New Junk, clearly floundering, no cohesion

1. THE INTRUDER WITHIN 2.BEYOND CONSPIRACY (ABC) 3. THE MIST 4. VACANCY 5. MODIFY 6. ASSIGNMENT OUTER SPACE 7. LOOKER 8. GOODBYE UNCLE TOM 9.DAVE ATTEL: MR MISERABLE

12/17/07: Cannibals and jungle stuff

Since last post I have seen:

HEARTS AND ARMOUR
EMMANUELLE IN AMERICA
NO END IN SIGHT
FIDO
RESCUE DAWN
EMMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS
EATEN ALIVE!
MASSACRE IN DINOSAUR VALLEY
DEATH SHIP
ADVENTURES OF HERCULES
GALAXY OF TERROR
DEMON OF PARADISE
GOLDEN TEMPLE AMAZONS
DIAMONDS OF KILIMANDJARO
MAN FROM DEEP RIVER
DIRTY SANCHEZ; THE MOVIE
ROMANCING THE STONE
HUNTERS OF THE GOLDEN COBRA

DEATHSTALKER (Sbardellati, 1983) ... This response to CONAN THE BARBARIAN is the perfect realization of the 'sword and sorcery' genre and knows precisely that its audience is young men aged 13 - 22. Nary a scene passes that an excuse is not found to render an actress at least partially naked, and lots of dudes either take their shirts off and flex, or chop off heads. Usually both. But seriously there is a TON of female nudity in this movie. A LOT. IT has more nudity than a 70's Corben comic! I can see why it was on Cinemax so often back in the day. Also I wonder why I never watched it, maybe my standards were too high. Its not super good or anything but its budget is pretty high especially in comparison to other attempts to mimic CONAN. There's some cool gladiator fighting with a lot of extras and a giant set and oh yeah did I mention all the boobs yet because there are a LOT.

MURDER IN SPACE (Stern, 1985) ... I broke one of my self-imposed rules and wound up fast-forwarding through this POS starting at about the 50 minute mark. Note to self: stop watching Steven Hilliard Stern movies because they suck ass. This one does at least, good grief, what a boring load of nonsense. All hopes of getting a cool detective picture set in the confines of a spaceship are dashed before the damn opening credits are finished rolling and the viewer realizes this movie has no budget and a corresponding lack of ambition to boot. DULL DULL DULL and not even Michael Ironside can save it although he tries. I dig Wilford Brimley but honestly his Quaker ads are a lot more compelling than this snoozer. I figured since it was a mystery, they'd recap who the killer was at the end, so I FF'd to the last 15 min and lo and behold I was treated to a TON of flashbacks --- of scenes from earlier in the movie! Man I hate that, what a waste of time. Worked out pretty well for me this time however, they totally spelled out who the killer was, so no complaints. (You know you are in trouble in a movie when the high point of interest is spotting a Canadian character actor from early Cronenberg pictures.)

MEGAFORCE (Needham, 1982) ... An absolutely MIND BENDINGLY BAD FILM. And never has it been so easy to point the guilty finger at so obvious a culprit: the star, Barry Bostwick. And when your movie is directed by the same guy who made CANNONBALL RUN that's really saying something. Everything about Bostwick is offensively, intensely, wrong. First of all he looks like an utter fool in that stupid jumpsuit and beard and sky blue headband. He looks like a gay aerobics instructor! Which isn't entirely his fault but he seems to really "own" the role and anyone who agreed to be photographed that way deserves the blame regardless of seamstress. Add to this his silly heroic posturing and smarmy "it'll all come out in the wash" 'tude and you just want to scream. Mind you he isn't exactly surrounded by talent here. Michael Beck is astonishingly lame in his fake "cowboy" getup and accent, almost to the point that he rivals Bostwick on the Scale of Intolerability. But we soon forget this contest when confronted with the misogynistic treatment of the female character (singular; Persis "I'm a soldier not a diplomat" Khambata), who Bostwick allows to train with the men but then refuses to let her go on the mission because he worries she'd distract him, and SHE STAYS AT THE BASE WILLINGLY as a result! Some soldier. The icing on this stale hardpan cake is the stunningly inept special effects so proudly achieved with model rockets (!!!) and cheap bluescreening that they get big, fat, glowing credits singling them out in the opening titles! When the trumpeted "sky diving" sequence finally rolled around I wanted to stab my eyes out. Seriously. Eye-stabbingly bad. Henry Silva as the bad guy was pretty funny though.

