Mario Bava Fest: 5 Dolls for an August Moon

1970 murder mystery

Rating: 10/20

Plot: Swingers attempt to swindle a chemist during a getaway on an island and then back stab each other literally and figuratively.

Don't watch this movie. Watch Bava's next feature, A Bay of Blood (or Twitch of the Death Nerve) which has a similar premise (people being murdered on an island) and is much better. This is an Agatha Christie type murder mystery that, to be perfectly honest, didn't make a hell of a lot of sense. Did you know that her original story was Ten Little Niggers, by the way? I am not making that up. And I'm happy to provide you with that little bit of trivia because now my blog might enjoy more traffic from white supremacists who happen to be fans of Mario Bava. More than likely, that's the demographic I'm writing for anyway.  The only thing I really liked about this was that all the dead were hung in a meat locker which was always shown with this carousel music. For whatever reason, that struck me as funny. This has almost none of the style you'd expect from a Mario Bava movie except for a scene with some spilled glass balls rolling down stairs and the no-way-that-could-be-accidental placement of a carrot following one death scene. Of course, any bonus point I would have given this for the use of a carrot as a phallic symbol is taken away when there's a continuity error in a later shot and the vegetable moves. This movie feels somehow more sleazy than the other island movie even though it lacks nudity. And it's pretty boring with most of the murders taking place off-screen. The biggest bunch of nothing happens for the first 20 minutes or so. There are some swinging dancers or dancing swingers, a peeping Tabitha, parlor games that oddly involve faux human sacrifice. Even the waiter guy is dancing. I'd not mind partying with these characters, but I'm not exactly glad I had to spend this hour and a half with them. This is a movie that is not as good as its title.

Boy

2010  coming-of-age comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: New Zealand's number one Michael Jackson fan, the titular boy featured on the poster, is happy to have Dad back in life. Dad, however, turns out to be a complete jackass and seems to be using his sons to help him find some money he may or may not have buried in a field. Boy desperately tries to connect to his father. 

Taika Waititi is a name I'd love to have. He's the guy who wrote, directed, and starred in this movie, and I believe the only thing I know him from is Eagle vs. Shark which I almost liked. He plays a completely unlikable character in this as Boy's dad, but for some reason, he's still hard to dislike. Waititi's physical comedy is great--a Dukes of Hazard move, a Michael Jackson dance or two, his general posture, a Pee Wee insult. My favorite scene out of lots of favorite scenes in this was some playtime at a beach when Waititi's character, remote from his two boys, continues to gun down imaginary foes in a wartime scenario, a child in a man's body playing with stick guns. I liked the two kids in this movie, too, even though the main character said "Egg" way too much. I didn't realize that was an insult. I've heard "Egghead" and "You've got egg on your face," but just "Egg"? This movie also has the Maori Winnie Cooper. I like the playfulness of this. There's a sad and eventually touching father-son story at the center of all this, but rapid narration that would remind me of a quirky French comedy if it wasn't in the wrong accent at the beginning, spoon violence, failed breakdancing on a square of cardboard by a guy wearing a Michael Jackson jacket (so me, circa 1984), Boy's Michael Jackson dance, a bunch of pop references with an emphasis on E.T. for some reason, and an awesome teacher who says things like "Who knows what disease this sheep's got?" and "Oi! Both of you fuck up or I'll send you to the principal!" all set the stage for silly slice of life from down under comedy. The movie's often hilarious although it does wear itself out a little by the end. Still, there's something refreshing about it. And I loved the Bollywood-esque ending where the characters perform a Michael Jackson song complete with choreographed line-dancing. This one hit me in all the right places. 

The Intouchables

2011 French movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A rich quadriplegic hires a troubled young guy from the hood to be his caretaker, and they become really good friends. 

