More On Movies VIIII

RECENTLY RE/WATCHED

Truck Turner (1974)
The threads in this blaxploitation flick are outstanding. Isaac Hayes is Truck Turner the double denim clad booze hound bounty hunter. The hunters however become the hunted. Look out for weird car chase including bagels, a foot-chase through a sewage works, the pimp and prostitute pool party & funeral, spectacular shoot out in a hospital and the brilliant symphonic funk soundtrack. Not forgetting the cars on the 70s streets of LA. Originally released as part of a double bill with Foxy Brown, now that's what I call a double feature!

Beyond The Black Rainbow (2010)
Third viewing of the first feature from director of 2018's Mandy Panos Cosmatos. I can't say it has grown on me at all. It's just too fucking slow and oh so stylised man. Elena (Eva Allan) is drugged and trapped in some kind of New Age clinic/psych ward The Arboria Institute by psycho druggy Dr Barry Nyle (Michael Rogers). What will happen? Well not much but there is a pretty cool telekinetic murder. Beyond The Black Rainbow is where trash and high art aesthetics collide but it's just not satisfying like similarly styled films ie. early Cronenberg movies. Fabulous soundtrack however from Sinoia Caves. One of my top 5 soundtracks of the 10s.

I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore (2017)
Wow this was an unexpected little bewdy, it made my week. Netflix just dump stuff on their site and you have no idea what it is. This had been sitting in my watch later list for over a year. I thought I'd probably never watch it, mainly because of the title. I was expecting it to be some kind of emo snowflake indie shit until I read the blurb. The lead role of Ruth is played by the stalker girl from Two Men and A Half Melanie Lynskey. Anyway Ruth, who is suffering from depression, gets robbed after already having a bad day at work. She teams up with neighbour Tony (Elijah Wood) to try and find her stuff, then things go berserk and spiral out of control from there. I Don't Feel... is an unpredictable and thoroughly entertaining black comedy revenge film. Hey, it's got the frontman of noise-rock legends Scratch Acid* and Jesus Lizard David Fucking Yow as shit criminal Marshall and he's really good. In a word surprising.

Someone's Watching Me (1978)
Pretty good little made for telly thriller. John Carpenter made two movies in 1978 this is the other less famous one. Good performances from Lauren Hutton and Adrienne Barbeau. A stalker is making creepy phone calls to Leigh (Hutton) but nobody's taking her seriously so she takes matters into her own hands in this Hitchcock homage. Terrific ending, which is something you rarely get to say.

The Invitation (2015)
Will (Logan Marshall-Green) is invited to a dinner party by his ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard). Things start looking dodgy as the hosts become more creepy and may have some kind of agenda for the evening apart from the usual eating and drinking. An uneasy suspenseful vibe is created right from the start. One of the most well executed horror/thrillers I've ever seen this Millennium.

Creep (2014)
Top notch found footage horror flick. I was not expecting much from this but it turned out be fine entertainment which was funny and ultimately very fucking disturbing. Aaron (Patrick Brice) a freelance video cameraman gets a job with a weird dude named Josef (Mark Duplass). Should he continue with the project or run for his life? A very clever premise and script with good actoring. I recommend.

Creep 2 (2017)
Not as good as the first one but still pretty good. Another good concept and script. The acting is good once again. If you enjoyed the first one do yourself a favour.

50 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen (2014)
This is one of those countdown shows like the TV show here in Australia which had a heap of crap celebrity Z-listers counting down all sorts of obvious shit like the best music videos of the 80s, the 20 most controversial moments in sport etc., maybe it was called 20 to 1. Anyway this American one counts down 50 horror movies you've supposedly never seen. I thought right here's a challenge I bet I've seen a shitload of these. But, haha, they got me in my achilles heel with a lot of movies made post-2000. I think I'd seen everything listed from the 20th century and only a few from the new Millennium. It's narrated by legendary scream queen PJ Soles. You get to see some talking heads that you may not have ever seen like film-makers, writers, podcasters & Blu-Ray label people such as Philippe Mora, Jeff Nelson, Kim Morgan, Rob Galluzzo etc.