ELIMINATORS (Manoogian, 1986) ... Ugh ugh UGH. It made me wish I had 2 sets of eyes so I could stab them REPEATEDLY. This will go down as the movie that made me exercise more discretion while renting. And I've seen Nazisploitation movies! Its almost not worth describing except as a warning like in ALIEN. Miserable garbage. Miserable PG-RATED garbage to boot. Its sole source of amusement is seeing just how many disparate tropes could be crammed into one single picture. Here's a laundry list: a TERMINATOR/ROBOCOP sympathetic cyborg, a cocky, selfish pirate-type reminiscent of Han Solo, a cute talking robot filling in for R2D2, some cavemen, some Romans, a fucking NINJA, a lesbian river guide with a shotgun, 2 mad Japanese scientists, and a chick from STAR TREK so the nerds can at least beat off to the side of one of her boobs. It did however feature an admittedly cool tank-like contraption that replaced the cyborg's legs, turning him into a KILLING MACHINE! But since this was PG he was more of a WOUNDING MACHINE!!! Still, this robot thing honestly did look pretty cool, and the producers could easily have just stuck with it alone and had a more interesting piece on their hands, instead of this piece that had me checking the bottom of my shoes while it played because I thought I smelled shit the whole time. Terrible, terrible, awfulness. AVOID.

CREATION OF THE HUMANOIDS

The previous 2 days' fare ...

CREATION OF THE HUMANOIDS
WAR BETWEEN THE PLANETS
CONQUEST
SCREAMERS

Whew!

17 movies since the last post

Thanksgiving break afforded me a lot of time to catch up on the "to watch" pile. I saw these films in the past week or so ...

LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD (Wiseman, 2007) ... Watched it a couple of times. I dig it. The unrated version is silly. Its just a lot of digital blood squibs and a whole bunch of swear words delivered via ADR while Bruce's face is away from the camera. Unneccessary.

WARRIORS OF THE APOCALYPSE (Suarez, 1985) ... Really entertaining and hilarious ROAD WARRIOR clone about a band of Warriors (of the apocalypse) who all try and outdo each other with the size of their shoulder pads. Soon the plot gives way to a garden of eden in danger from some techno wizards who shoot lazer beams out their eyes at each other. See? ENTERTAINING. Oh yeah and the immortal pygmies who get killed over and over throughout the movie are worth your time too.

TAKE A HARD RIDE (Margheriti, 1975) ... OK Margheriti western w/ Fred Williamson and Jim Brown (showing surprising acting chops) and Lee Van Cleef. A couple of good set pieces including a very cool scene w/ a machine gun mounted on a moving wagon!

INDIO (Margheriti, 1989) ... Fair Margheriti action stuff notable for the presence of Francesco "Rhah" Quinn from PLATOON. Pretty much a RMABO clone with lots of jungle action and guerilla stuff, including an awesome bit where Francesco sets a booby trapped palm tree for an attacking helicopter. Brian Dennehy is actually really good in this as the JAWS-inspired ruthless land developer.

TIGER JOE (Margheriti, 1982) ... Second in Margheriti's "Vietnam trilogy" has likeable gun runner David Warbeck up against a bitter North Vietnamese army. And how odd, a flamethrower scene :) Surprisingly bereft of Margheriti's signature miniature work until a train explosion near the end.