I'd seen this around and avoided it because it's called The Intouchables and has a poster like the one above. Seriously, I'm supposed to want to see a movie called The Intouchables that looks like that? Then, I saw the super high rating on imdb and noted that it was currently sitting as the 38th highest-rated movie on the site and figured it was time to check it out. I'm glad I did because even though it's a little color-by-numbers with a story that could only make sense in Hollywood (it's actually based on a true story), I thought it was very well acted, often really funny, and ultimately profoundly touching. The leads are great, and I was surprised by the amount of chemistry between Francois Cluzet as the rich guy and Omar Sy as hooligan Driss. That chemistry is what made the movie, and if they wouldn't have been able to sell that relationship as the titular duo (whatever Intouchables means) to the audience, this wouldn't have worked at all. I'm not sure exactly why Driss was a black guy from some country in West Africa instead of an Algerian guy or whether or not I should care about all that. I think the directors (Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano) just liked him, and I also thought he was extremely likable. His antics during a trip to the opera made me laugh, and I also liked watching him paint. Oh, and he's got some pretty sweet dance moves. Cluzet's performance is powerful, more powerful since he's doing it all without moving anything below his neck. I was touched by his desire for romantic love and his mostly-unspoken fondness for Driss. There's nothing fancy about this movie, and it's a better story because of it. It's just a naturally unfolding friendship that, even if you don't bother filling in all the gaps, hits you in ways that you can't help but understand. It's really a beautiful little story, and I really like it the more I think about it. Just now, I thought about early scenes where Driss is picking Cluzet's character up and later when the latter is in the passenger seat of a Masserati recklessly driven by the former. You've got to put yourself in Philippe's shoes there to fully appreciate the love and trust this scene shows us. 

My spell check is telling me that "intouchables" is not a word. 

Shane Watches a Bad Movie with Friends on Facebook: Forbidden World

1982 Alien clone

Rating: 8/20 (Libby: 7/20; Josh: 5/20; Fred: 6/20)

Plot: A space guy with an android friend is sent to a planet where research and experimentation is happening. Oh, and sex. That's apparently happening quite a bit, too. While there, the experiment they call a Ding Whopper (seriously, several times) breaks out and wreaks havoc. 

An alternate title for this is Mutant which is more appropriate because it's a one word title like the classic it's ripping off. This is from a story by shane-movies favorite Jim Wynorski (and frequent collaborator R.J. Robertson) who co-directed Dinosaur Island and was the subject of this kind-of cool documentary. And that's unfortunate because the writing is easily the worst thing about this movie. I guess we can blame screenwriter Tim Curnen who also wrote something called Ghost Warrior about a samurai in deep-freeze before he was never allowed to write anything again. The storytelling's languid when it's not unnatural and goofy, and I'm not sure Wynorski or anybody else associated with the writing of this has ever heard of science. Or maybe they just made filthy doodles in the back of their science classrooms like I did when I was in school. The acting also makes it impossible to take this seriously. The pair of women space scientists don't look like the type of people who have even heard of outer space, and they definitely don't belong anywhere near a spaceship or a laboratory. They look like they might have been "discovered" in a strip joint actually, and that's about what their characters are in this for anyway. Seriously, this might have the most gratuitous nudity and sex I've ever seen in a movie. Guy arrives, horrible monster kills somebody horrifically, sex happens, more mutant mayhem, same guy almost gets it on with the other woman. And this is exactly the type of movie that's going to throw a scene where the two gals are having a conversation while showering just because. Don't get me wrong. I love female nudity as much as the next guy, but it just didn't make any sense here. One of the women, Dawn Dunlap, played Taramis in another Bad Movie Club flick, Barbarian Queen, so there's a pretty good chance we'd already seen her naked since they were all naked in that movie.  June Chadwick was the other female scientist, and she had more of a career. She was even in This is Spinal Tap and a couple episodes of The A-Team. The worst acting comes from Linden Chiles who played Dr. Gordon. Chiles can't play angry realistically at all which is not good at all since he's angry for almost the entire movie. Well, until he's replaced by an oozing special effect. Those special effects--including different evolutions of the titular mutant--are really pretty effective, at least if you're into gross-out squelchy stuff. There's an effect near the end, one that has to do with a twist that would be cool if it wasn't for science and stuff, that was really disgusting, and what happens to some of these characters is often hard to watch. The ship and weapons used by the characters aren't half bad either. But none of it is enough to be an adequate life preserver to save Forbidden World from drowning in its bad acting and worse writing. 

Ding Whopper though. You've got to give them credit for that one.  

I'd apologize for the poster creases up there, but this is a movie that deserves creases.

Holy Motors

2012 experience

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Oscar is whisked around in a large limousine as he changes character and keeps assignments. 

