The Legend of Hell House

1973 ghost story

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A husband-wife physicist team and a psychic agree to spend a few nights in the titular haunted house with the lone survivor of an earlier visit. There's some haunting.

I wanted to watch something penned by the great Richard Matheson after his passing last week, and this was available. The horrors are effective enough, at least psychologically, and I like that the movie doesn't depend on gimmicks. They're the kind of scares that get under your skin a little bit. The story and its little twist are as cool as you'd expect from something that came from the mind of Matheson. The dialogue's not always great, but I like the conflict between scientific thought and supernatural beliefs. And you have to appreciate when writers can throw in phrases like "ectoplasmic stalk." There's also one of the most arousing come-on lines in the history of horror cinema in this when the hornily-possessed spouse of the scientist says, "You...me...naked...that girl...together...clutching..scratching...biting," before dropping her nightgown. Hot! Oh, and there's ghost sex, something that makes my head hurt now as I try to think of some clever way to reference ectoplasm. This feels a little stuffy at times, but it's got some style. The soundtrack, with its rumbling unidentifiable wind instruments, works well, and there are all these weird close-ups of people's faces or times when their faces move into a shot that I liked. And there's a stuffed cat attack which is nothing short of amazing. I liked Roddy McDowall in this, and one moment where he freaks out--all shrieking and contorting--is probably one of the highlights of his career. Near the end, he engages in a little paranormal trash talk. "What size were you, Belasco?" "Funny little dried-up bastard!" Great stuff. Roland Culver is also really good in a very small role.

Emperor Tomato Ketchup

1971 blockbuster

Rating: no rating

Plot: In a land governed by children, kids run around abusing adults and drawing X's over things.

The only thing I really knew about this movie is that the band Stereolab grabbed its title for one of their album titles. I'm not sure what it's about. It's a frenzy of worn black 'n' white shock images, a lot involving children doing things they're not supposed to be doing. I'm sure director Shuji Terayama is saying something here, but it's going to be next to impossible for most viewers to see it through some really shocking visuals. The imagery invited Holocaust comparisons and thoughts about censorship and totalitarian governments, but none of it was cohesive enough to make a point that a dumb guy like me could fully grasp. No, I'm the type of viewer who's content in being entertained by a scene of a little person emerging from a hole while wearing an army helmet and what appears to be a diaper, running to another hole where he extracts a chicken that he takes an ax to, an act accompanied by a too-loud screech and some scattered applause. There's no real dialogue, but there's some words thrown in (found sound or stock sounds, I assume), none of it that I could understand because I don't speak whatever language it's in. There are also some words that appeared in white on the screen that I wouldn't be able to read even if I could read German. The music is nice if not all over the place. Like many foreign avant-garde productions, I'm missing way too much context to fully appreciate this or even understand it. This might have loads of interesting ideas but it's distracted by its own imagery.

Note: There's a 70-something minute version of this and a much shorter 20-something minute version that I'm guessing only shows the highlights. Like a Michael Bay movie with just the explosions maybe.

Little Shop of Horrors

1996 musical black comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: For the most part, it's the same as this one. Only this version has songs and probably took longer than two days to film. There's also more cleavage, less Jack Nicholson, more black people, and more color.

I had a "Guess This Movie" contest with the winner getting pick the next movie that I watched, and this is the movie that was sort of chosen for that. It was on the queue anyway, so this guy really didn't win anything. Sucker!

The only other time I saw this was in the theater. I was a big Rick Moranis fan, and since this was PG-13, I thought there might be a little partial nudity. I already liked puppets, but I wonder if this sparked an interest in cult black comedies. I can't think of any that I would have seen before seeing this. It was an interesting theater experience for me. I remember during "Suddenly Seymour" not being able to peel my eyes from Ellen Greene's cleavage, and I was perplexed and strangely aroused by the hermaphroditic Audrey II. When Audrey II assaults Audrey I (a scene that completes a 2012 "tentacle rape" trifecta for me, by the way), I got stiff and hoped my date--the pudgy and red-haired Cassandra, a girl who may or may not actually exist--didn't notice. When Audrey II depantsed Rick Moranis, I climaxed, and I wasn't ashamed of it then and am not ashamed to admit it now. Also--and this made the Brazil Times so you can verify it--during the scene where Audrey is crying because her boyfriend was just smashed by the demolished building and the music rumbled to life and played "Suddenly Seymour" and then Seymour emerges from all the smoke, the theater crowd erupted with cheers. People started disrobing and having sexual intercourse right in the theater aisles, somebody started a small fire and started throwing trash into it, a person a few seats next to me fell to his knees and started eating through the cushion of the chair he had been sitting on, somebody stood a few inches from the screen and screamed The Kaddish. Sure, the songs in this are memorable enough, but all the extracurriculars made this a movie experience I will never forget. The songs in this, all intentionally corny, aren't bad, but they're dated more from the bass lines than they are the doo-wop doo-wops provided by the trio of background singers. I like them, by the way, like a dramatic chorus. Not sure why they were murmuring "summertime" during the scene when Seymour's boss gets eaten. [Edit: Ah, it was "suppertime," not "summertime." That makes more sense.] Rick Moranis, a guy who ruined what could have been one of the greatest careers in movie history by deciding to focus on his family, isn't a bad singer, but he's out-performed by Ellen Greene, sometimes comically. Either she's overdoing things or he's underdoing them. And then there's Levi Stubbs of The Four Tops whose performance would have been better if he didn't have such stupid things to sing. "I'm just a mean green mother from outer space, and I'm bad." "Would you like a Cadillac car? Or a guest shot on Jack Paar? How about a date with Hedy Lamarr?" Ick. He does get to use one of my all-time favorite phrases--"No shit, Sherlock"--so it's not a total loss. Back to Ellen Greene and her cleavage. She's got an impressive singing voice, but the Olive Oyl screeching voice thing drove me nuts. She made up for it by riding side-straddle on the back of Steve Martin's motorbike though. Hot! Steve Martin is delightfully over the top, part-Elvis and part-Marquis de Sade, and I especially enjoyed seeing him from the perspective of a uvula. And I had completely forgotten that Bill Murray was in this in Jack Nicholson's role. That's still a completely pointless scene. The stylized setting looks great, and the puppet work is amazing. No, I never believed there was really a man-eating plant in the room, but I also couldn't figure out how exactly that many parts of Audrey II moved around like that. As my five and a half regular blog readers know, I'm easily impressed by puppets though. A couple gags that I really liked: John Candy's radio show that apparently shows his listeners weird things. How would that work on the radio? And waiting to be interviewed after Rick Moranis was a little person with a saxophone-playing nun ventriloquist dummy. I tried to find the little person's name, but I can't even find evidence on the Internet that that scene exists. It's possible that I hallucinated again.