TORNADO (Margheriti, 1983) ... Downbeat third "Vietnam trilogy" entry is fairly grim stuff and left me feeling a bit cheated seeing as how all its big action scenes were lifted from THE LAST HUNTER. Most of the original material is just DEER HUNTER prison camp stuff but at least the hero manages to steal a big bulldozer for some shenanigans near the end ... Hilariously all the "American soldiers" are seen wearing Italian camoflage uniforms, but at least they all manage to dress the same this time, which is more than can be said for other Italian "Vietnam" films. Spoiler: hero dies in the last few SECONDS from a stray bullet fired from offscreen. War is hell!

THE BIG ALLIGATOR RIVER (Martino, 1979) ... Foxy Barbara Bach menaced by a toy alligator in a fish tank. Kinda fun when you realize its ripping off first JAWS and then KING KONG 1976 of all things! Mostly though its fucking stupid.

NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES aka ZOMBIE CREEPING FLESH aka HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD (Mattei, 1980) ... I though this one was gonna suck but I ended up enjoying it. On the surface (and especially in the trailer) it doesn't so much seem like a ripoff of the 1978 DAWN OF THE DEAD as it seems like Dawn of the Dead ITSELF. A bunch of SWAT dudes in blue uniforms shooting up a tenement block riot and then menaced by ghost-faced zombies, all accompanied by the Goblin music from DOTD. Shortly though it distinguishes itself and becomes something of a combination of DOTD and Fulci's ZOMBI. The zombies here are "pure" zombies, exactly the same look and bahaviour as Romero zombies. This is one of the very few zombie movies that seems totally faithful to the mythos and if you can watch it as a companion piece to Romero's original, you might be surprised. I can't believe how many times over how many years I have seen and passed on this stupid video and now I regret it.

THE SEVEN MAGNIFICENT GLADIATORS (Mattei, 1983) ...
RUSSKIES (Rosenthal, 1987)
DELTA FORCE COMMANDO (Ciriaci, 1987)
DEMONOID (Zacarias, 1981)
THE BARBARIANS (Deodato, 1987)
FIREBIRD 2015 A.D. (Robertson, 1981)
STORM OF THE CENTURY (Baxley, 1999)
SUPERSTITION (Roberson, 1982)

Oh good Lord ... RATS and WHEELS OF FIRE

2 movies I can't be bothered to write about.

RATS (Mattei, 1984) was boring and stupid and I felt sorry for the rats.

WOF (Santiago, 1985) was a transparent imitation of THE ROAD WARRIOR with nary a single original idea in its empty head, and if you told me it was comprised entirely of B-roll footage from ROAD WARRIOR itself that was rejected for being boring, I'd believe you. I think the female lead's topless screen time greatly outweighs her clothed appearances, and the film feels mean and misogynistic as a result. I did, however, like the final stunt. But in a movie comprised entirely of "action scenes" and stunts (and topless victimization), that's not saying too much.

Stuff from 11/4 that needs addressing

WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD (Worth, 1983) is an extremely silly movie but at least it has Robert Ginty in it. Pretty much a ROAD WARRIOR ripoff only the lead character is even more of a selfish asshole than Mad Max. I actually got angry at the character for being such an asshat all the time. Plus he drives a stupid motorcycle that talks, which is an odious enough idea already, but its voice is something of a valley girl "Simon" that repeats grating phrases like "Tubular, dude!" three times in a row.

THUNDER WARRIOR (DeAngelis, 1983) is a FIRST BLOOD knockoff with an Indian in the lead role which is kinda cool I suppose, even if Mark Gregory isn't exactly a Native American. Charmingly silly and having no pretentions towards anything other than showing slow motion explosions and reminding the audience of other films (especially BILLY JACK), I dug it, and Gregory, God bless his talentless heart, is a scream in almost anything.