I know I've mentioned this before, but my favorite movies are ones that I don't fully understand or ones that I'm not sure I understand. I knew enough about this movie going in that this would be that type of movie, and since I really have to be in a certain mood and be wearing the correct pants to make it through a movie like this, I kept putting it off. Well, until I saw it and wrote about it on the blog and somehow inspired my friend Rubber Duck to check it out. This is bizarre, probably by anybody's standards, but I really felt, after making it through the nearly-two-hour film and honestly feeling a little worn out afterward, that I had a pretty good grasp on what this is all about. And then it bounced around in my head a lot more, and I convinced myself that it was about something else. The main character, played by Denis Lavant who was in Tuvalu, a movie I really liked and would recommend for people who like quirky art and/or silent movies, plays around ten different "characters," and it's never clear whether any of them are actually supposed to be the real Oscar although there's one in the middle that very well might be and one at the end that could possibly be. Oh, and another in the middle who gets to hang out with Kylie Minogue, an Australian pop artist who I've heard has a lovely posterior, might very well be the real him, too. Anyway, he's playing roles, and this movie could be about the roles that all of us regular people are forced to play to get through our lives. We have to be violent, we have to be lovers, we have to be spiritual, we have to be parents, we have to be victims, and we have to be needy. A fantastic two-and-a-half-word final line to his surprising family in a last scene intrigues, and there's also a line he says to his daughter that just has to be a key to solving this riddle of a movie. "Your punishment is to be yourself." Or, this could be a movie all about the film industry and the way actors play these different roles, the demands placed upon them by their audience, and maybe how it's all a dying craft. Minogue's character asks at one point, "And if there's no beholder?" and during a surprising musical number (this movie's full of surprises) sings, "Who were we when we were who we were back then?" which fits in thematically with the idea of playing roles and also has nine W-words in a row. So what's this about? Actual people or actual people playing actual people? Or maybe both of those are far too simplistic, and I'm just a dumb guy easily amused by things he hasn't seen before. This has plenty of that and is unlike any movie I've ever seen. I really want you to see it and be as surprised and surprised again as I was, so I'll keep specifics out of this, but the opener with a guy with a tool for a finger, boat sounds, and a secret door in the wall opening into an opera house with zombie people, some dogs, and a naked kid hooked me right away and my eyes stayed wide open during contortionist sex in motion capture suits with squeaking leather and a truly grotesque ending, some flower eating, a crime, a second crime, and a bunch of other stuff. And there's an interlude featuring more accordions than I think I've ever seen in a movie that blew me away. So good! Anyway, I've said too much already. Denis Lavant is brilliant as Oscar and all the other characters he's playing, and I realize that there's a lot of make-up and costuming being used to transform him into all these different roles, but I'd like to see another actor take all this on and do it as effectively. Edith Scob from Eyes without a Face drives him around, and Eva Mendes also has a memorable role. The movie's frequently funny, sometimes almost profoundly sad, and always mesmerizing. I loved it despite not being 100% sure what I thought of a goofy ending in the titular place of business. It's a challenge for sure, but it's great fun for adventurous movie lovers. 

Mario Bava Fest: Hercules in the Haunted World

1961 mythology movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: After the evil Count Dooku  puts the mythological demigod's gal pal in a trance in some devious plot to become the ruler of wherever she's supposed to become the ruler in, Hercules and a couple buddies have to venture to the Underworld to retrieve a magic stone to save her.

Reg Park's got the guns and charisma to play the titular strongman, and I think he nails the action-hero deity side to the part while also nailing the human side. A young Christoper Lee, for some reason with a dubbed voice which just didn't sound right at all to me, is perhaps menacing only because of how tall he looks. I'm not sure how I felt about the guy who played Theseus (George Ardisson) who I thought was a little dopey-looking. I just didn't buy him as a mythological hero, probably because he had to be on the screen with Hercules most of the time. That or he's making out with the ladies. He does that a lot. Not sure if this was pre- or post-Ariadne and the labyrinth because I'm not up on my mythology. I wasn't even aware that Hercules and Theseus were buddies. I am enough of a nerd to recognize the name Procrustes and his infamous bed, and that whole scene could not have been gayer. First, I didn't realize he was a petrified tree monster, and although he was almost not completely dorky, I still can't think of anything less menacing. And when he said, "You should be longer," I thought that Theseus was going to joke, "That's what she said."  I'm actually kind of disappointed that he didn't because it would have been so cool if Mario Bava was the guy responsible for the "That's what she said" joke. This sword and sandal flick has its share of mumbo-jumbo, some of it narrated by a voice that has to belong to an elementary school librarian, and that makes it feel a little bit stiff. It's hard to take a story seriously when people are talking about the "grotto of Procrustes" and dragons swallowing moons. And honestly, I was a little bored with the story and just paid attention to Bava's visuals, especially in the scenes taking place in the Underworld. Bava might have invented brand new colors for this thing, and I loved watching a magic ship in a psychedelic perpetual dusk-dawn. Scenes featuring gnarled trees, perfectly-fallen magic apples, the emerging of the dead, and vines that bleed were really cool, and Bava's visual brilliance kept things interesting even when the plot wasn't very interesting at all. Those visuals are so cool that I'm surprised Bava wasn't doomed to make movies like this for the rest of his career.

