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Reviews
The Tubes: Tubes Video (1982)
always ton-o-fun!!!!
i used to hang out with these guys in San Francisco.....i first met the
group in 1970 at the worlds fair in Osaka, Japan......under the name Airazon.....
the whole attitude was different than anything i was used to....a "glam/punk" and generally Bowie thing but bent by bands like Zappa, Beefheart, and Cooper.
Rick Anderson turned me on to "curly fries".....the others, to other things.... it was also the first time i had seen a some wild stage antics.....some got a bit out of hand, like the "Dr. Fee" bit.....cracked me up!!!!
WAY TO GO,GUYS!!!!
The X Files: The Post-Modern Prometheus (1997)
totally brilliant!!!!
oh, common, critics!!!! Get yr head out of yr rear sphincter and realize this is just a one-off fairy tale.
This has nothing to do with the other episodes in the series, so why did Chris Carter put it on this show? That's answered by the "Mad Doctor" in the best line in the episode: "Because I CAN!!".
ALL the actors are perfectly cast, even the drag queen "Cher" at the end. And that ending, well, I had a major grin and tears streaming down my face. Way to go Mr. Carter!!!!
In college I had to read Gothic horror.....turns out I liked it. Mary Shelly's book is very short, but has the mood. Funny to see all those unknown actors be so intense. They are ALL good!!!
Videodrome (1983)
Just Plain Bent......
This movie is sorta an LSD trip without the drug. Anyone who saw this first time and was on acid first time is probably in a "home".
The concept of TV as shorting out our brains it nothing new....and all this was before the internet. Take a look at Brainstorm, for example...or even Metropolis.
The plot is scary. People are putting things on a subconscious level into our heads. Just watch any commercial and see how they do it.
But this movie does it on a GUT level. Not that much gore but some way sexual images. Between Max's gun and the very vaginal opening in his stomach should be a clue. It's erotic and horrible. Adding "Blondie" to it sorta dated it but it was a good choice. James Woods is at his sleazy best and I agree that Cronenburg should have added Harry Dean Stanton to the cast. You can't make a more scummy or weird movie than this!!
The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980)
Reality is Relative.....
Malcom McLaren died two days ago. He was, basically, a legend in his own mind. This is not to put him down but to say that, like Howard Beale in "Network" or even Barack Obama in the White House, he was up against the BIG BOYS with money. On to the film......
A "mocku, rocku, documentary" of the Sex Pistols, it's really up there with "This is Spinal Tap" and "The Rutles"....very enjoyable bullshit, though totally biased. McLaren's view of history and his part in it.
Back in 1980 fans of the Pistols (like me) had very limited chances of seeing them and the archival footage here is great!! So is the animation but you do need the inside story to understand it. Younger viewers will not understand who Ronnie Biggs is or why "Belsen Was a Gas" is in such bad taste. Read some history before seeing.
The songs are hot and director Julien Temple suffered under McLaren's ideas of what should be in the film. He did much better in "The Filth and the Fury" and for some more accurate views of the era, read "England's Dreaming" by Jon Savage and "Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs" by John Lydon.
And for us die-hard fans, youTube has some amazing videos, including the final show at Winterland.
In Cold Blood (1967)
Almost Speechless!!!!
I haven't seen this in over 20yrs but I still remember things about it.
This film could NOT have been made in color. The stark grays are what make it, and was life really that simple in the 1950's?? What stands out the most in my memory is Perry Smith going to the gallows. His breathing under the hood just before they sprung the trap. I don't think I could watch that again.....once is plenty. It's like that unnamed guy at the beginning of "Papillon" who is dragged out in terror to the guillotine. The guy that said watch this on a double bill with "Dead Man Walking" should have added the last 10 minutes of "I Want To Live" as well.
Some of my ancestors being "aristos" went to the guillotine in 1794-95 so my feelings on the death penalty are rather intense.
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
wow
This was my favorite movie until i recently shuffled things up. If i could put two as number one this would be there. The only reason Network is tops is because of certain speeches by Peter Finch and Ned Beaty.
But i digress. ACO is one of the most awesomely filmed things i've ever seen...and the interplay with the music is perfect. I should had a clue watching Kubric's previous film, 2001, with the "Blue Danube Waltz", but this is better. Plus you get the whole idea of what is a "free man". As the prison "charlie" says, the man has no choice after his brainwashing. Real food for thought these days.
Oh, and by the way, Mr. Alexander's assistant near the end is Dave Prowse, who would seven years later be under that Darth Vader costume in Star Wars (voice by James Earl Jones).