Wrong Turn (2003)
This is one from The 50 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen which I'd never seen. Not a bad little backwoods slasher. Young and beautiful city slickers get in the way of inbred hillbillies somewhere in West Virginia. There's a body count and a couple of good, if generic, kills toward the end. Wrong Turn stars Eliza Dushku and the dude who played Brenda's mental patient brother in Six Feet Under.

Giallo E Venezia (1979)
Nuts giallo meets exploitation hybrid set in the seedy side of Venice. Much wrongful sexy time and creepy rapeyness with plenty of 70s bush and even quite a bit of male nudity. The awkward wrongness of these sex scenes is captured to create maximum unease. You know what I found the most disturbing about this film though? The detective always had a boiled egg. At one stage he was banging it on his colleagues smoking pipe. Weird. There weren't many Gialli set in Venice, I can only come up with The bloodstained Shadow. If you're looking for Giallo of the most sleazoid kind go no further, here it is. Thanks to Samm Deighan and Baron Martino for alerting me to this little known flick.

Baise-Moi (2000)
I have a vague recollection of this getting banned in Melbourne and taken off cinema screens before I got a chance to see it. So I was quite surprised and thrilled to find it was streaming on Stan. I'm assuming this was some kind of censored censored version. The utter nihilism of this movie is pretty fucking intoxicating. Two girls get raped then fuck and take out vengeance on everything in their path. Extraordinary romp of extreme sex and violence.

In A Lonely Place (1950)
I felt like starting a noir-fest after reading some stuff on the BFI website. Noir films tend to all blend together for me as I haven't watched them for a long time. Great cynical tone, script, acting, direction, plot etc. A screenwriting thug (Humphrey Bogart) is suspected of murder then falls in love with his actress neighbour (Gloria Grahame). It's all about the drinkin' and the smokin'. This Nicholas Ray fella wasn't a bad director was he?

Rabid (1977)
This is probably my least watched of the classic David Cronenberg movies because it's so fucking gross. I can't look at the screen half the time. The living anus with the spiky penis thing in the armpit of main star Marilyn Chambers is just disgusting. Medical experimentation once again causes chaos (see Shivers 1975) this time across Montreal and martial law is imposed. Canada did some dodgy shit back in the day with regard to medical trials, government control etc. This is a comment on that but it's still an entertainingly queasy horror flick.

Suspiria (2018)
Just kidding. Why would you bother doing this? What's next Blue Velvet?, Holy Mountain?, The Godfather? Withnail & I?....

More On Movies VIII

RECENTLY RE/WATCHED

Mr Majestyk (1974)
Classic. It's all about the ford cars, the double denim, the melon massacre, curtains with horsey patterns, the car chases, the hair and the stunning landscape of rural Colorado. Terrific Elmore Leonard screenplay perfectly realised. The pace and the tone were spot on. I believe this is now the fourth Charles Bronson film I've liked and this just might be my favourite. That's 4 out of 7 now, his average is growing. The soundtrack from Charles Bernstein is excellent up there with his other great scores White Lightning and The Entity. Why is Mr Majestyk not rated along with other 70s canonical shit? I get that director Richard Fleischer was old compared to the new Hollywood brats but hey so were Sam Peckinpah and John Huston. Perhaps it's the whole thing of auteur theory being valued above all else in film criticism particularly when it comes to American cinema in the 70s. Whatever.

The Last Run (1971)
The Last Run is a good lil crime movie if a tad too slow. An ageing criminal getaway driver Harry (George C Scott) plans to retire after one last caper. Will he walk away cashed up and happy or will things go haywire? Spectacular Spanish setting.

The Tenant (1976)
The first time I saw this I thought it was silly, the second time I thought it was cool and this time I thought it was brilliant. Roman Polanski directs and acts in this psychological horror movie. Trelkovsky (Roman Polanski) moves into an apartment previously occupied by a suicide victim. Things get very bloody strange and Trelkovsky gradually becomes unhinged. This is a wonderful time capsule of Paris in the 70s that also stars Isabelle Adjani. The Tenant is an amazing meditation on paranoia. The sense of unease created here is palpable. Quite possibly Polanski's best film.

