Apr 30
Time for another B-Masters Cabal roundtable! This time, we delve into the relatively little-explored world of counterculture exploitation– movies about hippies, bikers, beatniks, punk rockers, neo-pagans, and anybody else in youthful rebellion against whatever you’ve got… to say nothing of the squares and finger-waggers trying to put them down! We’ll be turning on, tuning in, shooting up, and rocking out all throughout the month of May.
Apr 30
Leonor (1975)
So what happens when you bring together a world-class cast and crew, and make a vampire film that has no blood… no fake fangs… no rubber masks… and a tragic love story for grown-ups?
The movie sinks without trace, that’s what.
Apr 30
If you go around the Internet to many B movie web sites, you’ll get the impression that the 1970s were a golden age for made-for-television movies. There certainly is some evidence to support this, with movies like Sole Survivor, Thursday’s Game, and Dr. Cook’s Garden. But if you actually take a closer look at all the made-for-television movies that were made in this era, you would actually see that for every classic made, there was a TV movie made that actually wasn’t very good. Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo is one such movie. Yet despite all those good made-for-television movies lying on the shelf, this bomb actually managed to get a release on DVD! There’s no justice in this world.
The final two movies of Original Crew Month:
Moontrap (1989), aka “the one where Chekov gets the girl”:
And The People (1972), or “My Folks Came From Outer Space and All They Tell Me to Do is Shut Up”:
As a lead-in to the Los Angeles United Film Festival, there will be a special screening of JAWS at 9.30pm, 30th April, at the Vista Theater.
The festival itself will host the world premiere of THE SHARK IS STILL WORKING, Erik Hollander’s documentary tribute to the impact and legacy of JAWS. The doco will screen throughout the festival, but tickets are selling fast (first screenings sold out). More details here.
Fans of transgressive cinema, take note: today’s the day a small company in Europe is releasing a limited-run, Special Edition 2-disk set of Vase des Noces — better-known by its alternate English title, which is definitely Not Safe for Work (the English title illustrated here, “One Man and his Pig”, is a compromise, apparently on a reversible sleeve… though why any store that would put this movie on its shelves would feel squeamish about a naughty word in the title, I have no idea).
In addition to the feature film, the set contains interviews with the director and star, a making-of documentary, and a booklet with essays by three different critics. The mind boggles.
OK; kudos to Camera Obscura for what is clearly a labor of love; and maybe this is hypocritical for a guy who eats bacon with every meal; but I can’t really endorse a movie that kills pigs for Art.
Hat-tip to Blake Lewis for this information.
BATTLE WIZARD
Battle Wizard finds future “crazy cop” Danny Lee smack dab in the middle of his role as the go-to guy for any weird thing the Shaw Bros. threw up on screen. Hot off Goliathon and about to appear in the deliriously torrid Call Girls, this ultra-strange slice of kungfu fantasy casts Lee in a position that might take people familiar with the bulk of his work somewhat off-guard. He’s not stoic. He’s not mean. He’s not pretending to be Bruce Lee while banging Bruce Lee’s real-life mistress. He even laughs and smiles. But don’t worry — his basically likable character is still surrounded by a movie that includes a lascivious green goblin man, a legless fire-breathing kungfu master who has replaced his missing limbs with electrified robotic chicken legs, guys who shoot lasers out of their fingers, and a woman who can throw snakes at you that will burrow through your face and crawl around in your chest as they busily eat your internal organs.
As well as…
First, a screencap for my male readership:
… And then one just for Lyz:
The Horror at 37,000 Feet (1973)
Whatcha think, Lyz? Hubba-hubba, eh?
Apr 22
Well, it’s been a long, long time, but I’ve finally resurrected SCIENCE IN THE REEL WORLD, my look at science and related matters in a non-science fiction context. And to make up for the silence, here’s a triple update:
THE SILVER CORD (1933) – Science versus smother love.
DIVE BOMBER (1941) – Physiology meets misogyny.
NO HIGHWAY IN THE SKY (1951) – Scientists are NUTS!! Oh, sure, they save lives; but basically, they’re NUTS!!
And in house-keeping news, I’ve added some screenshots to my reviews of HALLOWEEN and HALLOWEEN II.
THE WEB OF DEATH
Most of Chor Yuen’s film’s can be described as including a web of death, as they are fabulously complex, convoluted mysteries full of murder, betrayal, and secret societies. Web of Death justifies being titled Web of Death by including a literal, rather than metaphorical, web of death. It wouldn’t be difficult to interpret The Web of Death — the third in director Chor Yuen’s long cycle of films adapting contemporary popular wuxia novels — as something of a cold war parable. In it, a Martial World clan by the name of The Five Venoms Clan is in possession of a super-weapon so powerful that the clan’s leader has decreed that it should be put under wraps and hidden away for the good of the Martial World as a whole. That weapon, the Five Venom Spider, is revealed to us in the film’s opening minutes, and that’s a good thing; while definitely kind of neat in a cheeseball sort of way, the Five Venom Spider is not the kind of thing that could live up to an extended build-up. What it is, in fact, is a normal-sized tarantula that, when released from its ornate cage, glows green, emits the roar of a raging elephant, and then shoots a deadly, electrified web to the accompaniment of much billowing of smoke and flying of sparks.
In other news…
Attack of the God of Joy
Black Shampoo
Avenger X
Dolemite
She
Batwoman