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
Classic Adventure Movie
Probably the greatest "adventure" movie ever made! The casting was perfect. I just bought it to add to my collection, mostly to see if they got it wrong. They did, but having been to Tahiti at least they did right by Polynesia....even the words were Tahitian!! Hard to imagine that in a 1935 film.
What was wrong was the reasons for the mutiny and the portrayal of William Bligh. I have nothing but praise for every role Laughton has done. SUPERB!!! But the real Bligh was the exact opposite. Too gentle, I think and didn't see this all coming.
Put yourself in the crew. Almost a year at sea, eating rotten salt pork, then months in a tropical paradise with sexy girls....would you look forward to that return voyage???
The President's Analyst (1967)
Hey....someone put LSD in the fruit punch......
Simply one of the funniest movies ever made......
I just watched my DVD of this and I'm amazed at all the new stuff I pick up and a lot of stuff nobody did or ever would.
OK....it's a satire, but some of it is too clever for it's own good. For example, the head of the FBR is named "Henry Lux". Fine. "Lux" is also the name of a brand of vacuum cleaner. Another brand of vacuum is a "Hoover". Um, who was director of the FBI when this was made? J. Edgar Hoover. Accident? I don't think so but you can't watch this and not be paranoid.
I have a sick fantasy. No, not the ones involving Ms. Delaney and whipped cream. This involves a high tech room where this movie can be shown on all four walls plus the ceiling and floor, a sound system that can crank up to 130 decibels, and locking Dick Cheney in it for 24 hours. Somehow I don't think YouTube would post that video......
South Park (1997)
It Just Doesn't Get Any Funnier!!!
There are few shows that can catch you off guard: South Park and Two and a Half Men (who I will write about next) fill the bill PERFECTLY!! I was watching it a few nights ago when one brief aside happened. In shop class, you see two kids only from the back in front of the teacher. One tells the teacher that the other got his face stuck in the belt sander again. In the blink of an eye you see the other kid's face which is totally blank. No eyes, nose , or mouth. Unfortunately, that came on right when I was taking a drink from a mai tai and it came out my nose.
I gets deeply into current events by way of social satire and comments on public figures, which, I assume, is why Paris Hilton, Mel Gibson, Stevie Nicks, Bill Clinton, Tom Cruise, Wal-Mart, the Mormons, etc., can't sue their asses off.
I don't get Comedy Central so I watch them on reruns or DVD sets (thanks, I've spent $400 on them) and can't wait to see what they do with Obama.....lol!!
Sleuth (1972)
Where Did the Two Hours Go???
I first saw this flick in the cinema when it came out. I was one of those morons you see in the audience who can't help laughing, first to themselves and then spewing popcorn. The rest of the audience can't understand why. So, WHY??? For one, Olivier is totally over the top. In all his other serious roles I knew he had it in him! Compare this with Richard III, the Madhi in "Kartoum", or his role in "The Boys from Brazil". Here he is going bonkers with the style of a John Cleese.
Caine is simply wonderful. Very multi-layered and the cockney accent is a perfect contrast to Olivier. And when he gets mad, can you blame him? Inspector Doppler didn't fool me....it might have on the stage.
And the list of "other" actors was a lovely touch.
All in all, a real 10/10!!!
International House (1933)
A Fine Excuse for a Commercial
I loved this! Great to see ideas that in a few years would become reality: i.e. the "radioscope" would become television and while it did exist, the "autogyro" would morph into the helicopter.
This flick is mainly a commercial for popular acts of the time. Fields, Burns & Allen, Cab Calloway (who, due to the racism of the day, was classed as a Negro or colored act...no white faces in his band and no dark ones in the later Benny Goodman, or the Dorsey's), Baby Rose Marie (later of the Dick Van Dyke Show), and Rudee Valee (who turned up 40yrs later as a psychotic doctor on Night Gallery who amputates Robert Morse's feet).
For any of you who lack the version with Cab Calloway singing "Reefer Man", I found it on youTube for free.
Shocker (1989)
I Saw This at the Perfect Time
Honestly loved this....mostly for the musical soundtrack and Peleggi's over-the-top acting. I had just come back from many years of living in Micronesia with vacations in SE Asia and I was trying to catch up on "trashy" music and cinema. This fit the bill and Wes Craven is an artist.
To digress slightly, seeing cinema is weird in foreign countries. It gives one a good idea of a peoples slant on morality and perspectives. Case in point: I saw Re-Animator in a theater on Mabini St. For those unaware, that is the middle of the "go-go", prostitute, lady-boy, underage sex business. But watching Re-animator there, any scenes of nipples or other nudity or depiction of sexual activity was censored out with green bars or blobs....but the gore was there in all technocolor....including Dr.Hill being beheaded by a shovel. Go figure.
