Oohhhhh….Oohhhhh….Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.
What the hell ever happened Lucio Fulci?
What went wrong?
What?
Completely, utterly, numbingly tedious drivel. When the best scene in the movie involves a rubber slug and snail shit, you know you have real problems.
Jared Martin teams up with Fulci again 3 years after “Fighting Centurions” to far lesser success as Lucio bores us to tears with that old chestnut the ‘revenge while in a coma’ plot.
Virtually goreless this plods from tedious dialogue scene to tedious dialogue scene (with crap dialogue) until a stupendously weak and bloodless death scene arrives…...then it’s back to the tedious dialogue again.
We have some unattractive breasts and a colossal bit of writhing booty to give us at least something to stare at and the famous ‘death by snail ‘n’ slug’ scene works on a gross-out gonzo level as (rubber slug in the mouth aside) these are indeed tons of real snails really oozing and dripping and crapping their way over the actress’s body.
But hey! Anyone with a camcorder, lots of snails and a very forgiving female friend could make that scene work! So not much praise for Fulci there either.
OH boy…Can this really be the same Fulci that gave us such magnificent Gothic Gore Gems as “City of the Living Dead”, “House by the Cemetery” and the truly iconic “Zombi 2”??
Hell, this makes “Door to Silence” look like “The Beyond”!
Lay down the slug pellets and kill this monstrosity!! Never let this festering sore of a film anywhere near your precious eyes!
Save your brain and indeed your very soul and walk away…no, run away…if you ever see this thing cluttering up a DVD shelf.
Just a note to say I watched Der Knochenmann (The Bone Man), and it is one of the best thriller/black comedies I’ve ever seen. The DVD is available from
Amazon.de and features optional English subtitles.
Hmmm….
A barmy post-apocalyptic plot that has all civilisation virtually destroyed in no time at all because the electricity has run out.
This sudden lack of lack of twinkly lights, PC’s, DVD players and HBO is so bad that many humans turn to cannibalism (despite there being rather a lot of animals in the world) and as the survivors try to stay survivors…these cannibal sorts roam around picking them off one by one.
After an effective enough start the tiny budget starts to show, the silly script starts to scream at you about how silly it is and the few good bits in the film start to drown in the rising boredom and general ho humness now swamping all before it.
Despite Michael Madsen playing one of the cannibals he actually appears in only 2 scenes and then without the other cannibals.
Vinnie Jones also appears in only 4 or so scenes and again, he is either alone or with only one other cannibal chum.
Obviously this was because the budget only stretched to having these guys there for one day or so.
Jones is hammy rubbish, Madsen is…er…Madsen again and is soon dispatched in a crappy way.
The fact the cannibals (to keep the meat fresh!) only kill one person at a time adds a certain sadism to the proceedings as those left at the end of a particular grocery trip know they will have to go through it all again the next night when the ribs have all been eaten.
But this methodical way of doing things also means that a dull repetitiveness sets in, not helped by some bad acting and small scale of the set-pieces as it’s almost all set in a few deserted rooms and corridors with only 2 or 3 people on ever on screen.
Gore wise it starts off very well with a nasty throat slicing and an exceedingly sadistic axe attack (with Madsen enjoying himself!), but after that there is very little gore and little real bloodshed.
A late twist is also ineffective as quite frankly it seemed blindingly obvious ages ago, so the film is playing catch-up to its audience which is never good.
A weak finale rounds things off badly.
Could have been okay…ended up not.
“The Invisible Man”(1933)
Universal’s groovy, pretty faithful, adaptation of HG Wells’ story of the same name still holds up on many levels.
The FX are still damn good and effective, with no wires on show for the many moving objects, and the clever (and damn hard) invisible man effects are also fine…with the Black and White cinematography ensuring that the ancient matte work looks great thanks to none of those typically awful colour problems.
Hell , look at the truly dire matted Alien FX (a green hued blob on a wall more like) in “Alien 3” to see how even decades later colour problems could ruin many a matte shot.
Away from the great FX we have a fast pace, some great sets, a brilliant support cast of whacked out and theatrical local yokels (with the great Una O’Connor in top camped up form as the shrieking landlady and a top ‘comedy cop’ performance by E.E. Clive) and a wonderfully mixed brew of slapstick comedy, black comedy and out and out nastiness.
And it is Claude Rains who superbly utilises this mix of horror and humour.
Wrapped in bandages or quite simply not there at all Rains has only his commanding voice to make an impression. And he does.
His psychotic rants, mad cackling and comic singing as he causes mayhem all help to essay one of the most whacked out and downright nasty characters in any film ever.