Zazie dans le Metro

1960 French comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Because her mom wants to get laid, the titular 12-year-old has to spend a couple days with her aunt and uncle in Paris. She has a series of adventures, none which involve her riding the subway due to a strike.

It seems like it's been a while since I've used the word whimsical on the blog. I use it almost hourly in my normal day-to-day communication though. I'm not sure if I've just not been watching a lot of movies filled with whimsy lately or if I've been a little down. Either way, this offering from an ornery Louis Malle either met any kind of whimsy quota I might have or acted as a pick-me-up. The movie's very French and very late-50s/early-60s, so much that I more than likely missed a little of the satire. But slapstick is a universal language, and Malle's dicking-around, though likely excruciating for a lot of people, was a lot of fun. This is just so visually playful and random right from the opening sequence in which a very tall man in a checkered suit, a character who turns out to be Zazie's uncle, walks through a crowded train station talking loudly about how bad everybody smells before a pickpocket, a recurring character, pinches a ringing alarm clock from his coat. The rest of this is cartoonish and manic, like a cross between those wacky Beatles movies and Looney Tunes with a pinch of Tati. There's a delirious chase scene that did seem to borrow a little from and the roadrunner and coyote cartoons, complete with a character named Pedro Surplus. Malle pulls out every visual and audio trick in the book in his quest for whimsy. You have characters flashing around, a silly French parrot, intentional continuity errors, multitracked crying, music box boots, children for sale, backwards storytelling, invisible violins, a character who actually changes races for a single shot, endless traffic jams, a stalking little person, a very cheap puppet, and a polar bear juggling flaming torches. Oh, and lots of chipmunk voices. You're going to have to have a high tolerance for chipmunk voices if you're going to dive into this one. There's a long sequence at the Eiffel Tower that I really liked, one of those things where it's pretty obvious that Malle and his camera crew just went in without a script and said, "Let's just film a bunch of stuff and see what we get." And they got some really incredible shots, some which don't look safe at all. Of course, this is coming from a viewer with mild acrophobia. I'm not sure what this all adds up to, but it's a neat little story that I had a lot of fun with. Oh, I nearly forgot to mention Catherine Demongeot who plays young Zazie. I thought she was really good here. I think her character might have grown and turned into Amelie. Demongeot, probably because of her Satanic name, didn't have much of a career--only three roles, the last before she was eighteen.

L.A. Confidential

1997 movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Following a massacre at a diner, three 1950's Los Angeles cops--a by-the-book youngster with a tragic past, a thuggish veteran with a special hatred for wife beaters (men who beat women, not the shirts), and another veteran more concerned with his own fame and wallet weight--uncover corruption.