I digress. Shocker was one of those original ideas. Admit it. How many new "monsters" have been created in the last 50yrs?? Not many, and a guy that can travel thru wires and virtual reality is sumthin new!! Peleggi has a field day!!!....LOL
Seconds (1966)
Be Careful What You Wish For.......
I have only read a few comments on this, but those I did hit the mark pretty well....
If any movie can have you running from the theater screaming, this is it. Especially if you stayed for the ending. If you have run out of prozac do NOT watch this!!! Everyone goes through a mid-life crisis, made worse by the media's love of youth and beauty. This turns all of that inside out, especially for at least one cast member.
Ah, the cast....It reads like a "who's who" of people on McCarthy's famous "Black List". I never thought much of Rock Hudson but here he channels being a macho leading man tortured with being a closeted homosexual into on screen agony. He was never better than here. The rest of the cast also does a brilliant job.
Part of the horror for me was my fear of doctors...even though they've saved my life more than once. I think it's the super clean environment and all those needles. Here, the Hippocratic Oath is window dressing for a "business". You see that at the end.
You could not re-make this in color. It would loose EVERYTHING and Howe's use of the fish-eye lens just magnified that druggie,it's not happening to me feeling. Same for the music. Simple but dreamlike. And the sound of the cranial drill hitting bone was totally over the TOP!!! Thats it. See it at your peril and try to remember all that has happened since 1966.
Sid and Nancy (1986)
How Can You Make Stupidity Funny??
OK....first of all, I may be the oldest punk rocker out there. While my younger sister was groovin out to the Stones, Hermins Hermits, The Dave Clark Five, and all those other bands in the 1960's that would merge into the psychedelic hippie thing I was into Mozart, Beethoven, and Ralph Vaughn Williams. She stayed there, I didn't.
I discovered ROCK....got involved with a band....and grew from there. I discovered punk while on a distant Pacific island and then on a trip to England....Sid was dead by then. The culture lived on...at least for a few years.
This movie, however inaccurate, has got the spirit and Gary Oldman is perfect as Sid. The look and attitude is positively scary. It's almost like a drug induced dream, floating thru the white ghettos of mid 1970's London. Why is it that the Pistols destructed and the Clash went on?? Something to do with drugs, specifically heroin. In my day the biggie was cocaine. I got out of it by joining Peace Corps and going 7000mi away. Oh so many are now pushing up flowers.
Stupidity as funny? Yeah, Just look at Sid.
The Thing (1982)
Creepy, Gross, and Worth It
I don't remember when I first saw this. In 1982 I was living in Hawaii and all I remember was seeing ET and Poltergiest. Musta been later on HBO or something.
At first I was rather upset since I loved the 1951 version which was used as an example in my "Sociology of the Horror Film" class at San Francisco State Univ. There it was touted as a prime example of cold-war paranoia. Plus it scared the crap outta me seeing it as a kid in the 1960's.
Carpenter's version hits you in a different area. The stomach, primal fear and that isolation you get when you realize that no one from the outside is going to come to your rescue.
As to the "gross-outs"...the transformation of the sled dog didn't bother me. As an animal lover, it would, but by that time it wasn't a dog anymore, was it? For me, the real gross-out was from when Norris had a heart attack to the ER where Doc Copper gets his arms bit off to Norris' head melting off and sprouting legs and eyes. Palmer's stoned comment really summed it up.
Great movie and a product of it's times in many ways. If a remake is gonna be like other recent remakes.....I'll pass.
Mastergate (1992)
Mastergate is Available
While the other reviewer may not know it, Mastergate may be found in three parts on YouTube and is easily downloadable for free. Anyone with moderate skills can merge the parts into a whole and burn to DVD, although I don't know what copyright thinks of that.
When I first saw Mastergate we still were under "Daddy Bush", not to mention a vice president who didn't know how to spell "potato". The film has gained in importance and relivence with each passing year. All you need do is watch a few hours of CNN or C-SPAN to realize this. Alcohol is pretty much recommended.
Nevermind "Watergate" or "Iran-Contra", both of which are lampooned in Mastergate, the years following have brought us such wonderful reality shows like "Enron-gate", "Cigar-gate", a vice president who can probably spell "potato" but shoots a friend in the face and a president who appears to have taken up drinking again.
I have always loved double-talk as it usually takes a lot of skill. When it turns into "spin" is when it gets scary because they are SERIOUS about it. When I watch "Wag the Dog" I think of Criswell's words in "Plan9,from Outer Space"....."Can you prove it DIDN'T HAPPEN???"