Something I think people tend to forget.
Today, we mostly think of an invisible man as a purely comical creation or a good guy figure.
Add this to the fact that a man you simply can’t see is somehow not as scary or visually impressive as a werewolf, vampire or man-made monster and the character has been rather pushed aside when we talk about great screen villains and threats.
But in reality…The Invisible Man is by far the most deadly figure in any ‘Universal’ horror film!
A couple of dead yokels or local wenches? Small fry!
Dracula, The Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s Monster are novices in death dealing!
The Invisible Man racks up a body count of…wait for it…122!
By the time he has bashed in heads, rung necks, pushed people of cliffs, sent a man (who screams in a genuinely unsettling way) crashing to his death in a runaway car as well as derailed a damn train…he’s bumped of 122 human beings!
As such there is real sadism in the film, as the laughing killer routinely kills people with psychotic glee.
A few plot hiccups (a guy is murdered and next we see that the national press is reporting the murder in blazing newspaper headlines and yet the scene of the body being carried out of the room comes after this press coverage! Must have started to smell a bit!) fail to hurt the film to any degree and in fact the great dialogue given to the Invisible Man is so memorable it bulldozes everything else out of the way.
The embracing of the violence and mass death that is constantly on occurring, when added to the great FX, wonderful cast and generally effective black comic styling, ensures that “The Invisible Man” has dated less than many other ‘Universal’ horror films and still retains a genuinely horrific edge.
Hack about 10 minutes out of this and things would improve in leaps ‘n’ bounds.
There are too many repetitive scenes and events and the whole Satanic plot (if it exists…but I think by the end we are meant to realise it is indeed real)seems rather flawed and long winded in execution.
The plan of the all powerful Lord of Hellhas to rely on the complete consumption of a chocolate mousse?
And although I like John Cassavetes he is never, ever, anything other than rather unlikeable and suspicious. With his endless forced smirks and bursts of rage you never, not once, feel this is a trustworthy guy and innocent Husband. He seems to be on the wrong path (indeed the left hand path! LOL!) from the start.
It would indeed have been far more effective (and fascinating) if the clean cut, likable, Robert Redford (who was originally up for the Husband role) had taken the part.
As quite frankly to have had a “Barefoot in the Park” style Redford be exposed as pimping out his young wife to Satan would have been a real shocker…and completely unexpected to a virginal 60’s audience.
With Cassavetes though, you think he’s up to something as soon as he appears!
This aside though, Polanski has delivered a surprisingly engaging Satanic slow burner that has some engaging characters and a nice air of sinister mystery and dark conspiracy.
Mia Farrow is just the right side of twee and does a great job later on as her character’s natural shrewishness valiantly tries to fight back against the all powerful witches plotting against her.
I have to wonder why this still rates an ‘18’ in the UK though. A nicely bloody body aside (and I’m still not sure why and how this character died either…her existence in the plot seems rather strange and unexplained) we have nothing else at all except some mild nudity, Halloween costume Devil claws and the most sedate rape ever filmed.
This is ‘15’ material.
I still refuse to see this as a real classic in 2009 and I put it far behind “The Omen”, but it does hold the attention for the most part, is well made and directed and delivers a stonking finale.
Despite having a gore-tastic and satisfying opening murder the rest is almost unwatchable, atmosphere free (it’s more accurate to call it “Car Park Massacre”) , badly made, tedium.
This is a truly foul pile of putrid matter masquerading as a horror film that serves less purpose on God’s green Earth than a eye burrowing parasite in an African watering hole.
It may have been one of the first true examples of the Slasher sub-genre, that would get honed to perfection a few years later…but being the first crap example of something that would get much better is hardly a triumph to shout about. Avoid.
The under-appreciated Amy “Streets of Fire” Madigan (one of those forgotten Oscar winners) stars as the tough wife of a murdered Airforce Major, who was killed because he was investigating a series of mysterious helicopter crashes.
On the run for her life,with her little boy, she fights to discover the truth….
Dreadfully overlooked little action thriller from (I assume) Canada.
Low budget it may be, but thanks to a stirling cast, fine acting, a tight pace and well staged action this conspiracy thriller has been a favourite of mine for many years.
While not overly violent it does have its moments, the strongest being the blood spattered shooting of the Husband (well played and who could easily have been a likeable lead hero) that ends on a genuinely disturbing note when his body drops onto the bed where his Son is hiding, meaning the child has to look right into the blood smeared face and staring eyes of his dead father.
Madigan is great here and does a superb job essaying a tough, resilient woman, a grief stricken widow, a terrified victim and a determined Mother throughout the movie.