I think all movies should start with Danny DeVito. The plot of this one confused me the first time I watched it. I finished it, enjoyed it, turned to a friend sitting beside me, and said, "I'm not even sure what happened during a lot of that." Of course, since nobody was actually watching the movie with me, I wasn't exactly lucid anyway. I really feel like this movie pulled its punches. Don't get me started on the ending which puts the capital H in front of ollywood. The movie should have ended with Guy Pearce flashing his badge, and you're not going to convince me otherwise. And the makers of this really tease us with Kim Basinger who could have been a lot more naked. She does have the perfect look for this sort of femme fatale role and does a nice job. Really everybody is almost given a role that is perfect for them. Pearce is good, even when they put glasses on him. The Crowe (that's what I'm calling him), for whatever reason, is a very realistic tough-guy-with-temper. And Spacey and DeVito are terrific in their sleazy roles. And you have to love James Cromwell who I think is the best of the bunch. I'll tell you, when you put him in a situation where he's not talking to a pig, that guy's as menacing as they come. There's a lot of interesting stuff packed into this almost-Shakespearean tragedy--racism, Hollywood and the nature of tabloid, greed and corruption, pornography, what shapes us as human beings/determinist philosophy. And I really like how 50's L.A. is created here. The costumes, the music, the settings, the dialogue, etc. all recall the earlier noir films this pays homage to, and the clash between the sparkling time and place--these almost peachy-keen 1950's--and its much darker underbelly really is what drives this movie and makes it pretty special. The complexities of this story fit together so well, and its twists and turns are interesting even when you're seeing this for a second or third or fourth time. The biggest tragedy is that this (and Boogie Nights, and probably almost every other movie released that year) lost to Titanic for Best Picture. Somebody should be embarrassed about that. L.A. Confidential is a great old-school movie movie, arguably one of the best made in the last twenty years. It could have done without all the glitz and gleam of Hollywood though in a sort of strange way, that fits thematically.

The Emperor's New Groove

2000 movie where a David Spade character befriends a fat guy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: The titular emperor, a young and arrogant spoiled brat, has plans to build a waterpark on a hill belonging to a gregarious peasant named Pacha. A power-hungry associate named Yzma attempts to assassinate Emperor Kuzco but winds up turning him into a talking llama instead. He has to depend on Pacha to get back to his kingdom and un-llama himself. It's a hilarious adventure!

Sure there' a midget Tom Jones in this, but other than his opening song, this isn't a musical. And thank God for that! This offering seems a little adventurous for the Disney folk. This one's got an ornery rhythm, and although there isn't anything objectionable, I imagine its general attitude might be off-putting to some parents. It's playful and as colorful as Robin Williams' squelchiest brain farts, but unlike his unhinged Genie, the modern references in this--boy scouts, exotic bird bingo--are never obvious. This is stuffed with visual gags, and the jokes in the dialogue are rapidfire, the funny coming so quickly that you really need to see this more than once to catch it all. So much contributes to this unique liveliness this cartoon's got. You've got the good voice work from the likes of sarcastic Spade ("He's doing his own theme music!") who, for at least part of the movie, narrates unreliably; John Goodman; freakin' Eartha Kitt as one of Disney's most inept villains ("Should have thought about that before you became a peasant."); Patrick Warburton as her even more inept sidekick, the rare dumbass character who doesn't get annoying by the end, a character whose every bit of dialogue is funny; even John "Piglet" Fiedler with one of his final roles, an Old Man cameo surrounded by movie after movie after movie in which he has to voice fucking Piglet. The action sequences, those scenes of adventure that must have been the reason this had a "mild peril" warning stamped on it, have both a zip and a wang. The sound effects accompanying all the mild peril were also great, giving this almost a Looney Tunes flavor--wacky and lively. The settings, a variety of gnarled locales with no regard for buzzkills like continuity, just pop, and I like the cool transitions from place to place and scene to scene. The whole movie's got a look that I liked a lot--the characters with exaggerated angles of necks and limbs, the jazzy movement, explosions of color. It's all very refreshing. Buster watched this with me and instantly wanted to watch it again. She was, however, high.

The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings

1976 baseball movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Negro League pitcher Bingo Long's in the declining years of his baseball career. He's disgruntled, tired of the way the owners of the baseball teams treat the players. The firing of his pal Rainbow after a beanball is the last straw, and Bingo gets together some stars from various teams to form an all-star barnstorming team. The owners, understandably, are irritated by that.

Nice little baseball movie here and probably the second best movie that Billy Dee Williams and James Earl Jones were in together. And was Richard Pryor an Ugnaut? Maybe him, too. The comedy didn't quite work for me in this, but the baseball and it captures the feeling of the late-30's and the oft-flamboyant trash-talking Negro Leagues and African American life style so well. And I should know because I grew up a black boy in the late-1930's. I enjoyed the parallels, the writers having a little fun with baseball lore. There's a catcher half the size of Midget Cadell and a one-armed player a la Pete Gray. Richard Pryor's attempts to break into the majors as a Cuban and later Chief Tokohama was straight from my favorite baseball story of all time when a black player tried to break into the league in 1901 by claiming to be a Native American. And some of Bingo Long's antics--sitting his outfielders down, for example--seemed straight from Satchell Paige's biography. So it's a lot of fun as a baseball movie, and there are some nice social themes in there as well. Don't go into it expecting something Major League funny though. The characters are more likable though. Billy Dee's smile is infectious, and James Earl Jones is great here. This is the best baseball movie he's ever been in, of course.

Eating Raoul

1982 black comedy

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A boring and seemingly asexual married couple need some money to open up their dream restaurant. When they accidentally kill a swinger with a frying pan and find a wad of cash in his wallet, they get an idea to do that for a living. A friendly dominatrix and the titular swindler help them with their business.