Oprah Movie Club Selection for January: The Usual Suspects

1995 crime movie

Rating: 17/20 (Jen: 18/20)

Plot: A guy with a messed-up foot, one of the titular suspects, shares a serpentine tale with a policeman.

I guess I never thought about it, but director Singer got the title for this from Casablanca.

Josh, a guy who doesn't appreciate Jack London's "To Build a Fire" nearly as much as he should, picked this movie for the Oprah Movie Club. Well, sort of. He told me it was one of his favorites and noticed it wasn't on my blog. I guess I picked it for the Oprah Movie Club since I hadn't seen it in a while. There's a twist, but it wasn't a twist since I had seen the movie. I'd contend, however, that this movie is better a second or third or fourth time through. When you know everything, you pick up on the little clues sprinkled throughout the movie that you wonder how you didn't notice the first time. I asked Josh what he liked so much about this movie, and he cited the writing as one of the reasons, and as an exercise in foreshadowing, it's so well done that you do want to watch it two or three more times after you see it a first time. My favorite of these clues, by the way, is the urine we see in one of the opening shots, a thick urine that turns out to be a genius bit of nudgery if you're really really paying attention. However, a really good twist ending with some clever storytelling leading up to it is not enough to make a movie great. The actors create memorable characters even if I kind of wish they each had their own prequel to further develop them. Well, not Stephen Baldwin. Baldwin faces are generally distracting, and his is not an exception here. But career criminal Keaton (Byrne) or Fenster (Del Toro, with that odd accent) or especially Pollak's Hockney should each get their own movie. Kevin Spacey is a guy I never want to like, but he's about perfect here, a guy playing the role of a guy playing a role. Just as the viewer could get lost in Verbal's (perfect nickname, no?) story as it unfolds, refolds, and unfolds again, you could almost get lost in his performance, and it's something else that makes subsequent viewings rewarding, when a lot of his lines become dramatically ironic when the pieces are all together in your mind. His "devil" is that type of character you need to see more than once to discover how fully realized he is, how multi-dimensional or complex. You can throw out the adjectives or other descriptors, but you can't nail him. He's a cocky son of a bitch, essentially spending the length of the entire movie dicking around with the police just because he knows he can and saying that he's scarier than God. And, of course, he calls himself the devil in the film's most memorable line: "The greatest the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." Spacey's performance is exceptional, but it's one of those that didn't even seem very good the first time I watched this. It wasn't until I watched it knowing that he's a character playing a character that I realized how brilliant it is. I enjoyed the rapport of all of them when they're in scenes together, especially the comic stuff in the jail cell. I wish there was more of that. Josh mentioned a great melding together of scripted writing and improvisation, and I'm really not sure how much improvisation there is, but I did like some of the humor in this thing. Singer's direction has very little style. It's simple really, something that almost clashes with the incredibly complex plot.

Question: You can call Soze/Verbal a genius prankster all you want, but didn't he completely screw up in this? I mean, the authorities end up with a pretty accurate picture of the guy, so the anonymity is gone. His tomfoolery is going to make it impossible for him to ever show his face again, right?

Oh, there are spoilers up there if you haven't seen this movie. I can't think of any reason why I should keep the Oprah Movie Club write-ups spoiler free.

Pitch Perfect

2012 musical comedy

Rating: 14/20 (Jennifer: fell asleep; Emma: 18/20)

Plot: All Beca (you almost lost a point because of that spelling, Pitch Perfect) wants to do is make music and be a disc jockey, but her dad, who happens to teach at the same college she attends, makes a deal with her and talks her into participating in an extracurricular activity. She joins one of the numerous a capella groups, The Bellas, and tries to shake things up as they compete for a chance to win some competition that I have doubts actually exists.