The film makes her a strong nemesis for the bad guys (she despatches them with everything from guns to a blowtorch), while never (until the rather OTT finale) moving her away from what she ultimately is…A realisticlly scared, grieving, woman trying to protect her child.
Lots of tense moments and action is spaced nicely into the opening hour, and one of the best parts of the film has yet to even make an appearance…Michael Ironside!
The always welcome and wonderful Mr Ironside plays an ex-Army family friend, who now lives as a recluse in the mountains, who Madigan turns to for help when all seems lost, and he does a lovely job in a (sadly) too short role.
But he has a chance to shine as he takes out bad guys with his doberman dogs and deadly bow and arrows!
Should be better known and available.
Check it out for some solid, no nonsense, well acted, very 80’s (bad ‘military’ synth score included) action funstuffs.
Nice to see our Sam getting back to his whacked-out horror roots with a fine little film that manages to mix his hyper-kinetic, slapstick, horror violence (though no real gore sadly) and sticky fluid throwing with top notch FX work and high tech gloss.
Nicely played by all, this is packed with memorable moments, but perhaps it does blow its load too early with the truly stunning, laugh out loud funny, gross, exciting, creepy as hell car park fight scene, as our heroine, Christine, fights off the rampaging power of a pissed off old Gypsy woman with a grotesque eye and even worse dentures.
This is easily one of the finest moments in Raimi’s career.
From then on we have some good and well crafted scares and smackdowns as Christine’s ‘dragged to Hell’ possible fate gets nearer.
Raimi astutely plays these fright scenes for (for the most part) black comic laughs and the chance to pile on the slapstick violence.
This ensures the incidents become purely entertainment, instead of seriously delivered false scares, which would have been a huge and costly mistake as the plot has explicity told us that actually…she’s not in the slightest bit of real danger yet.
Fans of his early work will relish the muck, filth, vomit, goo and blood plastered all over these scenes as well as the ‘Three Stooges’ level of bodily abuse.
And almost all the effects are expertly rendered and imaginative.
And if it wasn’t for one easily avoidable cock-up near the end involving far too much (needlessly and easily avoided) fuss being made about something happening that should barely have got any coverage at all…The film would also have ended as effectively as the journey to that ending most certainly was.
The ending itself is perfectly fine…Raimi just blew the possible effectiveness of it by foolishly telling us pretty much what was going to happen 10 minutes or so before.
There were also a few other niggles.
Much is made of Christine’s bashed up lip in one sequence, only to have said bashed up lip in the very next scene (in huge close-up no less) then shown to be absolutely unmarked in any way! Boy, frozen peas are a miracle cure!
We are also informed about the Seer who Christine goes to visit offering to refund money paid for her aborted fortune reading.
Yet, in one continuous scene, all the Seer ever does is take hold of the credit card, walk into a room, turn the light off and sit down at the table to do the reading.
Unless the guy is not just a palm reader but also Human credit card reader…he never took any money!
The film also has some plot hiccups as far as huge jumps in the narrative go, which makes me think a number of bridging scenes were cut.
For example Christine goes from walking out of a dinner, to a bust up at the Indian Seer’s shop, to her trying to gather money together to pay for help when all of a sudden her boyfriend comes in and says he has paid the Seer!
But as far as we are shown the boyfriend was never with her during any of these scenes, she has had no contact with him and has no idea at all about the need for money or what it’s for.
And seeing as only Christine can see and hear what she does…there is actually no sense in her uber-sceptical boyfriend suddenly becoming uncertain about what he believes.
It seems some kind of rushed editing of screenplay or actual footage shot was the order of the day.
Al this aside though…“Drag me to Hell” was a nice return to his roots for Raimi and, although disappointingly low on gore, it delivers tons of fast paced, slam bang supernatural violence, laughs and thrills.
Originally called…wait for it…“Kung Fu Flid” (it stars Mat Fraser, born with stunted arms after his Mother was one of those given Thalidomide in the 60’s) this British Gangster/Martial Arts flick certainly has a great central idea and shows a welcome relish to wallow in the bizarre and outrageous.
But….
There is nothing else here remotely welcome or worth relishing. It’s truly awful.
Shot on a video it looks ugly and cheap and this lack of technical shine is not only visual either as every aspect of the film is technically awful.
From the sound, the acting, the script, the editing and the laughable action all is so bad the film often becomes a genuine chore to sit through.
Despite the original title Martial Arts (Flid-Fu or not) is only a tiny part of the film and is staged, filmed and performed with all the effectiveness of a bucket with holes at both ends.