There's a parade of perverts in this movie and think you've seen it all until the door swings open to reveal none other than Billy Curtis--my favorite little fellow--with a dog and a very funny voice. I'm sure this wasn't his proudest moment. Then again, the guy played Mayor McCheese, so maybe vanity wasn't a big deal for him. Paul Bartel, one of Corman's buddies, directed and starred in this. He looks a lot like Chris Elliott, something that probably made me like his character more. As a writer/director, it doesn't seem like Bartel's had a lot of interaction with actual people because the dialogue is awkward and silly. Maybe it's intentional. He gives it this off-50's sitcom texture with some corny music, the couple sleeping in a pair of twin-sized beds, and this general prosaic feeling. It reminds me in tone of Parents with a dash of A Bucket of Blood but it's too silly and not clever enough. I did pick up a line that I will likely use if I ever have sexual relations again: "Look out! Here comes the duke now!" Oh, and this is only the second movie that I'm aware of that uses the word "pendejo" (Do you know the other?), a word I used in class the other day and immediately regretted it since my Spanish-speaking students ooooh'd like I had just cursed. Anyway, this movie gets a big bonus point boost for the Billy Curtis cameo, but it's otherwise kind of a one-gag movie that in the end seems like just one huge joke with a punchline that's given away in the title. Should I have typed "spoiler alert" before telling you that?

The Great Buck Howard

2008 comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: The titular washed-up illusionist hires a new assistant who has disappointed his father Forrest Gump by not finishing law school. Buck Howard isn't the nicest of employers or the easiest to deal with, but Troy does his best to help him in his attempts to make a comeback and get back on The Tonight Show.

Love seeing Malkovich in comedy roles, and although he might not have a lot to work with here--the writing, the other performers--he's a lot of fun here as the illusionist, especially when he becomes unglued. The dopey handshake, the piano performances, and the magician showmanship that paint Buck Howard as this almost deliriously unhip fellow who is not really likable at all but still manages to be somebody you want kind of almost want to root for. The real main character--with his narration, the conflict with his father, the love interest--didn't interest me at all. That's Tom Hanks' boy, and he doesn't seem to have much of a future in this business. You do have to give credit to a movie that establishes Jay Leno as a "dimwit" and manages to include a scene with Gary Coleman, a juggling little person, and a ventriloquist in the same room without making my television ejaculate. Worth watching for Malkovich fans.

The Station Agent

2003 movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The oddly-named Finbar McBride becomes the titular station agent after his only friend passes away and leaves him a tiny bit of land and an abandoned train depot. He clearly wants to be left alone but reluctantly befriends a hot dog vendor who sets up his stand in the weirdest place imaginable and a female artist who almost runs him over twice. Oh, and the guy's a dwarf. I forgot to mention that part.

All three of these characters and the performers who play them are extremely likable. Peter Dinklage is so good as the main character. He displays every single emotion that the script calls for, mostly without having to say a single word. It's really good seeing him in a starring role, and watching his character grow (Oh no he didn't!) is a rewarding experience. Bobby Cannavale brings an enthusiasm as the gregarious purveyor of hot dogs, and Patricia Clarkson is really good as a secretly complex character. Great cast. If there's a problem, it's that the characters don't have enough to go on here. They've got their back stories and their share of unspoken issues, but what we see on the screen isn't a whole lot of story. Still, as a quirky character study, this works really well. I like these movies where you have these characters who need each other, especially if they don't really understand how or why they need each other. I would have liked to have seen more of Paul Benjamin actually, but this movie wouldn't have made much sense if he lived more than ten minutes into things. A sweet little movie that is almost exactly what it needs to be.

Santa Sangre

1989 Jodorowsky funk

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A boy is traumatized by some horrible experiences that took place during his young life with the circus involving a tattooed woman, his knife-throwing daddy, and his mother who worships a no-armed woman with the religious cult across the street. Following his release from an asylum, he tries to put his life back together again. That's made difficult when he runs into his no-armed mother who controls him and demands the use of his arms. His childhood sweetheart and a little fellow try to help him out.

It's really the type of movie that makes a plot synopsis pointless which explains the half-hearted effort I gave it up there. This is a psychosexual Freudian (aka Freddian) horror-comedy that is probably unlike anything you've ever seen or in some cases unlike anything you'll ever want to see. My plans were to make Santa Sangre my Oprah Movie Club pick before I got depressed about that whole thing and passed. I'm sure it would have been dug by all. This is Jodorowsky's third best film after Holy Mountain and El Topo, and although it's not as bizarre as those two, it's pretty bizarre compared to everything else. I still chuckle a little when I see this labeled as one of his most accessible. Jodorowsky seems to have had more of a budget to work with in this one, and he uses it to compile some artful visuals and utilize his vivid imagination. Not that he needed much money to help him out anyway. Drenched in film-school symbolism and saturated in cartoon colors and Part-Fellini (probably just the circus thing), part-Psycho, part-Bunuel, and all Jodorowsky, there are scenes throughout this that will linger in the mind for a long time. There's an elephant funeral that has to be seen to be believed, and the choreography and timing required for the scenes where the mother "uses" her son's arms is impressive. There's also a great little person, Jesus Juarez as Aladin. And you get a scene where some actors with Down Syndrome visit a prostitute. Exploitative? Yeah, probably. Original? Definitely. Oh, and there's a scene where a guy peels off his own ear. I'm sorry. I should have warned you all about spoilers before typing some of that. It's a challenge, but it's a thoroughly entertaining one. Shame about the dubbing though. It's also a shame that this guy can't get financing so that the rest of us can see his dreams. I keep reading that he's making a movie, but then I'll see where the Russian producers "just disappeared mysteriously" and then there's no movie.

