From Beyond the Grave (1974)

Great ideas, boring execution

I finally watched FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE after years on must see movies. I love anthologies and this one is on of the more interesting ones. The wrap around story of the shop is excellent (and stolen by Stephen King). The idea of people trying to cheat the shop owner (Peter Cushing) is not really convincing as a reason for the horrific 'retribution'. The story with the haunted mirror is cool but the result is limited and plain, if a bit gruesome. The second story, with the man stealing a medal, is boring as hell and pointless. The third story has some ideas but the result, again, is flat. Nothing scary or earth shattering about it. The last story, of the door that leads to a different dimension or place, is the best of all the stories. It looks great and the idea could have easily been fleshed out into a full movie but again, the result is sorta pointless. The denouement happens too quickly.

The reaction of the characters, certainly Ian Ogilvy's character, is baffling throughout. I understand that they had to keep the story in one place and keep it moving since it's a short story but wow, if that happened to me I wouldn't be reacting casually like he did. The story needed more exploration to make the interesting aspects be as amazing as they could have been. It looks great though.

The director, Kevin Connor, is a veteran director and he knows his stuff but alas most of the movie ends up being much about nothing, even for an anthology movie.

Zombi 3 (1988)

A complete mess

ZOMBI 3 is a unrelated follow up to ZOMBI 2, also known simply as ZOMBI. That movie is a classic. 8 years or so later, director Lucio Fulci returned to the 'ZOMBI' universe with this opus. Unfortunately, Fulci left the production and other directors got involved (this is actually a pretty much standard thing in Italian moviemaking). Well, the final result is a complete mess. It's bad. The flying head from the fridge is beyond ridiculous. THere's non-stop mayhem which should be fun but instead you don't care over what's happening because it's such a mess. But there are some scenes that are surprisingly strong, including the one on the bridge. It sorta rocks (I guess Fulci was responsible for this scene). But overall, there's nothing scary or gruesome. The pregnant woman scene was probably meant to be shocking but it comes across as totally amateurish. The radio DJ character (reminiscent of Carpenter's THE FOG) is annoying and the surprise ending is stupid. Truly awful. ZOMBI 4, though no great masterpiece, is more watchable than this.

La ragazza del vagone letto (1980)

Sex Train Going Nowhere

Another super sleazy Italian movie. Three jerks cause mayhem to the pasengers. Their violent actions cause a cascading set of violent drama. One man decides to fight back against the three horny psychos. The most original aspect of this is the train has a full time hooker! It's filled with sex scenes, with nudity from the few young women and also the men. Remove the sex scenes and the movie's runtime is below one hour. The problem with this movie is that the bad guys are so annoying you really want them dead. The movie becomes almost unwatchable because of them. They're not fun. Just jerks.

Hard to believe that this was directed by Ferdinando Baldi who used to direct movies based on the Bible in the 1960s.

The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)

It has the funniest scene ever made!

THE PINK PANTHER STRIKES AGAIN is an over-the-top entry of the uneven Pink Panther series. Most of the scenes are funny and effective. While some, such as the Octoberfest one, falls flat. The ending is clearly very cartoonish and implausible but it's still funny. Peter Sellers has never been better. The entire scene when Chief Inspector Clouseau enters the mansion and interviews the staff is the funniest scene I've ever seen. It's perfect. I give the movie 10 stars for this scene alone.

Patrick vive ancora (1980)

Trashiest Italian Eurocult flick

I've seen nearly every Italian movie made from the 1970s to the late 80s and I have to say that this 'movie' is the trashiest of them all. Even trashier than CALIGULA-type of movie, including CALIGULA 2: THE UNTOLD STORY. The movie is excruciatingly boring: people walk in the dark, walk across a vast estate, they walk here and there. There are some scenes where there are more than one actor present but the bulk of the movie is made of scenes (seemingly disjointed) of a person, alone and in the dark and getting killed. It's boring. The makers of the movie decided to have the entire female cast take their clothes off at one point, including a naked woman who is mauled and eaten to death by dogs. The nudity, while okay is small doses, sorta becomes funny in this kamikaze style amount seen here. There's only one brief nude scene involving a male actor. The casting process must have been funny.

Actress: Hi, I'd like to act in this movie

Producer: You'll have to take your clothes off.

Actress: Okay. That's it?

Producer: Yes!

Actress: Okay.

