rave trax that weren't in this dimension but a possible world of parallels between raves. Seven buttered english muffin people hunted you until you arrived back in an urban town planning nightmare as the suburban lights glowed in the early AMs, comforted by the cars splashing by in the night rain. Feeling good that all this never happened except did it? It's all a dilapidated sound and vision but weren't your parents synthesiser robots? Who've now rusted into squeaky regressed babies. Now including the super soundz of helium voices incorporated with vague slowed down distressed monSTer tones? Were you ever anywhere? Is your brain just an experiment inside a chipped tea cup within a room where the windows have no outside? So wrap yourself up in a beautifully patterned 70s curtain, but hang on, it's just withering satanic wallpaper turning into the ashes of that fireman's suit you'd stolen from an unknown village's station. Weren't you going to wear that to a rural rave at a misty marsh as you couldn't find an actual train driver's outfit in time. There was a whistle in your pocket though... I'll come to you... " 

[This is an excerpt from Tim's Haunted Bollocks Fiction] 

Dirty Workshop Magick is a 6 piece sonic jigsaw. A transmission of shadows of music's former self from this dimension, I think.

  

*Unfortunately amnesia has crept into some of my memory zones so I'm not sure anymore what I thought I knew or whether I even did the things I thought I did. The scans are fine but that's about what it rules in now as opposed to what it rules out! As many less sinister things have recently been ruled out. Now that I think about it, that's very Haunty-Logical although it's definately (sic) not fun or awesome. It's frightening.