By the way, I follow Alejandro Jodorowsky on Twitter. Highly recommended despite 95% of his tweets being in a language I don't speak. I think probably Canadian. He's like an advice columnist. One follower asked him, "Any advice for mental clarity?" and he answered, "On Sundays, lock yourself in the house and repeat, incessantly, one word: ass." It's sound advice.

One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

1975 movie that should be on everybody's top-500 list

Rating: 20/20

Plot: McMurphy is lazy. Unfortunately, he's also a criminal and has to serve time in prison where they'll make him work. But he's got a plan--pretend to be insane so he can be transferred to a mental institution and serve out the remaining days of his sentence without having to work. He adds a little chaos to the gentle existence of the asylum, changing a few inmates' lives for better or worse. He also finds an enemy in the head nurse--Nurse Ratched.

I could have sworn that this came out in 1973.

First off, I'd like to point out that I don't see Nurse Ratched, stoically played by Oscar winner Louise Fletcher, as the real villain. She's a bit passive-aggressive maybe and gets on McMurphy's nerves, more as a symbol or maybe as a woman than through anything she actually does, but it's not like she's outrageously malicious or anything. McMurphy's biggest antagonist is himself, and each time I watch this, I see Nicholson's character as a failed Christ figure who, although he does do his part to save a soul in the end, ends up getting in the way of himself as he tries to do fulfill whatever mission he might have. He takes his "disciples" fishing, retiring to the bowels of the stolen ship in order to have sexual relations with a woman (don't think Jesus did that), and botches a few miracles. Jack's electric in this, really one of my favorite acting performances ever. I love the last moments of the big going-away party at the end when McMurphy sits and waits for Billy to finish doing his business. There's an extended shot of just Jack's face, and his expressions in that fifty seconds or so show loss, optimism, fear, indecision, happiness. Amazing stuff. But the ensemble cast around Nicholson is also great, portraying these crazies in a way that doesn't blow them up into comic figures (though there is plenty of comedy here) but creates these very human moments where you really feel the characters' pain. Observe that first therapy session--you have the circle of guys who can communicate, eventually fit in with society again, or whatever surrounded by all the lunatics who will never fit in again, the ones who stand in the background staring at nothing, hit a punching bag with a cane with a persistence that makes him almost a hero, or elegantly dances to the music in his head. I really like the expression on Harding's face when he realizes that nobody will help him with his problem. During that entire scene and probably all the conversations the "group" has, director Forman uses close-ups and distance shots perfectly. Danny DeVito (I'm counting him as a little person, by the way) is really good as Martini, William Redfield could easily have won something as Harding, Christopher Lloyd plays ornery and angry so well as Taber, and Brad Dourif and his Lyle Lovett-esque hair are heartbreakingly good as Billy and Billy's hair respectively. And Will Sampson is unforgettable as the Chief. I love that scene where he's striding across the court during that basketball game, the first time his character shows any personality whatsoever. He says so much for being a mute. I also like the nurse who is always with Nurse Ratched but whose only line is a lengthy scream near the end of the movie. When I saw this movie as a youngster, its themes of conformity and freedom resonated. I think it's captured best in the looks on the inmates' faces when Nurse Ratched asks, "Did Billy Bibbit leave the grounds of the hospital?"

Now, let's see why this isn't on Cory's top-500 movie list.

Gothic

1986 silliness

Rating: 11/20

Plot: We travel back to an era of English romanticism, specifically the night when Mary Shelley and poet husband Percy had a sleepover at Lord Byron's palatial estate, exchanged a few ghost stories, and gave birth to Frankenstein. Apparently, this night included a bunch of hide-and-go-seek and fighting off dwarf attacks.

Ken Russell's a director stuffed with bizarre ideas, and his films have a visual appeal. Gothic has some creative energy, but it's this really sluggish creative energy. Reimagining the night these crazy kids got together and inspired Shelley's horror novel, all the blending of reality and nightmare, is interesting movie subject matter. And there are some nifty visuals, like that suit of armor with a strap-on and the little fella featured on the poster. And you've got a strange but intriguing soundtrack provided by Thomas "She Blinded Me with Science" Dolby. But watching this movie was like wading through a filthy swamp. The period setting and stagy dialogue with freak-out interludes grew tiresome really quickly, and it's all so pretentious. It seems strange to say that since the majority of the movie involved the characters playing hide-and-seek, but it was. Fine characters, fine acting, a great scenario, some cool visuals and music. It just doesn't add up to anything that mattered to me at all. It's faux-intellectualism, flimsy and damp, a movie that drowns in itself. I was tempted to keep my finger on the fast-forward button, but I was terrified I'd miss a nipple.