Shivers aka They Came From Within (1975)
A parasite experiment gone wrong causes an epidemic of unstoppable orgy/rapey maniacs in a modern tower block. There is some pretty deranged shenanigans going on in this film but it's also pretty funny. At the time of release this was an enormously controversial movie in Canada. It almost feels quaint now but it's still a transgressive classic. David Cronenberg created one of the eeriest ever final scenes in the history of cinema at the end of Shivers.

All The Colors Of The Dark aka Tutti I Colori Del Buio (1972)
I like Gialli with masks and black gloves but I also like it when they go unconventional and don't use them. This Sergio Martino movie is in the later category. Three icons of Gialli Edwige Fenech, George Hilton and Ivan Rassimov star. All The Colors Of The Dark is Jane Harrison's (Edwige Fenech) paranoiac nightmarish vision that includes car crashes, dead babies, satanic cults, black masses, a stalker with a knife and more. Excellent Bruno Nicolai score too.

Una Sull'Atra aka One On Top Of The Other aka Perversion Story (1969)
An incredible Lucio Fulci Giallo shot in San Francisco in the late 60s. Is this the only bona fide giallo to be shot in America? Top crime jazz score with occasional psych interludes from legendary composer Riz Ortolani! French actor Jean Sorel, who is the star of my favourite Giallo Short Night Of Glass Dolls and the Buñuel classic Belle De Jour, plays George a shonky doctor who ends up on death row. Is the dodgy doctor being framed for insurance fraud and murder or did he do it?  We've got double identities amongst some classic Giallo shit like inheritances, sexy shenanigans, police, sleaze, detectives, exquisite interior design, airports, people being drugged, photographers and even black gloves.

Mandy (2018)
You know you are in for something different if a movie starts out with a tune from prime 70s King Crimson. This is a fucking mental movie like a queasy bad acid trip. I dunno if I liked it but I watched the whole thing so I can't have hated it. In 1983 Red Miller (Nic Cage) and his girlfriend Mandy Bloom (Andrea Riseborough) are living off the grid somewhere in the wilderness but an absurd hippy Christian cult leader Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache) has spotted Mandy. Jeremiah wants Mandy for himself but his seduction technique doesn't work so the cult wreak havoc upon the couple. That first half of this film is very bloody slow going but the second half is more compelling with Red seeking spectacular vengeance on the lysergically altered cult members. The saturated colour scheme used in this film would make Michael Powell, Mario Bava, Dario Argento, Marty Scorsese and Michael Mann proud. Mandy is some kind of arty cosmic black comedy action revenge horror film, that has instant cult status written all over it.

I was thinking Mandy was a truly anomalous film but then I thought hmm it's a bit God Told Me To (1976) with a tiny bit Hellraiser plus the film's vibe had me thinking of batshit crazy movies like Blood Beat (1983), White Of The Eye (1987) et al. So it is a pastiche but a mega-mix like no other. The first Panos Costmatos flick Beyond The Black Rainbow was much more indebted to his influences ie. Kubrick, Lynch, Cronenberg, Tarkovsky etc. If that was his hypnogogic/vapourwave film Mandy is his prog rock/black metal movie. Seedy, unhealthy, gross, sickly, fantastical, icky, psychedelic, nightmarish, hallucinatory, languid, gory, feeble, uneasy, squeamish, nauseating, peculiar, queer and aberrant are all words that could be used to describe Mandy but I feel like we need some new language to elucidate more perfectly what this movie is like. Sorry, you'll just have to watch it but don't blame me if you hate it. Look out for the chainsaw sword fight plus tiger and big black insect. The late Johan Johannsson's gloomy drone score, which is frequently reminiscent of 90s post-rock legends Labradford crossed with atmospheric black metal, is outstanding and this film would be nowhere without it.

Best score since Mica Levi's Under The Skin