Fraser might be able to kick his legs up and do a bit of (very) close quarters fist pummeling but his blows never carry any power or force and the camera spends most of time trying to cover up (and often failing to do so) the fact that most punches and kicks never actually connect.
Nothing here is done well in fact, guns fire with almost no noise, people slump off camera when shot to save money on actually doing anything to imply a bullet hit and even when the violence is effective and genuinely bloody (and I mean bloody!) the actors are so awful (and the director so blind and deaf it seems) at portraying the realistic effects of such violence that even the few technical things that are okay are ruined.
When Fraser’s Wife is shot, twice to the chest, she not only moves around as if nothing has happened but then holds a shouting conversation with such vigor and energy that you’d think she was just received a vitamin shot, not a gun shot.
The Gangster characters are all the same old cliche geezers we have come to love or loathe (me, I loves ‘em) but the appalling screenplay shows just how bad and annoying such characters can be when not handled carefully at the script stage and by a director who can guide the actors during the often essential broad performances that come with essaying such characters.
Fraser is okay as an actor and “Lock Stock” bad guy Frank Harper as the gangster boss is fun (if outrageously hammy) and delivers the better dialogue moments well.
But everyone else is dire and too often mugs for the camera.
The screenplay is messy, rushed and badly plotted as it bogs us down in really bad dialogue sequences and ‘crazy’ characters that actually show just how damn good Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino are at delivering these aspects.
The basic formula is that poor characters, played by poor actors, deliver poor lines before each of these poor set-pieces ends in a brief burst of poorly staged action…and repeat.
The film is also unsure on what it actually is. The taglines, title and basic plot make the film look like a Martial Arts revenge film with an unusual setting, but most of the film is a a time hopping crime/gangster film that suddenly turns into “Hostel” during numerous nasty torture sequences.
One such sequence involves a Scottish psychopathic serial killer (with really false looking tattoos that loo like paint) who suddenly takes over the film with much overacting as he tortures Fraser’s Wife and friend in a blood spattered room full of sharp objects and power tools dripping gore.
This extended sequence then cuts back and forth to Fraser taking a taxi, driven by a mad Jesus preaching driver who gets lost, in cinema’s least energetic and exciting rescue plan.
The mad Scot is then, after all this build-up and screentime, simply dispatched by a punch in the nose by the Wife whose two bleeding bullet holes STILL don’t seem to exist outside of a visual make-up effect.
The finale is an utter mess as well and is nothing but a ranting, swearing chaotic stew of bad acting, silly plot mechanics and the worst Kung Fu yet seen.
Now I love my British Gangster films, and I love my mockney/Cockney geezers (yeah…I admit it!), I love it when everyone shouts and call each other c*nts, and I love a bit of blood and nastiness, and I love the idea of a whacked-out Kung Fu set-up…and I had all that in “Unarmed but Dangerous”....and yet I still ended up hating the film.
Avoid!!
42nd Street Freak, I don’t know how you do it but you still manage to get me curious to see these films, no matter how bad!
Me, I finally saw “Quantum of Solace” and enjoyed it a lot. I applaud the running continuity of the last two bond movies. The whole idea to do a serious take on a fledgling Bond (who is also TOTALLY unlike any previous one) is quite daring, but so far they’ve pulled it off admirably (and it doesn’t hurt that the BluRays for both film are of kick-ass quality either!).
Here’s hoping a third movie won’t foul up what they have going now.
I’m amazed it’s taking them so long to get another Bond out actually, surely it could have been seet for an early 2010 release, cast and crews other engagements not withstanding. My guess is the scribing is holding things up since Quantum wasn’t met with the same acclaim that Casino Royale got - one of the best reboots ever in my mind. I’ve never been into Bond all that much but I really liked the last two so much it’s encouraged me to revisit some of the oldies. BRs of the latest are both excellent and I’m looking forward to see where they go next.
42nd Street Freak, I don’t know how you do it but you still manage to get me curious to see these films, no matter how bad!
Me, I finally saw “Quantum of Solace” and enjoyed it a lot.
LOL! It is my evil gift.
I thought “Quantum” was better then people said, but it did fell like simply the end of the first film made into feature length.
Curious to se how they carry this new Bond on now, as really this will be their first true new movie (as “Quantum” was a direct sequel/story continuance) since Craig’s debut.
Iconic make-up, top notch performance by Boris Karloff, some nice set design and cinematography…and quite frankly not much else.
Out of all the ‘Classic Universal Monster Movies’ “The Mummy” has not only dated the most, it’s also the least entertaining and theatrically stodgy.