Why the hell did I like this movie? I'm trying to think of reasons why I don't like it, but gosh darn it, I can't help myself. This is something Emma likes, so I decided to watch it with her. I fully expected to hate the thing, but the cute a capella opening for the Universal Studios screen peaked my interest, and it's hard to hate a movie that features projectile vomiting before the credits even begin. The comedy is a little too raunchy for my tastes, or maybe it's just the wrong kind of raunchiness, but I did laugh a few times, especially at the antics from the commentators played by John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks. Of course, we did watch this very late at night, so maybe my defenses were down. Trying to catch everything the mumbling Asian Bella said became a little game. I think she must have been played by Hana Mae Lee because that kind of looks like an Asian name. "Want to see a dead body?" is when I first started paying attention and caught "I set fires to feel joy," "That's adorable," and "I ate my twin in the womb" that made me all chuckle. But as I said, my defenses were probably down. Look at me! Making excuses for liking this movie! This is the very definition of a guilty pleasure. And the musical moments were pretty fantastic. I liked the "riff off" in what seemed to be a very dangerous part of town, and I would have loved to see more from the group that used sock puppets. Clever stuff going on with those musical numbers though, and they were consistently surprising. I liked Adam DeVine who I know only from this latest season of Modern Family, but there's something about the kid's face that I don't care for. The cut of his jib, I guess. But he nailed expressions in this, and I couldn't stop watching him to see what that stupid face would do next. I also liked Rebel Wilson in this, surprising since the sitcom she's currently starring in is annoying. There were several scenes I could have done without in this--a scene with some old guys makes no sense and seems out of place--and I thought the love story was too Hollywood, but that's probably expected in a movie that is made for girls in their late teens. Oh, and a realization: Anna Kendrick really needs to play Han and Leia's daughter in these new Star Wars movies. She's got Carrie Fisher's face. Disney wouldn't even have to Jar-Jar-ize her to make that seem totally realistic.

Anyway, I liked this movie, will see the sequel when it comes out, and will fight anybody who makes fun of me for either of those first two statements. I've been looking for an excuse to fight somebody for a long time anyway.

Mario Bava Fest: The Girl Who Knew Too Much

1963 thriller

Rating: 16/20

Plot: While vacationing in Italy, pretty Nora either witnesses a murder or imagines that she witnesses a murder. At any rate, she now knows too much which might make her a target. She desperately tries to get somebody to believe her story while taking cues from the mystery novels she loves and doing a little detective work of her own.

This is also known as The Evil Eye for some reason, but I prefer the take-off of the Hitchcock title. This is a better movie than Hitchcock's whatever title you go with. This is Bava's last movie in black and white, and it's considered the first giallo movie which Wikipedia tells me is a "mixture of thriller, sexploitation, and horror conventions." The black and white is appropriate because it allows a lot of the story to take place in shadows where it belongs. Bava didn't like the story much and wanted to focus more on film techniques. He said it was "too preposterous" and added, "Perhaps it could have worked with James Stewart and Kim Novak, whereas I had. . .oh, well, I can't even remember their names." Their names are Leticia Roman who is absolutely fetching as the titular girl and John Saxon as her love interest. But the style probably is the real star of the show here. There's a jazzy score (not Les Baxter who was used for the American release), another cool-looking dead lady and a bizarre scene where a cat rocks her bed under blinking lights, all these off-angles that show how our girl's world has gone askew, all that greasy black and white, general fuzziness, shots looking up at nuns and creepy daughters, swinging light bulbs, and cameras looking up from newly-dug graves. I loved one shot where a murderer spends an inordinate amount of time trying to pull a knife from somebody's back. Another great, and admittedly preposterous, scene involves Nora setting a trap for a suspected prowler which adds a little goofy humor to the thrills. Despite what Bava said, I thought the story was solid, and although I probably should have seen the surprise ending coming from a mile away, I only sort-of guessed it correctly. It was really well done though. This is a very likable and accessible Mario Bava movie and maybe not a bad place to start if you want to get your own Mario Bava Fest going.

Shane Watches a Bad Movie with Friends on Facebook: The Fantastic Four

1994 unreleased movie

Rating: 5/20 (Josh: 7/20; Johnny: 6/20; Jeremy: 8/20; Libby: 4/20; Fred: 5/20)

Plot: Four astronauts have a bunch of science happen to them which manages to make them slightly more fantastic. They become Stretchy Man, Clobberin' Man, Fire Man, and Invisible Seamstress Girl and face off against a metallic mumbler named Dr. Doom who has plans to blow up a city or something.

