Incredibly Strange Blog That Stopped Living and Became Mixed-up Movie Reviews

AKA Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel; Pendulum; The Blood Demon; The Snake Pit and the Pendulum; The Torture Room; and, the best, The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism. CASTLE is the story of Count Regula, played by Christopher Lee, a man intent on gaining immortality. After he killed twelve young virgins in his quest, he was executed by quartering, but only after he promised to get revenge on the families of the man who sentenced him and the thirteenth virgin, the one who got away. Thirty-five years later, his plan for revenge is slowly enacted, bringing the son of his sentencer and the daughter of the thirteenth virgin to his castle.

The most wonderful part of this movie is the art direction/art design. They tend to be geniunely creepy and well-executed. The plot and the acting are fine, including some subtly campy performances, and the torture devices are contantly used to ratchet up tension, often effectively. This is a movie full of wonderful details and a subtle, almost psychedelic madness. I think the most apt comparison would be to any number of Mario Bava films, although personally this film held my interest in the story more easily than many of those.


 

Highlights: The forest filled with people hanging from nooses by the branches, the outrageously deranged paintings in the castle, the variety of torture devices and secret passageways and chambers in the castle (apparently built only to torture and terrorize people), the passageway that seemed to use skulls for bricks, the ending, and, of course, Christopher Lee.

AKA Huang jia shi jie zhi IV: Zhi ji zheng ren; In the Line of Duty 4: Witness; Witness; Yes, Madam 4. A Hong Kong girls-with-guns action flick, this movie is a real diamond in the rough. Directed by Yuen Woo Ping and starring Cynthia Khan, Donnie Yen, Michael Wong, and Yat Chor Yuen, the movie can't go wrong in the action department and doesn't. The thrills are generally martial arts heavily laced with impressive stuntwork, and it all looks like it hurt a whole lot. The fight locations are all utilized extremely well in all of the fights.

The plot is okay and deals with some corruption in the C.I.A., but about every five minutes or so the action makes you forget about all that. It's what I like to call a "Whoa! Dang!" movie, because that's all I was saying while watching it. The Region 0 "Universe" DVD version that I saw has some barely intelligible subtitles, which provide some laughs and a few ? moments. While everything else about the movie is satisfactory, the action is really off the chain and exceptional and definitely worth a look.


 

Highlights: The hanging-off-the-side-of-an-ambulance fight. The two motorcycles, a shovel, and a sledgehammer fight. The hospital room fight between an assassin with a sword and an unarmed, drugged woman who is trying to save the patient from being killed.

Major Charles Rane (William Devane) returns home from Vietnam with fellow P.O.W. Johnny Vohden (Tommy Lee Jones) only to discover that his wife has fallen in love with another man and wants a divorce. Shortly after receiving a $2000+ gift of silver dollars from a department store, some greedy lowlifes try to get him to give up where it's hidden, but this is a guy who has been conditioned not to talk, even when they end up feeding his hand to the garbage disposal and ultimately kill his wife and son.

And that's where the revenge slowly starts, intermixed with some interaction with Linda Forchet (Linda Haynes), a woman who seems attracted to emotionally distant men. The revenge plot is extremely well-written, and this is a movie that you think about a lot while you're watching it. The characters are particularly well drawn, and there's more to them than is spelled out explicitly in the dialogue; the way they act (and are acted) is very important, as is the difference between what people say and do, a big theme here. Despite the exceptional events, the characters and situations are treated with a lot of honesty. This movie reminded me alternately of FIRST BLOOD and IN THE BEDROOM. Unfortunately, it's only on VHS right now, but it's worth hunting down.


 

Tagline: Major Charles Rayne Has Come Home to War!

Highlights: The hook. Major Rane and Linda shooting by a stream. The relaxed but steady pace, fully appropriate for films set in the South. How the "romantic" subplot is resolved (and who ends the film with Rane).