Shaolin vs. Evil Dead

2004 kung-fu zombie movie

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Something about the star of Kill Bill and a pair of sidekicks fighting evil and giving the dead proper burials. It involves voodoo papers. His brother's turned evil and fights against him every step of the way. There are hopping zombies all over the place, too.

First off, I want to find the guy who played Buck (Michael Bowen) in Kill Bill Volume 1 and put him in the kung-fu sequel to The Diary of Anne Frank that I plan on writing and directing some day. That way I'll be able to put "From the star of Kill Bill 1" on the top of my dvd box and make a little extra cash despite having dialogue as bad as the dialogue in this movie:

Master: Take a piss!

Kid: What? Now?

Other Kid: You heard the master. Do it.

Kid: [Pisses]

Other Kid: Master, why did you tell him to take a piss?

Master: I need virgin's pee.

See, sometimes it's poor translating combined with poor dubbing that makes it all sound much worse than it actually is, but I'm not sure that's the case here. Maybe with the later "Where do you come from, devil? How dare you invade my little brother?" is the result of the translation/dubbing combo though. This whole thing's a lot of nonsense. Why do the zombies hop? What's with the ad nauseum chanting? Why's that kid keep slamming his groin into a wall? Does a suddenly materializing Mike Tyson tattoo really give a person special powers? Why so many references to whizzing? What the hell are voodoo papers? There are a few moments when this movie almost looks good, but for the most part, it's one of those modern kung-fu flicks injected with some horror that isn't very scary and some humor that doesn't fit at all. The special effects are the scariest part of this, a kind of CGI nightmare. The Shaolin vs. Evil Dead story isn't even completed in this movie which is really frustrating. Clips during the credits promise a sequel, and it looks like they've found a way to make the special effects even uglier. I have no interest in sitting through the sequel to figure out what the hell this one was about.

Basket Case

1982 horror sleaze

Rating: 10/20

Plot: Duane travels to the big city with a basket containing the lumpy blob of a brother who was formerly attached to him. They're not there to sightsee though. Oh, no. They're on a mission of revenge to kill off all those responsible for separating them. But Duane finds love, and brother Belial isn't happy about it at all.

What percentage of female first-time viewers of Basket Case (to be honest, I can't imagine there are many female fans of this movie) watch and just pray that there will be a Bilial sex scene somewhere in the sleaze? They'll get their wish with what will undoubtedly win my annual "Sex Scene of the Year" award. As a guy who enjoys both puppets and stop-motion, there's no way that I'm not going to enjoy Bilial. This is one of the cheapest movies you'll ever see, but it's got this grimy style and filthy charm that, although not something that will appeal to everybody, puts this a notch above its landfill-dwelling brethren. The most obvious thing you have to overlook is some of the worst acting ever. Kevin Van Hentenryck, the guy who plays Duane, is like a poor man's Bud Cort, and the periphery characters (mannish prostitutes, hotel managers, shady doctors) are played by actors/actresses who are each worse than the one who preceded them. Bad acting can be entertaining, but the stuff in this crosses a line into a new level of bad. I really enjoyed some over-the-top sound effects and a really weird soundtrack. There's a funny "woo-woo-woo" thing during a scene when the camera reveals an empty basket (Woo woo woo!), and the exaggerated squishes, wickery creaks, and audible drooling give this a disgusting edge. Basket Case isn't played 100% straight, and I laughed most during some flashback scenes, including an operation scene with some hilarious dubbing. This has enough sticky violence, creative garbage cinematography, and fun for somebody in just the right mood.

I'm pretty sure most of the budget for this one was spent on the basket, by the way. It's a pretty nice basket.

Sherlock Holmes

2009 action movie/bastardized lit

Rating: 13/20 (Jen: 11/20)

Plot: Slobbish detective Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson attempt to solve the mystery of who is trying to terrorize Londoners. Turns out that it's a dead guy! Oh, snap!