FINAL MISSION (Santiago, 1984) has to be one of the most riotous movies ever seen. I think it is more successful in copying FIRST BLOOD than Adrian Lyne was remaking PSYCHO in 1998. Oddly it gets off to a start setting up the familiar narrative of THE PUNISHER, ie, battle-hardened Nam vet returns home only to have his family murdered by the Mob, upon whom he swears vengeance that he carries out post haste. Somewhere near the halfway mark our man Deacon stumbles across the crooks who offed his family, conveniently all in the same car, which he blows up. I had to check my watch because surely this movie was not less than an hour long. But I needn't have worried, because sooner than you can say "two for one" Deacon is targeted by the (now dead) villain's Local Yokel Sherriff brother for disturbing the peace (amongst other offences likely to include 'civil apocalypse making') and before he can apprehend his target, Deacon has stolen from a shop window a fully-loaded M60 (in the movie they call it an MG 82) and proceeded to blow the living shit out of the whole ville. Did I mention the shop window had a fully loaded M60 on display? Soon the Sheriff has rounded up a posse of local militia and chased Deacon into the mountains where some guerilla warfare stuff happens. Honestly you can just FF a half hour at this point and cherish your memories of FIRST BLOOD because the 2 films play out almost the same, complete with an 11th hour appearance of Deacon's old C.O. from Nam who tries to talk him off the mountain. Luckily for us the screenwriters were feeling cranky and threw in a wonderfully apocalyptic "Chinese Connection" ending that ends with Deacon unloading his weapon straight into our FACES. This movie was frankly awesome and bolstered by a bizarre score that veers from plodding to frantic but is always atonal and sounds like it was composed by a cat.

BROTHERHOOD OF DEATH (Berry, 1976) I rented mostly for its Namsploitation elements, which did not disappoint. Sometimes I wonder if I watch Nam flicks to make myself feel smart when pointing out all the innacuracies in uniform and weapons. Whatever, pleasure is where you find it I guess. The Nam sequences are a real hoot and all the guys run around with big hair and mustaches and the like and wear outdated duckhunter camo from WW2. Their chief lesson learned seems to be "the best defense is a good offense" and we spend the next hour waiting for them to get around to applying this lesson in their battle with the local Klan chapter. A great deal of time is gobbled up with a failed attempt at a voting drive in attempts to get a seat in congress to challenge Whitey but when this goes tits-up we get to some solid fun with our boys ripping the Klan a new one, only like, in the dark, so its hard to see what's going on. I was glad for all the white sheets at least but our heroes sadly offered no contrast with their surroundings.

YOR THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE (Margheriti, 1983) is silly claptrap from start to finish but it has big fake dinosaurs that bleed a LOT and also Corinne Clery in a teeny little cavegirl outfit. Reb Brown is a prancing fawn in this whose mullet apparently substitutes for any need he has for a shirt. Frequent buffalo shots of both sexes keep the proceedings snicker-filled for its target audience which appears to be 12 year old boys who did not see CONAN because it was rated R. A riot.

TREASURE OF THE AMAZON (Cardona, 1985) ... What can I say about this, except that it BLEW ME AWAY! What a total surprise. I bought it solely because it was on sale for a dollar and had a "why not" moment. The cover is lousy and looks like a cheap knockoff of ROMANCING THE STONE complete with buff shirtless bozo and prostrate bimbo hanging on to his bronze thigh while behind them a bas relief of a monkey statue vomits diamonds all over the place. I figured I'd put it on as background noise but in short order it had my full attention, especially when Stuart Whitman cuts a native guy's thumb off for pickpocketing and then throws him over the side of a boat to the alligators. Lots and lots of high adventure follows and the movie refreshingly and shockingly does not skimp on the gore. Heads are lopped off repeatedly and sometimes require more than one chop (!!!), and one guy is eaten alive by crabs who pull his eyes out!!!! Underneath all of this is an unbelievable "love" story between Whitman and a girl young enough to be his granddaughter but it all turns out to be a double-cross for her to make off with the treasure once he finds it. More twists and betrayals follow and the ending had me clapping in honest glee. This is truly one of the better Jungle Action Ripoffs (JARs) and Whitman's beard is very impressively groomed throughout.

