VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented

[Magnum Milano]

A bunch of films I watched in the last month.

Rush Week (1989)
A recently transferred journalism student is assigned to do a story on the University’s Rush Week but stumbles upon a more sinister one as female co-eds begin to disappear. A very tame slasher (to the point I’m hesitant to even call it one) up until the final confrontation and the killer’s reveal.

Femme (2023)
Three months after a vicious hate attack, a drag queen sees his attacker in a gay sauna and starts plotting his revenge. Two excellent lead performances in what is a highly tense, compelling watch, where it feels like anything could happen at any given moment. 

St. Ives (1976)
A crime writer is hired by the wealthy Abner Procane in order to be “the middle-man” and to hand over a ransom fee in exchange for Procane’s stolen journals. Found the story hard to follow and the plot ended up being far too confusing. A fair bit of double crossing going on didn’t help.

Disco Godfather (1979) (ok.ru)
A former police officer, who now works as a DJ at a nightclub (“he’s the Godfather of the Disco”), vows to put an end to the angeldust epidemic that is taking over the town following his nephew’s hospitalization. Corny, cheesy, hokey fight scenes, badly acted, crazy hallucinations, so bad its good!

Rad (1986) (ok.ru)
Helltrack is coming to the small town of Cochrane, giving a local BMX rider the chance to compete against the world’s best. Full of 80s nostalgia and if you didn’t own a BMX, you would’ve wanted one after seeing this. Also has the requisite bad guy boss stacking the odds against the hometown rider.

Magnum Force (1973)
Disillusion with the justice system, a secret death squad within the San Francisco Police Department begins killing off the city’s top criminals. I love Harry’s astute sixth sense. A very good sequel with an unexpected twist, at least for me.

The Enforcer (1976)
The third instalment in the Dirty Harry series sees a terrorist militant group holding the city of San Francisco to ransom, while the force goes all progressive as Harry gets partnered with a new female inspector (who naturally gets killed). A notable step backwards on the two previous films.

Police Story 3: Supercop (1992) (ok.ru)
Chan’s latest assignment sees him sent to mainland China to join force with Interpol in order to take down a Chinese drug lord. The action scenes and stunts remain incredible, especially the last twenty minutes or so. Always watch to the very end of the credits to see the bloopers, the crashes etc. 

Dreams Don’t Die (1982)
Two loved-up teens, who both want out of their neighborhood and a better life for themselves, find trouble on the streets of NYC; that is until a run-in with a sympathetic cop. Really good made for TV movie, with the visuals offering a look at New York that has long gone.  Paul Winfieid is great in this.

Donkey Punch (2008) (All 4)
Three girls holidaying in the Med meet a group of guys and head back to their luxury yacht to party. Things go dramatically wrong through when one is killed during a sexual encounter. Not particularly good, not particularly bad either. No regrets on watching it. Sian Breckin has a cracking body.

[BomberPat]

A few over the last week:

Night Of The Big Heat - a 1967 Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing joint I hadn't seen before, that happened to be on one of the more obscure channels I could pick up while staying in a hotel. In the middle of winter, a Scottish island suffers an inexplicable extreme heatwave. Turns out it's aliens. It aims for a kind of Night Of The Living Dead/Day Of The Triffids vibe where a lot of the horror comes from the survivors being trapped in one place and getting on each other's nerves to build tension, but where it lands is lots of irrelevant talk, irritating characters, and fuck all happening, with aliens only showing up at the very end and being dispatched in record time. A bit shit.

The Blood Beast Terror - a 1968 horror watched in the same circumstances as above, once again starring Peter Cushing. He plays a 19th century detective investigating a string of murders that turn out to have been committed by a vampiric were-moth. A giant moth that can turn into a beautiful woman, and drinks human blood for reasons. Cushing is good, but the film is dogshit. It might have been alright with a bit more of a budget, even if it were on the lines of Hammer's output at the time, to give it enough period atmosphere to distract from the flimsy premise. Awful.