Yep, that's it. The 'movie' is supposed to be an unofficial sequel to the sleeper hit PATRICK but it's a sequel in name only. The death scenes are hilarious. A man decides to take a swim in a pool at night. As Patrick's supernatural powers target the man, the trees around the pool shake wildly. Why? I dunno. It's meant to show the 'power' of Patrick but what do trees have to do with his powers? It's dumb. Why is Patrick's room always brightly lit? I know he's in a coma but the light in his room is always on, shining directly in his eyes. Again, it's stupid. If people are invited to a mansion and they start dying off one by one, why do people stay? The poker through the vagina scene is not that memorable except for the trashiness of it all. Anyway, I could go on and on about it. Can you imagine the premiere of this movie and everyone involved attending it and watching what they agreed upon?

The Innocents (1961)

Gorgeous film with a good if somewhat tedious story

THE INNOCENTS is a gorgeous film: the cinematography, by Freddie Francis, the location, the look of it, the costumes. All of it stunning. The direction is also quite effective.

The story itself though is another thing. It's not bad but it's one of those stories which can viewed straight or with everything seen purely as subtext for another story. In the 'straight' version, the children are possessed and Deborah Kerr tries to save them from the ghosts haunting the stunning mansion. The subtext angle, which has been written about by many critics, basically points to Kerr as the instigator of all the sordid goings on, projecting her sexual frustrations on the kids. That the ghosts don't really exist. Fine but the way the movie was directed, this angle doesn't make much sense: how did the governess (Kerr) know of the existence of the ghosts ahead of time. She began seeing the figure of Quint on top of the tower. She saw the ghost of Quint in the window before even learning about his sordid history. If this is the angle the makers of the movie intended, it's a fail because it creates a plethora of plotholes.

On the other hand, another angle, which would make more sense, is the ghosts are real and they are not targeting the children but the governess herself, driving her mad. This would explain the creepy scene of the governess seeing Quint on top of the tower, where she experienced some sort of disturbance. It's pretty simple and not farfetched. Regardless, the film has some truly creepy moments and the whole thing looks like a masterpiece. The actors are all excellent. The production simply needed to be less ambiguous and be more committed to a story and stay with it.

Space: 1999: War Games (1975)

Brilliant episode!

Amazing action and special effects. Unforgettable aliens. Thought provoking concept. This episode is one of the best of the series, along with DRAGON'S DOMAIN and FORCE OF LIFE.

L'année des méduses (1984)

Deliriously bad

Almost every review for this film asks: is this just an excuse to show beautiful topless women? If everyone keeps asking that it's because it is an excuse to show topless women. The only dramatic tension in this soufflé is while Valerie take her top or not? After a while this disappears since she's always topless for most of the film. The story is risible. The mother basically smokes and drinks throughout the movie (and takes her top off as well). The dramatic denouement at the end (don't worry, I won't spoil it) is so underwhelming and filmed in an uninspired manner that you only then realize that the filmmakers were truly only interested in showing topless women. They were too lazy to come up with something else. I like Valerie Kaprisky. There's something bold about her (she's clearly allergic to clothes) but when she has clothes on, one sorta has a hard time noticing her. It's then that one realizes she's ordinary.

It Follows (2014)

Bad acting

The acting in this movie is bad which is not uncommon in low budget horror films but the makers of this movie made the mistake of having all the actors shoulder the believability of the story unto them and since the acting is not convincing, the story and, in the end, the movie itself is not convincing. Great camerawork, editing, style, music, etc, will always eclipse bad acting. Take the original SUSPIRIA for example, which is a masterpiece even if the acting is not that great. This movie doesn't have a lot of style or anything to compensate for the weakness of the acting.

Suspiria (2018)

Cinematic reverse psychology

This movie was made to showcase how utterly brilliant the original SUSPIRIA was. A true masterwork.

Thanks to all of those involved with this. Your hard work has truly made Dario Argento's work shine that much more.

Justice League (2017)

Where's Zeus when you need him?