Catch up time

On the weekend of 11/11/07, a 3-day, I watched:

THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR (Clouse, 1975), BOUND TO LOSE (a Holy Modal Rounders doc), TRANSFORMERS again, just to seal that 'hell' deal, SLIPSTREAM which has Mark Hamill and a ton of references to Blade Runner, SEARCH FOR THE GODS with TV's Kurt Russell which until now was a lingering title on the shortest of my "video search lists" and that I got for only 2 bucks, SKINHEADS w/ Chuck Conners, a violent and exploitative thriller with an earnest performance by the lead skinhead that's unmissable, but so odd that I still can't decide if its genius or crap, CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE by Margheriti who I have grown very fond of recently, its about Nam and zombies and one guy's name is 'Charles Bukowski,' THUNDER WARRIOR 2 by DeAngelis, which features a Indian lassoing an attacking helicopter amongst other feats of buffoonery and has the single most inexplicably bizarre nonsequiter ending I have ever seen, and which its sequel THUNDER WARRIOR 3 utterly fails to address, although it does have John Phillip Law in it, but is lethargic and uninvolved and seems entirely unneccesary, and being one of the priciest tapes I have bought or rented lately, kinda sucks, FINAL EXECUTIONER, an Italian postnuke picture that was forgettable but for Woody Strode in a supporting role as a noble ex-lawman yearning for order, and finally, just for grins, the special edition of RETURN OF THE JEDI which went down damn easily this time thanks to being a markedly better film in comparison to almost everything that preceded it this month.

***

Monday I caught Margheriti's INDIO 2: THE REVOLT, which as expected, was perfectly accessible without having seen part one. Punchy Marvin Hagler 'stars' and his efforts to clearly enunciate common words should be commended. First hour seems draggy but is punctuated by a handful of cool parts mostly involving miniatures exploding, but the last half hour is balls-out mayhem and fighting that redeems all that came before it. At one point the villain cropdusts a village of fleeing natives with ACID (!!!) and shortly thereafter Hagler punches his fist through his chest (!!!!!!!!!).

Tuesday was the time for the "Incredible Lou Ferrigno" in HERCULES by Luigi Cozzi, and as I told a friend, this film will only make sense to you if you are a little kid or a crazy person, the only people who won't have a hard time buying that bitchy gods sit on the moon and plot our fates. Ferrigno recoils like a frightened girl when struck and one wonders what he thought the director was saying half the time. Just when you thought you couldn't laugh any harder, Hercules punches a bear into orbit like Wolverine in X Men #108.

Chased this one down with WAVELENGTH which honestly was just a kinda lame copy of ET and STARMAN and maybe HANGAR 18. Although to be fair I enjoyed the witty dialogue and curmudgeonly Keenan Wynn can usually be counted on to keep a movie bearable at the very least. Weird score by Tangerine Dream isn't their best but gets extra points for using a ton of whalesong which always sounds cool.

Tonight's features began with OPERATION NAM starring John Wayne's son Ethan, who as an actor isn't fit to smell even his father's shit, but if I let a little bad acting ruin my day I should probably kill myself now and get it over with. Anyway this turned out to be a pretty dynamite little piece of junk from Fabrizio "Thunder" DeAngelis, and while the rescue-the-Nam-POWs plot isn't terribly original, the movie manages to deliver some good shocks and good performances (mainly from John Steiner and Christopher Connelly) and seems uncommonly committed to its subject matter. Kept moving by a good score and lots of "yeah, right!" action, I give this one five Nape Strikes.

And finally we have another fun, if lesser Margheriti work, JUNGLE RAIDERS, one of the many Jungle adventure movies that followed in the wake of ROMANCING THE STONE and INDIANA JONES, which this film imitates in equal measure but to lesser effect. Except for all the stuff about the substitute "Short Round" kid with the talking pet cobra, that was something else. Another big finish for Margheriti in this one too with plenty of miniature mayhem and lots and lots and lots of stuff blowing up (SBU). Plus, yet another flamethrower-on-a-something from Mergheritti, this time a big bulldozer. Intermitent attempts at a jovial tone with silly 'comic' music grate the nerves with their unfunniness but as long as the movie shoots for 'adventure' its fairly solid, if panderingly PG-13 viewing.