Galaxy Quest - as close to five stars as you can get, really, a masterpiece. One of the three best Star Trek films. I hadn't seen it in years, stuck it on while I was getting ready to go out, and ended up running late because I had to watch until the end. Smart writing and great performances means it outperforms its rather hokey premise, and even representing the fans of its own genre as pathetic shut-in dweebs a la Ready To Rumble is forgivable. By Grabthar's Hammer, what a savings.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar - I thought this was bobbins. Like a student film trying to do Wes Anderson, all of the tropes and none of the charm.

 

Late Night With The Devil - One I actually bothered going to see in the cinema; didn't know much about it, other than figuring the premise was a late night talk show deal. I've seen so much hauntology stuff deriving horror and uncanniness from 1970s British TV formats and retro tech - in places this felt like it could be a feature length Inside No. 9 - but never as far as I can recall seen the same approach applied to glitzy American TV, so that was a fun touch. The period attention to detail is fantastic, one of the characters being a James Randi stand-in got a big pop out of me, as did other nods to conspiracy culture and the '70s occult craze, and I liked almost all of it, up until the closing ten minutes. It felt either like the filmmakers lost confidence in their ability to tell their story in the format they had chosen, or like focus groups had told them they needed to over-explain everything, because at the end they abandon everything that gave the movie its charm, in favour of lazy horror clichés and exposition, over-explaining things that were already pretty clear in the film as a whole if you'd just been paying attention. If the movie ended at the end of the "episode", it would have been far better, and if they must tie up any loose ends, there would have been more thematically appropriate ways to do it - a montage of news clips or headlines over the credits would have been my choice. 

The Iron Claw - finally watched this one, long after I intended to. I thought it was good - I almost wrote that I enjoyed it, but that's not the word. It was unrelentingly bleak, and the way they tightened up the timeline only made it more so. It's a story I know inside and out so there were things not included that I was surprised by, but that was balanced out by minor details that I really enjoyed. The main cast were all really good, the guy playing Fritz was fantastic in that you never got the impression he was being played as a villain, and he believed everything he was saying. I think it could perhaps have done more to show how huge the Von Erichs were as stars, to get across why they'd be putting themselves through all this, though Fritz's obsession with the NWA Title carried enough weight in that regard to make up for it. As everyone has said, the guy playing Ric Flair was awful, but it wasn't his film, so I don't actually mind that much - he got the point across without just doing an impression, and that's all he needed to do. He was only in it for a few seconds, but the bloke they had playing Jerry Jarrett nailed it. 

[Dr. Alan Grant]

On 4/2/2024 at 12:25 PM, Magnum Milano said:

Disco Godfather (1979) (ok.ru)
A former police officer, who now works as a DJ at a nightclub (“he’s the Godfather of the Disco”), vows to put an end to the angeldust epidemic that is taking over the town following his nephew’s hospitalization. Corny, cheesy, hokey fight scenes, badly acted, crazy hallucinations, so bad its good!
 

I really like the sound of this, but I’m not familiar with ok.ru. A Google search turned up some dodgy looking Russian social media sites. 

[Magnum Milano]

On 4/3/2024 at 12:50 PM, Dr. Alan Grant said:

I really like the sound of this, but I’m not familiar with ok.ru. A Google search turned up some dodgy looking Russian social media sites. 

I've never had an issue with ok.ru (and it's great for finding obscure films).  I just tend to download the films using the Developer Tools (F12 key) as opposed to watching them through the site.

You should be able to find it on torrent sites if you use those.

[Devon Malcolm]

On 4/3/2024 at 12:50 PM, Dr. Alan Grant said:

I really like the sound of this, but I’m not familiar with ok.ru. A Google search turned up some dodgy looking Russian social media sites. 

It's just a streaming site, I've been using it for a few years with no issues.

[Loki]

On 4/3/2024 at 1:50 PM, Dr. Alan Grant said:

I really like the sound of this, but I’m not familiar with ok.ru. A Google search turned up some dodgy looking Russian social media sites. 