I'm not a fan of CGI and this film is an orgy of CGI. When it's done right, I'm able to digest it to a certain level but most of the CGI here was so 'cartoony' that I could never get into it. The direction feels like a TV production ( claustrophobic sets, unrealistic looking sets, etc). Since almost everything is CGI, including the surroundings, the film feels really cloistered. The lame story is about some Mother Boxes which can destroy the world. These boxes were introduced back in Antiquity by the main alien villain called Steppenwolf. We see a flashback of the events of the distant past with Wonder Woman (a wooden Gal Gadot) recalling the events to Batman (a wooden Ben Affleck). Though the set-up is totally uninspired,. I have to admit that I liked the scenes set in the past more than the modern period (and why I'm giving this 4 stars). As Wonder Woman brings up Batman up to speed about the 'Mother boxes" we see an orgy of battles, of Amazons, Atlanteans, even of Gods such as Zeus, battling Steppenwolf and his army of aliens (they're from an unspecific alien world). In a brief but powerful moment, we see Zeus (bodybuilder Sergi Constance) 'neutralizing' the Mother Boxes. A defeated Steppenwolf is exiled from earth. Neutralized and with Steppenwolf gone, the Mother Boxes are kept hidden at separate locations around earth. Back in our contemporary time, with Superman 'dead', Steppenwolf shows up again, ready to find and reconnect the 3 Mother Boxes and destroy Earth. Desperate to stop Steppenwolf, Batman and Wonder Woman recruit other superheroes, such as Aquaman and the Flash, in order to team up and annihilate Steppenwolf.

This is basically the gist of the convoluted story. The story makes very little sense. The action makes even less sense.

My question is, if Zeus was able to 'defeat' and neutralize the Mother Boxes thousands of years ago, why didn't the 'Justice League' just try and recruit Zeus again? What happened to him? Was Zeus on vacation? Is he dead? Are the Olympian Gods not worthy of the Justice League? Is Superman the new Zeus?

The weakness of the script is apparent from the start. It shows a solution to the problem the contemporary heroes face at the very start of the film (all powerful Zeus winning over Steppenwolf) but when Steppenwolf decides to cause mayhem again in 2017, suddenly Zeus is nowhere to be found. A poorly written script.

Cheval Serpent (2017)

Hilariously bad!

This strange aborted creation centers around a strip club, of men taking their clothes off for women. It's inspired by a famous strip club in Montreal called the 281. It's the only club for women while there are 4 or 5 other strip clubs with men stripping for men. In this series everyone is super straight, even the 'choreographer.' The strippers and the people around act as if they're tough stuff, like hockey players. The acting is atrocious (but then the material is not really inspiring). It's one of the least believable things I've ever seen made. It's also one of the least erotic ones considering the setting. The series tries to mix political drama with the 'hot' strip club setting but it's as successful as mixing oil and water. Who exactly watches this crap?

Invaders from Mars (1986)

Tobe Hooper creates a nightmarishly good remake!

I almost always hate remakes. They rarely live up to the original's reputation. One of the exceptions is this remake by Tobe Hooper of the classic low budget 1950s sci-fi classic. For me it works in what it sets up to do: create a nightmarish world seen from the POV of a kid. This film was shot in a very deliberate manner: it's supposed to replicate a boy's nightmare come to life. Things are not supposed to be right. Things are supposed to look a little off-kilter and Hooper creates this nightmarish world with verve. If things look too fake for some, like the house, know that this was done intentionally. Some scenes have stayed with me since I saw it at the movies, like when the soldier falls into the sand and swallowed up by the underground 'digger.' Other filmmakers have actually taken visuals from this for their bigger budgeted productions, like Spielberg's WAR OF THE WORLDS. My only complaint is that the soundscape is a bit on the thin side. Aside from that, I like it. I saw this in a very cavernous cinema and the camerawork really stood out.

Questa volta ti faccio ricco! (1974)