Hey, at least the score is pretty good. This movie was never officially released and was only created in the first place because the Neue Constantin film company's rights to the titular superheroes was about to expire. Roger Corman said he could produce the thing for under a million bucks, and they shot it in about twenty-five days. Honestly, I'm not sure why they bothered spending any money at all for a movie that they never actually intended to release to the public. The special effects, credited to "Mr. Film" believe it or not, are about as embarrassing as you'd expect for a movie made for that amount of money, especially a scene where Fire Man turns into a cartoon and chases down a laser. Effects to make Stretchy Man elastic were also ludicrous although I'll be the first to admit that a final shot in this of his arm waving from the top of a limousine was pretty rad. Dr. Doom's costume ain't bad, and they must have worked extra hard on giving his fingers articulation because he shows those babies off any chance he gets. The other costumes? Well, just look at that shot of the foursome up there. Rock Man's a stiff plastic, and the other three have uniforms that look like they belong on the set of a television superhero parody. It's not good. When Invisible Seamstress Girl surprised the others with the costumes, they didn't seem interested in wearing them, and she was the only one to wear hers for several scenes afterward. My favorite character was Mole Man who, according to one of my Facebook friends, is actually called Mole Man. However, I don't see a Mole Man in the credits and think he must be the Jeweler played by Ian Trigger, a guy who ostensibly brought years of Shakespearean stage performance to role. Josh appreciated the gravitas he brought to the movie. Of course, when you've got the script these fine thespians were given to work with, it's going to be tough to make things happen. Here, they're forced to say things like "This is neat!" or, when flying in space as alleged astronauts, "This is really awesome!" or "We're motorin'," things astronauts just aren't allowed to say. The writing didn't matter much when Rock Man or Dr. Doom spoke because I couldn't really understand either of them anyway. Well, unless Rock Man said his catch-phrasey "It's clobberin' time!" which he says at least three times in this. Some guy named Wurst provides the score and went all out, balls to the cello. I think he threw every musical idea he's ever had into this movie. This is predictably terrible, but I'd wager that it's more palatable than any Fantastic Four movie that's been made since. I'm ashamed to say that I don't know how many that might be.

You can find this unreleased gem on Youtube.

Mario Bava Fest: A Hatchet for the Honeymoon

1970 hatchet movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A psychopath with a tragic past has a violent hobby--killing brides with a hatchet. A detective tries to put all the pieces together to catch him.

This movie has the best pick-up line ever: "We'll go to my place. My wife will see something she'll never forget--not even in hell!" Surprised that didn't work out for the guy, especially since he looks so much like Clint Eastwood in parts of this movie. If I were a woman and Clint Eastwood said that to me, I'd jump at the chance to go to his place. Hell, I might jump at the chance even as a man. Here's a film that isn't really very good at all but is saved by Bava's customary stylistic touches. The murder sequences, lots of them involving reflections in the titular murder weapon, are experimental and probably a little pretentious. There's a really cool shot after one key murder involving an arm hanging and dripping blood from a banister, and I liked another scene featuring a bunch of toys. And the mannequin room seems like the perfect place for scenes from a Bava movie to take place. I need to get myself a mannequin room actually, a place where I can just light candles, try on veils, and make out with plastic women. The story's not all that interesting and the cat 'n' mouse game between killer and detective, if there was actually a cat 'n' mouse game, wasn't very interesting at all. The twist, if there was actually a twist, turned out to be pretty predictable as well. Things do get a tad more interesting with the story when it turns into a ghost story though. This is unfortunately the most dated Bava movie I think I've seen. There's so much music, and much of it just isn't very good. And there's some voice-over narration where the guy says things like "I must go on wielding the cleaver." The guy's fashion sense is pretty incredible though. Stephen Forsyth is a guy who knows how to rock feminine belts and ascots, and there's a scene where he eats an egg while wearing this black and white jump suit thing that is pretty special. This isn't all bad, but it's not one of the first ten Bava movies you should see, and I'm not even positive I've seen ten Bava movies yet.

One cute touch: Forsyth is watching Black Sabbath at one point in the movie and uses that to explain to the detective guy why the neighbor heard a scream. The detective later says that he watched the movie and there was no screaming during that part which struck me as kind of funny. As did the wife's performance and the "wielding the cleaver" line. Maybe this was a dark comedy actually.

Mario Bava Fest: Danger: Diabolik

1968 funk

Rating: 16/20

Plot: The titular super-thief super-thieves seemingly just to impress his girlfriend which, if you ask me, is pretty awesome. And with those legs, she's totally worth it. The government sends a rival criminal out to help them catch him.