It’s owned by an oligarch friend of Putin and brings considerable revenue into the Russian state.  It’s been banned by Ukraine as part of the ongoing sanctions against Russia.

 Whether or not you use it depends how much you care about the possibility of your ad revenue ending up propping up the war in Ukraine.

 Edit: in a similar vein I used to use StreamEast for dodgy sport streams but I figure I’d rather not potentially help the Russian economy circumvent sanctions through copyright theft.

Edited April 4 by Loki

[Dr. Alan Grant]

Cheers all. Now I have to decide on whether to watch the potentially terrible, but wonderfully named Disco Godfather or supporting war in Ukraine. Sure, war is bad…but I do like logging films on Letterboxd. Choices choices.

[Mr_Danger]

Well if you’re paying taxes you’re already supporting it so Disco all the way.

[Devon Malcolm]

Use AdBlocker and save poor Zelensky!

[Mr_Danger]

Use Adblocker and maybe watch Inglorious Basterds  on it as well to piss off both sides. Just in case Israel see the Inglorious Basterds viewing as a show of support write “Woody Allen is a Nonce” on a lamppost.

[Merzbow]

2 hours ago, Mr_Danger said:

write “Woody Allen is a Nonce” on a lamppost.

I'm actually going to do this.

[Lorne Malvo]

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire - Phoned-in rubbish. Bill Murray especially is snoozing his way to a paycheck. Only bright spark is Dan Aykroyd who still thinks these films are Shakespeare.  Aykroyd looks like The Honky Tonk Man now. 

The Settlers - Very interesting Chilean Western. The first half hour is infuriatingly languid but then it takes some really unexpected turns. Still not sure how I feel about it, in all honesty. 

Imaginary - Saft as shite and full of ropey moments but I had a lot of fun with it. I'd take one of these over an Ari Aster-esque 'trauma is the boogeyman' elevated horror anyday.

I also watched Mary Poppins on the big screen. My first time ever seeing it. Shit, ennit?

[Merzbow]

Monkey Man could be right at the top of my favorite modern action flicks, Dev has knocked out of the park here and you can tell it's an utter love letter to minorities and the oppressed in India while also having The Raid level action and being a genuinely great film. Also, I think he's seen Lucha Underground.

[DJM]

11 hours ago, Lorne Malvo said:

Imaginary - Saft as shite and full of ropey moments but I had a lot of fun with it. I'd take one of these over an Ari Aster-esque 'trauma is the boogeyman' elevated horror anyday.

I didn't really like Imaginary. There was potential for something pretty good or entertaining, but it just ended up being a really average supernatural-horror film. It lacked scares and lacked imagination, and had very little interesting happening in it. The story and the characters were boring and the creature designs were quite poor as well. 

In fact, I've watched a few disappointing films this week:

Night Swim - An average supernatural horror film about a haunted backyard swimming pool. The cast is pretty good, but they're not given much to work with and the plot is as basic as you would expect from the idea of a haunted swimming pool. No scares, no atmosphere and no tension leaves you with a film that is not really worth watching and that would have worked better as a short film in an anthology.

Femme - I'd heard good things about it, but I found it to be a pretty average drama that lacked the impact it was striving for. It's well acted (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and George MacKay are really good) but it wasn't as tense, thrilling or gripping as I had seen it made out as being.

Frogman - A boring found footage horror film and a waste of 75-minutes. Poorly written and poorly made, with a lack of scares, tension, atmosphere or entertainment.

The Blackening - A really basic, predictable comedy-slasher that is poorly written/improvised and neither funny enough to be a good comedy, nor scary enough to be a good horror.

[Merzbow]

I really don't want to spoil this too much but Saiko! The Large Family which is suddenly gaining traction online many years after it was released, a Canadian mockumentary set in Japan following a seemingly normal family, it get's real creepy. Video is in the spoiler, I don't think there's a legit way to watch it right now.

Spoiler

 

 

Edited April 7 by Merzbow