The more this went on (and on and on), the more I actually ended up liking it. Unfortunately, it was never enough to completely save the movie. This is one of those movies that seems like it was written by eight different people. They all started out in same conference room around a massive oval table, a picture of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in front of an empty chair to give them inspiration. Maybe they all smoked opium, listened to violin music, and wore deerstalker hats to get in the right mood. In fact, I'm sure they all must have been smoking opium. They had trouble agreeing on much, just as you'd expect from a gaggle of writers, and decided to split up, write portions of the plot on their own, and reassemble later to paste it all together. So Guy #1 ran off with his head full of all these supernatural elements because he digs vampire movies; Guy #2, the traditionalist of the bunch, left with his convoluted explanations to show off Holmes' deductive knack and powers of observation; Guy #3, lover of action movies that he was, decided to storyboard a few ultra-modern fight scenes; Guy #4, lover of romantic comedies that he was, figured a little romance on the side wouldn't hurt anything; Guy #5 figured it was about time to put all that research he'd done on Masonry back in graduate school to use, also remembering the popularity of that Da Vinci Code movie; Guy #6, awakened from yet another terrorism-fueled nightmare, decided to put his irrational fears to use and include biological weapons; Guy #7 had writer's block and failed to contribute anything at all; and Guy #8, a chemist without any friends at all, decided to Bill-Nye-the-Science-Guy is up and add a bunch of stuff that nobody but he and the friends he would have had if he had had any would understand. They reconvened and threw all their ideas on that big oval table. But some dastardly foe, likely from a rival movie studio although that's yet to be proven, set the table on fire! The writers panicked, rapidly assembling the most coherent story they possibly can before their hard work perished in the flames. Sure the final result was a complete mess, but they decided that modern audiences won't mind if there's some nifty special effects to go along with it. I was a little annoyed by the slow-mo modern fisticuffs and Guy Ritchie's flashy direction. It's all stylistically interesting but very distracting. The story was also frustratingly complex, and after a while, I was so confused that I just gave up trying to figure out what was going on. Yes, it does all come together in the end, but it wasn't enough to make up for the previous 110 minutes of frustration. I don't easily forgive when something or somebody makes me feel so stupid for so long. The special effects team did create some cool settings (love moody London here), and as readers of my blog know, I always like Robert Downey Jr. He and Jude Law have fine chemistry. Rachel McAdams also provides some eye candy. I suppose there are enough nods to the original source material to appease some Holmes-aphiles while the purists will likely turn up their noses and pooh-pooh the whole thing. I'm somewhat in the middle. I'm not in a hurry to see this again even though it's the type of thing that repeated viewing could help, but I wouldn't mind renting the sequel when it comes out.

The Cremator

1968 Cesky film

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Kopfrkingl rfealtly lipkes hits jozb as the tituvglar spalovac mrtvol. He freqcuenjtly reacds the Tibeztlan Boozk of the Dxead and usces it to supplrort his idzea that crenmatzion is the most comcfortwable way to go. It's the 1930s, and when Gezrzmzany rovlls in, they make him an offqer that he has problkems renfushing in this hiltariousc comegdy from cheehry Czechoslovakia.

At least I think it's a horror/comedy. If it is, it's one of the most disturbing comedies ever made. If not, I might be disturbed myself. But the hijinks of a recurring married couple, lines like "We take a break in the afternoon, and you can breathe fresh air in the cemetery," and a cheery song some characters sing about the death of children are too funny not to be in a comedy. It's nothing I laughed out loud at. Well, that's not true. I think I laughed at a scene where the titular cremator is training a new employee and asks him to look into a little hole in the furnace before annoucing, "There's nothing to see--we must wait for a nice cremation." I really liked The Cremator, from the opening title sequence with some cut-out animation stuff that reminded me of fellow Czech Svankmajer to the startling conclusion. Speaking of Svankmajer, there are also some rapidly juxtaposing shots of cat facial features and pictures of women's breasts that looked straight out of one of the animator's shorts. That must have been the thing to do in Czech movies from the late 60s until whenever. This dark movie is a great depiction of a man losing touch with reality. The lead, a guy with too many consonants in his name, is subdued, doing very little to help the reader know that he's going insane. Instead, director Juraj Herz lets that be shown through the cinematography with some flashy editing, the use of the always odd wide-angle lens, and some other nifty camera tricks. I also like how Herz transitions from one scene to another. Close-ups of a wrinkled animal at a zoo bleeds into the next scene with a close-up of the wrinkles on a guy's forehead. A character's lines fit with the context of one scene when you suddenly realize you've actually been taken to a brand new situation. It's really a neat trick the first few times you notice it, but for the movie to so consistently move from scene to scene like that is really impressive. I also liked a scene at a very strange wax museum, one that featured both puppets and a little person, and the ingenious way a boxing match was filmed. And the music--haunting minimalist clicks with operatic ghosts--fit very well. If you're a sucker for guys-losing-their-minds movies like I am, The Cremator is for you! I've also decided I need to see more Czech movies. Awesome stuff!

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

2009 Terry Gilliam movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: The titular doctor roams England with a rickety theater wagon, luring some lucky customers into the Imaginarium, a trip through Parnassus's dream-drenched mind. Much earlier, he'd made a deal with the devil, Mr. Nick, and as his daughter's sixteenth birthday approaches, he knows that she will soon belong to him. Parnassus and Mr. Nick decide to have a competition to see who can get five souls first. Meanwhile, the performers have rescued a man hanging beneath a bridge, and he decides to travel around with them.