This has Bava taking on the spy genre without a spy, displaying the adventures of this Bond-esque anti-hero in a way that could only come from the swingin' sixties.  He's got gadgets and gizmos apleanty, a super cool underground lair with a rotating bed full of money and a Dr. Phibes alarm system, a sweet car, and twice the smarts of anybody else in this movie. Diabolik is played by John Phillip Law who was Sinbad in one of those movies with the Harryhausen stop-motion creatures, matched wits with Van Cleef in the awesome Death Rides a Horse, and played that winged angel with a pistol in his pants in Barberella all around the same time which shows some versatility and a penchant for choosing roles in movies that would become classics. Sure, Diabolik might be a stuntman half of the time since the costume--impeccably stylish--covers most of his face, but I'm giving Law credit for this perfect comic book hero posture he has in several shots and this acrobatic flip he does over the hood of his car. Marisa Mell plays his gal-pal Eva, and she's just stunning. There's a between-Eva's-legs shot with Diabolik holding this giant hose that I'd love to posterize. Man, those two look good together, even in a stylish shot where they're seen in a rear view mirror, and the scene where they're enjoying each other carnally, a sex scene with only partial nudity, on that rotating bed with the money all over and Morricone's score is bliss. That followed a twin shower scene that was a delightful tease. Oh, and speaking of Morricone, his score here is wild and terrific, and that includes the "Deep Deep Down" song that grew on me after about the 48th time. The music perfectly compliments what's going on on the screen, and Bava gives us plenty to look at here--a funky 60's nightclub scene, action scenes galore, imaginative sets, a Jaguar going off a cliff without Cat Stevens music accompanying it, great costumes, Marisa Melli's legs, etc. It's an overload of style, and the completely ludicrous storytelling only helps, right up to the very cool and very ambiguous ending which may or may not set things up perfectly for a single that I'd love to see. This never really takes itself seriously, or more accurately, it takes itself about as seriously as a comic book. There's a humor there--a cartoonishly cool police sketch thing, exhilarating gas and--of course--some anti-exhilarating gas capsules, an obvious dummy that turns out to be just that. Loads of fun, especially for fans of the wackier James Bond movies, maybe the Avengers, or movies like Austin Powers movies that aren't Austin Powers movies. Bava nails yet another genre.

Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony

2012 documentary

Rating: 12/20 (Emma: 17/20; Abbey: dnf; Jennifer: dnf)

Plot: I was going to type something here, but it's pretty much in the subtitle. This looks at several of the titular My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fans as they go to conventions with like-minded fans.

I took a break from Mario Bava Fest because my daughter wanted to watch this. Movies like Trekkies or those documentaries looking at obsessive Star Wars fans (or fans of role-playing games, or Tolkien, or whatever else a lot of people would consider geekdom) kind of set you up to think that this might poke fun at the unexpected adult fans of My Little Pony, but this is almost all positive and even has a few stories that you could describe as heartwarming. The tale of a young man with Asperger's trying to make his way to a convention where he comes out of his shell was moving even if it did seem a little artificial, and I liked the scenes with a teenage Brony and his ultra-conservative dad who can't figure any of this out. For all the interesting characters, you had to put up with boring subplots about 20-something Bronies (well, a Brony and a Pegasister or whatever the female equivalent is called) in love, a guy who makes techno music inspired by the show, and a kid making laser shows together. And voice actor John de Lancie who really got the ball rolling on this after discovering what kind of impact this show he voiced a villain for had on people. There seemed to be a lot of scenes in this with Bronies adoring de Lancie. And after a while, this just started to feel like a 90-minute advertisement created to justify the existence of Bronies and their conventions. And that kind of sickened me more than the good stuff warmed my heart. Some animated sequences explained the history of the various My Little Ponies incarnations if anybody actually cares about any of that. And if you need an explanation of how this show is a positive influence on its fans, that's all spelled out for you, too. I understood this movement a lot better after watching this movie, so the documentary succeeds there. However, it's not as entertaining as documentaries about other obsessive fans and does feel a little too much like propaganda after a while.

Mario Bava Fest: Kidnapped (aka Rabid Dogs)

1974 crime thriller

Rating: 16/20

Plot: After a robbery-gone-wrong, three-fourths of a crew of criminals are forced to kidnap a woman, a middle-aged man, and the latter's sick son. They drive and drive and drive.