Brawny action comedy starring two beefy men

This Italian movie was directed by Gianfranco Parolini. He started his career in making PEPLUM films in the early 1960s, those beefy action adventures with a Hercules-like muscular hero. Parolini's first productions also starred Brad Harris. The two men would end up making 11 films together, including a spat of PEPLUM productions, KOMMISSAR X spy films and so on. This was their first and only collaboration made in the 1970s. Handsome Antonio Sabato co-stars with Brad Harris in this Bud Spencer - Terence Hill kind of action comedy, with Harris playing Bud and Sabato being Terence Hill. The film itself is sloppy and there's very little to recommend. The one thing which is a constant from the PEPLUM film is the uber beefiness of it all. Parolini loved super brawny action and this movie is no exception. Harris and Sabato basically spend the entire film together. They are inseparable. The way Parolini conceived this and focused everything on their brawniness (check out the poster) lends an indirect sexed-up aspect to it. Sabato keeps gently brushing Harris' hair. In one scene, in a market, the camera focuses in Harris' butt and we hear a seller saying "Melons for sale!" The two men wear some of the skimpiest (Brad Harris in cut-off jeans) and tightest clothes ever put on screen. Sabato certainly wears the tightest jeans I've ever seen in a film. Nothing is left to the imagination. In one scene, Harris falls between Sabato's legs and, after Sabato strokes his hair, Harris stands up, his junk pops out from his skimpy shorts. It's often played for crassness but it comes off more as sexual than funny. The two actors have amazing chemistry together (and zero chemistry with the few women in this). This is what Parolini wanted. And it's the only interesting aspect about it. Harris would go on and make another film as a brawny bearded man wearing wifebeaters and that hat, WHO BREAKS...PAYS. It wasn't directed by Parolini but the formula is pretty much the same and instead of Sabato, Harris teams up with hunky Giancarlo Prete. Veteran Italian actor Gianni Rizzo would star in both films.

Antonio e Placido - Attenti ragazzi... chi rompe paga (1975)

More brawny action with Brad Harris teaming up with hunky Giancarlo Prete

One year before the release of this film, Brad Harris starred in "THIS TIME I'LL MAKE YOU RICH," a brawny action comedy starring Harris and Antonio Sabato, and Gianni Rizzo. This film, WHO BREAKS...PAYS, is a sequel of sorts with Harris playing the same role as in the 1974 film (even if the characters names are not the same). Instead of Sabato, Harris teams up with Giancarlo Prete. Same style of over-the-top action beefy comedy. The chemistry between Prete and Harris is not as good as the one between Sabato and Harris but the formula is pretty much the same. Not as unintentionally erotic or sexed up as the previous film but there are still beefcake scenes In it. In one gratuitous beefcake scene, the two men go to a Turkish bathhouse and they walk about the bathhouse with nothing but towels wrapped around the bottom half of their chiseled bodies. Only for fans of Brad Harris, Giancarlo Prete or Italian cinema.

Histoire d'O (1975)

As erotic as an appointment with the dentist

HISTOIRE D'O is famous and yet few will say they've seen it or admit they've seen it. Just look at the few reviews posted here at IMDb. The main reason is simply because the whole thing is risible! It's beautifully shot but still risible. It's almost like an old Benny Hill sketch : O loves Rene but Rene loves Jacqueline who loves Sir Stephen who loves O who loves Jacqueline who loves the fire hydrant. On and on it goes. I truly wondered what planet they were living on since very little of it made sense. Do they ever buy groceries? Wait in line at the bank? You know, things normal mortals do. The story wants us to believe it's all about love but love has nothing to do with the people inhabiting this baroque soft-core reverie. Love? Hahaha!

Like all "erotic" films of the period, all women are bisexual, or anythingsexual, ready to take off their flimsily clothes for the audiences' viewing pleasure. This brings up the main point of the "film" : the focus is only on the women which makes me wonder why they'd bothered with the male characters, who were very boring. Obviously the director, producers, and writer didn't care for them. They are merrily there to serve a purpose. The film would have been much more honest if the entire cast had been female, which during one segment it was. This is probably the best part of the film, not because it's all female but because the lecherous filmmakers could finally show every detail of the females' bodies along with their "tortured" minds.

The only saving grace of this superficial "charnel" nonsense was Corinne Clery. Remove her from the film and there would be nothing left to watch. Corinne was practically naked throughout the film. Her body was perfect back then.

In the end, the entire "complex" story, bogged down by its own pretensions and limitations, was bereft of the one thing they wanted to achieve : true eroticism.

Uchu kara no messeji (1978)

Walnuts from Space!

I saw this film at the movies. Yes, a Japanese film that had a wide release back in 1978. How times have changed. It's something which doesn't happen anymore.

Is this an all 'round successful film? Not really. I'd say 40% is really pure schlock. While the remaining 60% is non-stop explosions and goofiness which I enjoyed back in the day and still today.

Pros :

• the idea of magical walnuts was cool

• The main villain looks really great

• some of the space fights / dog chases, in the asteroid belt and inside the villain's inner sanctum were amazingly edited and were later seen in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and RETURN OF THE JEDI. Oh the irony.

• the sail-ship in space is fine by me

• great sword fight at the end

• The fantasy / sci-fi elements actually work here

• the tight pants on the two male heroes. Aha the 1970s!

• It was shot in VistaVision!