This is one of those cases where I'm really frustrated. How can I not like this movie? It's obnoxiously fantastical, another visual treat from the fertile subconscious of Terry Gilliam. It's got a little person, a monkey, and a Tom Waits puppet in it. It's got Tom Waits himself with a mesmerizing performance as the flamboyant Mr. Nick. It's got a really interesting story submerged beneath the onslaught of visual peculiarities. So how do I not totally love this thing? There are lots of problems actually. Sure, you can gorge on the visuals if you're into that sort of thing, but there are lots of times when there's much too much going on, CGI-mayhem that leads to a sensory overload with tinkertoy surrealism and forced field trips to a schizophrenic's painting studio. The visuals are often neat, but there's this timeless anachronistic quality to the whole thing where everything seems out of place. It's difficult, I imagine, for the average person to get a grip on what's going on in Gilliam's worlds. As a fan of a lot of his work, I even found this one difficult, and it made me wonder how messy the man's kitchen must be. Things stutter along, get weird, stutter along some more, stop, and stutter, and after a while, I started wondering when things were going to get started. By the time the giant unfurling tongue, dancing transvestite policemen, and a giant robot woman driven by the devil (all three which looked straight from Python), I had already lost my ability to focus and had to dump a half glass of raspberry lemonade on my lap to get my leg to stop vibrating. Heath Ledger is in this movie, and I think he did a fine job. I can't be sure because it was hard to get a grip on his character until some twistiness at the very end. Depp, Law, and Farrell step in for scenes with Ledger's Tony after Ledger's death, and although I suppose the different actors playing the same role could work on some level, I didn't completely get it here and it was just one more thing about the film to frustrate the heck out of me. Tom Waits really is terrific playing Mr. Nick, borrowing a sleazy and dapper tone that he's used in more than a few of his songs. And I liked Christopher Plummer here, too. But Verne Troyer (you know, Mini-Me) proves to the world that he's not an actor. At all. His is one of the worst performances I've seen in a long time. Verne is no Herve, and nothing, not even a scene where he's in blackface, made me glad that he was in the film. Big mistake with that casting decision, Terry. This was a movie I was looking forward to for years, and I'm really sad that I didn't like it.

There's a chance I'll watch this again some day, and there's a chance I'll like it a lot better. Then again, I've always said I'd give The Brothers Grimm (couldn't finish) and Tideland (wasn't sure if I liked it or not) another chance and never have.

Harlow Hickenlooper: One Man, a Striped Jacket, a Straw Hat, Three Stooges, Hundreds of Pies, and Thousands of Adoring Fans

2008 documentary

Rating: n/r

Plot: A look at the life and work of Indianapolis independent children's entertainer Hal Fryar, better known as Harlow Hickenlooper. Includes lengthy stories from Fryar and a ton of old clips.

From what I can gather, a Hickenlooper fan named Steve Pyatte put this together and gave it to Fryar as a gift. It's not exactly a professional work, so I didn't feel like giving it a rating, but I'm sure glad I watched it as a Hoosier. I'm only marginally familiar with Hickenlooper, but it was great watching the 80-something year old Fryar talk about his work and his colleagues with such enthusiasm. Even though his stories were all over the place and at times almost like jokes that only he would get, the guy is so likable and excited that you want to listen to him for hours. From how he got his first television gig (a guy who played a cowboy character quit and at 6'2", Fryar fit in the costume) to working with William Shatner and Shari Lewis (both using the show as a platform to peddle their own work) to behind-the-scenes footage of his work with the Stooges in The Outlaws Is Coming! this is a wonderful look at a time and television genre that won't exist again. As Fryar says, without whining, kids living in a world where everything is automated just wouldn't appreciate this sort of thing. As an Indianapolis guy, I enjoyed seeing crackly footage of Fryar flying a kite at Brookside Park (I've disc golfed there) and walking through a haunted house at the Indianapolis Children's Museum. My favorite moment: Hal Fryar talking about how excited he was when he showed up on the set of the Three Stooges movie and seeing a chair with his name on the back of it.

As a bonus, there was some stuff about another local television personality named Sammy Terry who I remember very fondly. That guy was great! He showed terrible horror flicks and had a terrific creepy laugh.

The Man with the Golden Gun

1974 James Bond movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: 007 finds out that the titular man wants to kill him with the titular gun and globetrots to find the assassin before the assassin finds him so that he can go back to saving the world or whatever it is he does.

Bitchin' 70s funk here! Within minutes, you've got Herve Villechaize, the appearance of a third nipple, fake skeletons, an old-timey shooting range, chaos in a house of mirrors, and wax figure finger target practice. Then, the theme song to end all theme songs! "One golden shot means another poor victim has come to a glittering end. For a price, he'll erase anyone. The man with the golden gun!" All behind the visual of women's dancing silhouettes against a background of fireworks! Shipoopi! Just when you think the movie has to slow down and take a breath, you're treated to details of a circus-born assassin, bellydancing, swallowed bullets, gun fondling, kung-fu hijinks, an attack with a watermelon, faux nipples, sumo wedgies, threats with a trident, something called a Solex Agitator or something, a car chase, a boat chase, another car chase, a racist Cajun, elephant molestation, a car-plane, a sun gun, a stunt that out-Dukes the Duke Boys with slide whistle accompaniment, a conceited Christopher Lee, explosions, more than a few bad puns, and a lot more Herve Villechaize. This is nutty stuff, but you've got a great bad guy doing his damage with a cigarette case, a lighter, and a fountain pen, and an intriguing plot stuffed with too many twists and turns for the average slide whistler to be able to keep up with. I'm far from a James Bond aficionado, but I really like the tongue-in-cheek approach this one has. It's nutty but not afraid to be nutty. It leaps on a kung-fu bandwagon unapologetically. It's got lines like Christopher Lee's "Look behind you. . .lower" which, in context, is as funny as anything I've heard in any comedies I've recently seen. It's got exotic locales, improbable action sequences galore, and beautiful women. And Herve Villechaize, sometimes shirtless! What more could a warm-blooded man want?