The Mummy himself famously only appears looking like an actual Mummy (Im-ho-tep) during the opening, most effective part of the film as far as any horror aesthetic goes, scenes where he comes alive, steals a scroll and sends the only witness into lala land upon the soundwaves of much superbly over the top mad laughter.
From here though the film falls into a slumber deeper than that of it’s bandaged icon. Only Karloff (now playing a talking and un-bandaged Mummy, but given a lovely ‘wrinkled’ make-up by the great Jack Pierce) and a surprisingly less hammy than usual Edward van Sloan give us anything interesting to focus on as a ridiculously fast, soppy as hell, romance and much talk now dominate the movie.
No more Mummy action is forthcoming and the ‘love across the ages’ plot involving Karloff’s Im-ho-tep and (the very theatrical but fun) Zita Johann as his reincarnated Princess.
But it lacks any real horror, has little action, soppy support characters and is quite simply not much fun.
Wonderful 2 disc DVD though with lots of good extras, including excellent “Universal Horror” documentary.
“Miracle Mile”
Nothing can compare to how I first saw this film many years ago.
It was an unknown entry into a UK, all night, Horror film festival and none of us knew what the hell we had been given during the light comedy romantic opening as we meet Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham
Then a phone call happens…and suddenly Anthony Edwards’ character, and the audience, are propelled on a very different course as we, like Edwards, have to deal with the knowledge that perhaps, just perhaps, World War 3 has broken out and the missiles will soon be flying.
From here on we are expertly moved from romantic comedy, to black comedy, to deadly serious drama and epic tragedy as what Edwards’ character may know sets off a chain of events that engulfs many, well played, support characters as he tries to get back to his new love Winnigham and escape the coming apocalypse that may or not be coming.
Mixing harsh language, romantic voiceover, love story, violence, light comedy and action “Miracle Mile” is amazing enough for the fact it got greenlit at all, let alone completed and released (no matter how small that release sadly was) and this mix, plus the about turn the film does from its opening 10 minutes, took the hardcore horror crowd I watched it with by surprise and I will never forget the sight of two leather clad biker types in the row in front of me wiping away the tears at the end of the film! Where normally there were hoots of appreciation, or howls of derision, from any hardcore crowd of horror fans at the end of a film..here there was only a bizarre silence, broken only by hushed whispers of surprise and praise.
As such, the film benefitted from that introduction in a way that I felt was missing on this DVD viewing and the film does lose something away from such a memorable projection setting.
But it does remain effective and is quite unlike any other film on the way it handles its subject.
Shamefully obscure and unloved…this is certainly a must see film for anyone at least once and will remain fondly in my heart because of that wonderful first exposure i had to it so many years ago.
With the very groovy looking (and actually valid) re-make coming up I took another look at the ‘Universal’ original.
Thanks to the truly superb scripting and then revolutionary folklore creation by Curt Siodmak The Wolf Man has in fact become the most culturally influential of all Universal’s monsters.
Lon Chaney he does everything that needs doing as far as essaying a likeable character caught in a web of tragedy.
But his general hulking physicality and distinctive drawl do not remotely work as far as him being a credible, (estranged or not) son of the slight, very English, very sophisticated, Claude Rains.
As The Wolf Man though, Chaney does a wonderful job and his bulk and physicality are a bonus here.
Claude Rains yet again does a wonderful job as the intelligent, caring, grounded father.
And the unforgettable Maria Ouspenskaya helps to create one of Universal’s most iconic non-monster characters as the wise but mysterious foreteller of doom.
For all it’s classic status I have to say though that the design of The Wolf Man is for me the least successful of make-up legend Jack Pierce’s creations.
The dog snout nose and rather comical bouffant hairdo that the Werewolf sports have dated badly and take away some of the viciousness of the creature, despite the effective looking fangs.
A few logic holes in the plot, but basically thanks to the otherwise effective screenplay, wonderful monster lore, good support characters, wonderfully atmospheric sets and cinematography, tight direction and genuinely effective and tragic lead character, “The Wolf Man” manages to retain much of its classic status historically speaking, and also manages to be an enjoyable fright film in its own right.
I’d still put this behind “Dracula”, “Frankenstein”, “Son of Frankenstein” and especially “The Invisible Man”, but The Wolf Man manages a very respectable placing in Universal’s classic monster canon.
After all those wonderful screenshots in our quiz I just had to see “Fine, Totally Fine”.
And what do you know: it was indeed a very enjoyable slice-of-life comedy. By the time I arrived at the holiday snaps in the end credits, I really liked everyone in them and felt sorry for the film to have ended.
It also doesn’t hurt that me and my wife both got some great laughs out of it.
This might have worked just as well as a series. A Japanese version of “Black Books”, perhaps?