AKA The Dorm That Dripped Blood, Death Dorm. Filmed on a shoestring budget by UCLA students way back in the day, Pranks is actually a decent early slasher. The film does falter in the beginning, perhaps taking a little too long with the setup, but once the killer gets going, it's got a lot to offer splatter fans. The acting isn't superb, but it's generally fine, and the production does well with what it had. The gore is perhaps the weakest part, but it's at a minimum here; the kills are sometimes brutal, though, even if the gore isn't directly seen. Lots of sequences of searching around the dorm and other buildings can be a little tedious, but the atmosphere and look of the movie hold interest; the ending is much better than the beginning anyways, and the faults of the movie are good fodder for a peanut gallery. The film actually marks a rare departure from the slasher formula with the finale, which I won't give away.


 

Tagline: When the kidding stops... the killing starts!

Highlights: The ending. Daphne Zuniga getting offed in her first role. The fact that the directors have been making low and bigger budget horror movies ever since, usually involving Satanism or college campuses (Soul Survivors may be the most well known).

AKA Rosemary's Killer. One of the better early slasher films, this one is marked by it's high production value, mostly owed to a good budget and interesting locations. The basic mystery plot is adequate but the weakest part. One murder 35 years ago at the Spring Dance has shut the dance down until today, and now the dance will be held again. So, it's like Tom Savini does Footloose, which is perfect since he worked with Kevin Bacon in Friday the 13th. Savini only did the effects on this film; Joseph Zito directed (they shared the same roles on Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter). The kills are excellent and brutal, and many of the set-pieces work very nicely and can sometimes get some good tension going.


 

Tagline: If you think you're safe... you're DEAD wrong!; The human exterminator.; It will freeze your blood.

Highlights: The DVD commentary by Joseph Zito and Tom Savini. The gory kills, augmented by great sound and makeup effects. The production value/locations. Lawrence Tierney!

Dawn of the Mummy follows the basic rules of the Italian zombie film. The gore and the undead are there, as well as fashion models and curses, and one character even suffers a wound early on that festers and boils as the movie continues (a recurring detail in many Italian zombie films). One crucial difference is that the film uses mummies, which do not infect others with the undead curse, instead of zombies. It stands out more as an original mummy film rather than an original zombie film. Compared with other zombie films of the era, it does fairly well. The acting isn't consistent across all actors, but it's fairly competent most of the time. The mummy's tomb set is perhaps the cheapest looking thing in the film. Otherwise, many of the shots are very nice. Even more surprisingly, some of the intended shocks actually work, primarily when misdirection is involved. Overall a decent entry, although occasionally the plot unfortunately took over.


 

Tagline: They Came from the Dead... To Feast on the Living...

Highlights: The end sequence where the mummies attack the Egyptian town. The great scene of mummy arms rising out of the desert sands at twilight.

AKA Beverly Hills Nightmare, Dial Rat for Terror, Housewife. Bone is the low-budget king Larry Cohen's first directorial effort. Obstensibly a blaxploitation film, Bone tends to bounce back and forth between exploitation and seriousness. The basic plot starts off as a home invasion by Yaphet Kotto into the mansion of a middle-aged white couple. On one hand, it is designed to provoke "white terror" and fears (it was also titled "Housewife" and marketed more as sexploitation), but it goes beyond to slowly reverse all of the presuppositions that you have about each character when they initially appear. The ending definitely cannot be predicted from the setup. The look of the film appears very professional and naturalistic, and the acting is all top-notch and campy or serious where it needs to be.


 

Tagline: A Bad Day in Beverly Hills.

Highlights: The acting from Yaphet Kotto, Andrew Duggan, Joyce Van Patten, and Jeannie Berlin. The naturalistic, real-time look of the movie, coupled with the very honest portrayal of the seedier sides of the characters (as well as the more vulnerable sides).

Directed by Bill Berry (not the one from R.E.M., of course). Brotherhood of Death is an exceptional Southern blaxploitation film. The story follows a group of black friends that end up going to Vietnam to escape some oppression at home. Getting into the special forces, they learn how to stay alive, and they make it back only to find that the whites are still holding a grudge. The friends try to use the system to protect their community, but the evil whites (most members of the KKK, save the sheriff), led by the county attorney, cut them off at every pass. Frustrated and pushed to the edge, the friends have no choice but the stick it to the man. And, like the tagline says, it's fatal! An excellent production that hides the budget well; sure, Vietnam in the movie is obviously not the real Vietnam, but it's not all that laughable, either. The acting is decent pretty much all around.