Night Gallery: Pilot (1969)
correction.....
That was Richard Kiley in that nazi segment. Kiel was the guy who had the metal teeth in a James Bond film and was nicknamed "Jaws". I didn't read all the reviews having developed a headache, but I see most of you got it right. I'd also like to ask about Gary Collins (I think.....my mind doesn't work perfectly, either) who'se failed show was merged with Night Galery either before or after it's prime. Some of the segments are available free online but all the ones I want are short and I cant find them anywhere....anybody got a clue??? In fact, I would love for somebody to put together an anthology of those classic short episodes but I suppose the lawyers would object.
Night Gallery: Satisfaction Guaranteed (1972)
The Victor Buono Diet
I agree with the previous reviewer that there were no witches in this title but I think there were in the rest of the program as this title barely filled the space between one commercial and the next. I always got a kick out of Buono because his style is so grandiose: King Tut on the '60's Batman show, Count Manzeppi on The Wild, Wild, West stand out the most as comic but in the film "Hush, Hush...Sweet Charlotte" after a horrible meat-cleaver murder, he said the chilling lines to a girl in a white dress covered in blood:"Charlotte, Honey...what have you done?" I can't think of any actor better for this role. He is dressed like an aristocrat, has great charm and style and from his girth does not want for food. Unfortuanately you find out at the end what his food source happens to be.......
Night Gallery: Lindemann's Catch/A Feast of Blood/The Late Mr. Peddington (1972)
giant case of da creeps!!
There is something just WRONG about that "broach"... The empty eyes, the long snout, just SOMETHING! When it starts to grow and move up her dress (or was it a coat? Been a long time!), well, that about did it for me. That last brief glimpse of it at about the size of a large cat or medium dog is enough to put most people off their snacks. It's kinda hard to juggle the morality of this little tale....the guy certainly was no Brad Pitt.... But I think most of let out a muffled "YES!!!" for him. She was a snobby bitch from the start. I thought about this episode a few years later when I moved to the tropics, although most of the "monsters" there had six or more legs.
Car 54, Where Are You? (1994)
A Video Laxitive.....
I have seen, at least in part, most of the films based on "classic" TV shows and have yet to see ONE that had any merit. This is odd since most contain actors of merit who have put out some really good product. I think of Raul Julia as Gomez Addams but this is still not up to John Astin.....but I digress.... I've always gotten a kick out of David Johanssen from the New York Dolls on.....in this, well, he sucks!! Rosie O'Donnell makes me ashamed to be part Irish and wonder if 38th trimester abortion shouldn't be legalized(thanks, South Park!!). All in all, I think I'd rather have gas gangrene than sit through this waste of money and talent again...
Two and a Half Men (2003)
Funniest Show on TV!!!
I missed the first few seasons but am catching up on re-runs. It's amazing to watch Jake grow up!! The highlight of the show has gotta be Berta....everything out of her mouth is a zinger, but the whole cast is flat out GREAT. I've never seen such a collection of insensitive, self centered, worthless bastards. The situations are like a glimpse of everything that can possibly go wrong in your life presented in a serial format. It's not exactly done with taste either....which I love!!! The episode where Teddy dies has more euphemisms for oral sex than I've heard of and am surprised the censors let go. Of course it's one of the reasons I watch South Park. Amazing guest stars, too. Sean Penn, Elvis Costello, Harry Dean Stanton, and one that had me going through brain damage until I got it: Mannix!!!...Mike Connors. WOW, and what a show of "who cares?" when he croaked. All in all, a can't miss show!!!
You Are There (1953)
A Break From the Usual Sit-Com's.....
I remember this, though it might have been in re-runs. I don't know how one can possibly be guilty of "spoiler alert" since the show is exactly as advertised and summed up here. It also was a prelude to future newscasts and maybe an amplification of those WW2 newsreels my parents told me about. Still, the views and events were based on the "standard model" we all read in school. There wasn't much of the other side and when there was it was pretty slanted. It's like that old test that if you tell one person an eye witness account and he/she tells it to another, by the time you get through ten generations you have turned "Mary Had a Little Lamb" into the Spanish Inquisition..... The only other show that I remember was on PBS called "The Battle of Culloden". It was very violent, though only in words describing the effect of grapeshot, for example...etc. Looking for it here and will make my comments. Lastly, Walter Cronkite. Jeez, how can you sum him up in a few words?? He was the anchor at my house for JFK in Dallas, RFK in California, and two unknown guys taking a stroll on the moon.