Note: This has an even more jumbled history than Lisa and the Devil/House of Exorcism. Whoever was financing this thing died before it was finished, and Bava only had a rough cut which was never released during his lifetime. Later, his son added a few scenes that most fans seem to think are not only unnecessary but actually ruin a surprise ending, replaced a sort-of-goofy jazzy score with one filthy with synthesizer, and changed the opening credits, replacing this gauzy pink shot with reverby crying with white letters over a black background and music that does not bode well. I wanted to watch Rabid Dogs, the Bava cut, but couldn't find a subtitled version and settled for Kidnapped which is easy to find. However, I did watch several chunks of the Bava cut sans subtitles to compare the two and would probably agree with seemingly everybody else that it's the superior version. The rating above sort of splits the difference and adds a bonus point so that this Mario Bava movie can get the customary 16/20.

This is a tense, mostly single-setting suspense thriller with some terrifying psychopaths. Almost all of it takes place in a car which, despite the fact that they're driving all over the place, gives it a claustrophobic feel that makes you feel as trapped as the characters. And really, they're all trapped even though only half of them are actually the kidnapped ones. You can kind of guess from the get-go that this isn't going to end well for most--if not all of the characters--but the twist Bava gives us is downright nihilistic. This is your typical crime drama in a lot of ways but flavored with enough cynicism to turn off a lot of people. In a way, the story reminded me of something Tarantino would tackle. There's some dark humor and some genuinely depraved moments like when we find out why the character named Thirty-Two is named Thirty-Two, a bit of dialogue that made me try and fail to figure out how the metric system worked. And there's a scene with forced urination that made me proud to be a human being. I hated the music in Kidnapped, but I'm not sure the jazzy score would have really worked either. I would probably prefer that sleaze to the sleaze in the re-edited version though. The trio of bad guys are interesting enough. There's the cool-headed one, a wacked-out younger guy named Blade for obvious reasons and played wide-eyed with just the right amount of insane rage by Don Backy, and Thirty-Two played menacingly by George Eastman. A movie like this isn't going to work if I don't feel a little scared for the "good" characters, and the kidnappers are unhinged enough to make that happen. It's too bad Bava never got to finish this because there's enough here to convince you that it could have been a classic crime movie. Luckily, the unfinished and bastardized versions suffice, and that ending, especially as we get it in Rabid Dogs, is pretty incredible and quite possibly one of the biggest downers you're likely to see.

Mario Bava Fest: Lisa and the Devil

1973 macabre fantasy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Tourist Lisa wanders off from her tour group where she is creeped out by a bald guy buying a mannequin. She's picked up by a couple and their chauffeur, but their car breaks down in front of a dilapidated mansion where that bald guy works as a butler. Oh, snap! Murder, confusion, a musical carousel, necrophilia, and cake with sprinkles invade her walking nightmare.

A note: This is another Bava movie that was apparently butchered for a U.S. release--House of Exorcism. That title was meant to capitalize on the success of The Exorcist and makes no sense unless the American version manages to actually work exorcism in somehow. The Devil version has nothing to do with exorcism. Both of the versions are currently on Netflix, but this one seems to be the one to watch if you decide to have your own Mario Bava Fest.

This one substitutes atmosphere--although it's not entirely sans Bava's atmospheric showiness--for mystery. Looking for the logic in the storytelling is frustrating as it seems like it's all made up as they go. However, there's a dreamy vibe, and the wandering, oft-illogical stream-of-consciousness flow helps this all make about as much sense as that weird dream that you had last night but can't quite remember. This is Mario Bava getting his surreal on, from a scene near the opening where Telly Savalas as the titular devil purchases a mannequin to the truly what-the-fuck-just-happened ending that may or may not reveal that Hell is actually not where everybody thinks it is. Elke Sommer is the stunning straightwoman in this comedy of terrors. No, it's not a comedy, but I would bet the devil would find it really funny. This is Satan's slapstick, and I'm also willing to bet he'd get a kick out of the kinky little nude scene Sommer has, too. Man, Bava can film his women, but he can also film the hell out of bald men. Savalas's butler/devil is creepy enough and would have had a chance to be a horror icon if it wasn't all played so low-key. And maybe if there were less scenes where he's offering people lollipops or talking to taxidermied hares or singing, "To all acquaintances and dashing through the snow." See, that's the kind of stuff that gets Beelzebub cracking up. This is the type of movie that would be a little too beguiling and frustrating for a lot of people, but for cinephiles who don't need their movies to make a lot of sense, this will wind up being a nifty little puzzle that might keep them up for a little bit longer the night they watch it.

Blog note: I seem to be giving all of Bava's movies a 16/20. What's the mean?