 

Tagline: When these brothers stick it to you... it's fatal!

Highlights: The Southern pace, dialogue, scenery, racism... it all comes together for a representation that hits home. The good old boys are really frickin' racist (even the sheriff is somewhat racist), which makes the escapist ending all the more satisfying. Some of the same things make all revenge movies fun, but this one stands out for the Southern feel and excellent production values (considering the likely budget).

Directed by Joseph Sargent. Based on the novel by John Godey. An exceptional suspense-thriller, PELHAM is basically the hijacking of a NYC subway train and its subsequent ransom. Robert Shaw is the lead baddie, Mr. Blue. Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo, and Earl Hindman round out the group as Mr. Green, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Brown, respectively (yes, Quentin Tarantino apparently did get that idea from this film). Charged with solving the crisis is Walter Matthau as Lt. Gerber, a transit system cop. The immutable deadline for the ransom provides most of the suspense, as the rest of the city races to meet the demands before the hijackers kill one hostage for every minute that the money's late. Some of the overt racism and sexism in the film gives pause, but it's all for verisimilitude, which does the trick of drawing you in and getting you caught up in the suspense.


 

Tagline: We are going to kill one passenger a minute until New York City pays us one million dollars.

Highlights: The acting, naturally. The actual NYC locations. Those little touches of realism mentioned before. The continually increasing suspense. The misdirections. The train passengers, listed in the credits as "The Hooker," "The Homosexual," "The Secretary," etc.

AKA Xian si jue. Ching Siu-tung's first film, before the more well known CHINESE GHOST STORY series. Basically, a contest between the Chinese (Shaolin) and Japanese (Samurai) is about to be held, but people on both sides want to fix the contest for various reasons. The two contestants themselves appear to be the only ones who want a fair fight. Constantly in the way are the ninjas, working to secure a Japanese victory at the behest of the Japanese contestant's corrupt brother. A nice-looking film, this is a period piece with lots of wire-work and fantastic kung-fu. Films like CROUCHING TIGER can tame the effect of this movie, but the highlights (below) help it stand apart.


 

Highlights: The ninjas. The ninja stars. The floating-in-kites ninjas. The disappearing ninjas. The exploding-head ninjas. The sand-burrowing ninjas. The Voltron-esque ninjas. The final swordfight between the two contestants also sticks out, but the ninjas are the coolest part by far.

KARATE FOR LIFE (aka KARATE BAKA-ICHIDAI) by Kazuhiko Yamaguchi. Sonny Chiba plays Mas Oyama, a karate expert who gets duped into leaving mainland Japan to fight in rigged wrestling matches staged in Okinawa for American G.I.s. Once he learns the score, he refuses to throw the fights, putting him at odds with the bad guys.

This film can be watched alone, but it is actually the last in a trilogy of films, preceded by Karate Bullfighter and Karate Bear Fighter. All of these are very loosely based on the life of Chiba's mentor, Masutatsu Oyama.

Although the plot is really just karate vs. pro-wrestling, the cinematography and editing are top-notch; this is a beautiful-looking film with great atmosphere. Although some scenes are hand-held with some frenetic cuts and such, this is always done to enhance the action. Even the ripped-off "hall of mirrors" scene at the end of the film is excusable because, well, it just looks really cool. The scenes with the pro-wrestlers are very fun once Chiba takes off the kid gloves. The non-action scenes aren't spectacularly interesting, but they're well done and really just look great. The action comes along enough that the scenes do not take away any energy.(MH)


 

Highlights: The opening fight, against 101 karate students who try to even the odds by oiling the floor; the title cards that go up during the wrestling matches, proclaiming things like "Airplane Spin Toss" and "Secret Ring;" the brutality of Chiba's fighting style--lots of bone breaking; and, again, the cinematography was excellent.