Mr. Sardonicus (1961)
"...So, Put on a Ha-Pee Face!..."
OK....so I saw this as a widdle kid....later again on one of those late nite "creature features" a lot of TV stations did on Saturday nights in the era that everyone I knew (including me) was smoking "herbal" cigarettes.....I had even read the short story in Playboy (see? some of us ACTUALLY read the mag!!) and I forgot how creeped-out and scared I was. Guy Rolfe normally had a face to give goosebumps but you add that make-up and the whole thing was a SHOCKER!!! Digging up your dad to get a lottery ticket is one thing but seeing his dead face with that grin is quite another....thank you very much!! A note here....the "grin-grimace" bears a strong likeness to Lon Cheney in a silent movie called "The Man Who Laughs"......comment me if I'm wrong. Still, William Castle and that lovely B&W photography is wonderful!!!
The Thing from Another World (1951)
Fear of the Unknown is Timeless
I first saw this as a kid in one of those grade "Z" re-run movie houses that as far as I know, no longer exist in the USA. Very scary and certain scenes really creeped me out.
As a child of it's time, this movie placed the fear of invasion (commies were EVERYWHERE!!), current events (flying saucers..and Roswell was only a few years prior), the glorious military (we beat Hitler and Tojo) and I thought Dr. Carrington was like Nevelle Chamberlin-an appeaser.
Nyby (or Hawkes) knew that NOT showing you something was scarier than showing it. If you show it directly you think "ok, now I know what I'm dealing with, I can handle that". That scene at the beginning where the guys spread out to determine the size and shape of what's buried beneath the ice is classic..."ya know...it's almost".."yeah...round.."..."we finally got one!!!...we got a flying saucer!!"! The "brilliant" military decides to melt it out with thermite and accidentally blows it up.....but finds a survivor. You never really see the alien body encased in ice....never really see it for the rest of the film. But you do get clues. "It" is a vegetable, and judging by when Dr. Carrington tries to make peace, about 7' tall, and lives on blood.
All through this is some music played on an instrument I never heard before: a theremin. Very creepy and used in several sci-fi movies of the 1950's and TV's Outer Limits of the '60's. For an amazing documentary of Leon Theremin see 1993's "Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey"..it comes off like a cold war thriller and Theremin was the ancestor of the Moog/Arp synthesizer's of today.
The sudden shocks, like when the men open the door to the lab and find "The Thing" standing in the doorway is reported as real....the cast didn't know. I love that sort of thing!! All in all a classic for the "hawks" to sorta counter the "doves" "The Day the Earth Stood Still"....100% on the creep-o-meter!!!
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
"It was the best of times,it was the worst of times....."
Unless you grew up in and had your young mind molded by the late 1950's and early 1960's, you will not understand the full satirical value of this film, although there is eneough stand-alone comedy to make you laugh.
We were drunk on the wonderful visions of Disney and his "Tomorrowland" gadgets but every day the news was full of the paranoia of Russians out to take us over and HELL, they were putting nukes 100mi. away in Cuba!! First Sputnik then Gagarin showed they had the "right stuff" while our rockets just exploded. But the fears ran deeper. In college I took a course called "Sociology of the Horror Film" and during this period we had films like "The Thing"(invasion), "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "Invaders from Mars"(hey, they look just like us but they're NOT!!), and all those "big bug" movies caused by atomic testing.
Amid all the paranoia comes "Dr. Strangelove" with all the people we saw on the nightly news showing their true colors and stripped naked to what they really COULD do if given half a chance. Gen. Turgidson? Just a better looking Gen. Curtis LeMay. Gen. Jack D. Ripper? An amalgam of the dreams of anyone in the John Birch Society and lots of people in the position to BE him, and this includes Col. "Bat" Guano (any non male-female, non missionary position sex made you a "deviated pervert", excuse me "prevert"). Ambassador DeSadeski was a stereotype of how we saw the "typical" occupant of the Kremlin and Kruschev's performance at the UN just reinforced it.
Sellers' three roles sum up LOTS. Mandrake was the prissy, mannered Brit who turned up on Monty Python as Graham Chapman. Pres. Muffley was the whimpy guy generals said had no backbone. Strangelove himself was a cross between Verner Von Braun and an unknown professor named Henry Kissenger.
While Slim Pickens riding the bomb down is the most famous scene, I can't help feel, with mixed emotions, the final scene. Over a sweet lullaby views of dozens of open-air thermonuclear blasts are seen that the fear and terror of them melts away and I was filled with a sense of beauty and awe....even in black and white! Wrong, I know, but Kubrick has that ability.