Cons :

• the mother in the wheelchair

• the retro 1960s dance and pop music ; outdated even in 1978

• the script is all over the place

• at times, the film's overall grubby look

• the overacting

Today's audiences wouldn't understand this style of filmmaking but I get it and I enjoy it for what it was / is.

Amer (2009)

A 90 minute perfume commercial

AMER is all style with absolutely no substance.

It's a collection of over-directed scenes stitched together with overdone editing all about nothing.

Aside from the overdone beginning, which has very little to do with the rest of the film, in tone or anything else, the rest is just 60 minutes of shots pouty lips, of long hair ending up everywhere or of the wind blowing in between a young girl's legs or a middle aged woman's legs, sending her in constant state of near orgasmic frenzy. In this film, the wind is truly powerful!

Every little mundane detail is a sexual catalyst and this is amped to the nth degree, in case we couldn't figure it out after the endless number of close-ups of lips and flesh and sounds of heavy breathing.

For instance, when the middle-aged woman walks through the garden surrounding the mansion, the trees, plants and shrubberies she comes across seem to want to ravish her. This is me rolling on the floor with laughter.

This film has two directors, one of them being a woman but even so the so-called 'male gaze' has never been more omnipresent. I've never seen so many panties/crotch shots outside of a Spice Girls music video.

Its attempt to ape the Giallo style of filmmaking (which includes a cheesy retro poster) falls resolutely flat. Giallo films are first and foremost passionate and this film is as passionate as a dead fish washed up on a deserted beach.

A very shallow cinematic experience.

Belles, blondes et bronzées (1981)

Stupid fun

This French "Bronzées" T&A film, a popular genre at the time, is one of the most memorable. Is it great art? No it's not but the goofy (and sexy) story sorta works regardless. It's one of those guilty pleasures you watch any time it's on TV. The story is secondary (something about two buddies who are mistakenly given loads of stolen money and the thieves trying to regain their loot). These kind of films were excuses to show gratuitous nudity: boatloads of shapely girls in bikinis, usually topless, as only the French can get away with and the men, equally wearing skimpy swimsuits or disrobing on a whim, chasing after the girls.

Funny scenes: when the duo are talking on the phone with their boss and following instructions; the newspaper bit at the pool side and the subsequent burning of newspaper in the desert and the two pretending it's cold to the suspicious police. The cast includes Daniel Derval as the flamboyant "folle". Derval made a career playing the same role in several films.

The Opposite Sex (1956)

Pretty much worthless

This glossy musical remake of THE WOMEN, the famous movie which featured a women-only cast, is nothing short of a complete disaster. This film is pretty much toothless and almost completely miscast. June Allyson? Yikes. She looks like a drip throughout the film. Hair, posture, etc, as appealing as a bowl of oatmeal. Granted, Norma Shearer wasn't the scorching beauty in THE WOMEN but she looked, eh, healthy. June looks a bit sick here. In the original, Sylvia was played by Rosalind Russell who almost stole every scene she was in. In this remake, Dolores Gray is Sylvia and looks like an embalmed drag queen-looking mummy. The only good bit of casting was having Joan Collins in the role made famous by Joan Crawford. Whenever Collins is not in the film, the film flat-lines, literally. She's the only spark in this wet firecracker, as clichéd as it is for her to play the conniving man-hungry uber bitch. Remarkably, having men in the film almost added nothing except for handsome Jeff Richards who doesn't have much to do but look good. Leslie Nielsen is wasted and not very convincing. June Allyson and Nielsen as a married couple? Bleech.

Some scenes are lifted directly from THE WOMEN, like the bathtub scene. Some things that sorta worked back in the 1930s simply do not work in 1956. The entire Reno bit is truly tired and should have been re-written for the 1950s.

Oddly enough, this is a musical remake, probably just to accommodate June, and the musical scenes are mostly horrendous. The bit with Dick Shawn is painful to watch. The whole "Now, Baby, Now" with June singing with a bunch of gyrating male dancers is inexplicable. It's so odd it becomes brilliant if viewed as a total curio. You really wonder what they were thinking.

Watching the film, with the characters trying to be classy and the rich types, moving within the tacky studio sets, the overdone gowns and all that stuff and I sorta realized how Hollywood had a truly warped Waspy vision of the world. The end result makes Hollywood look like a playground for philandering film producers who wanted to be surrounded by what they thought were the beautiful people but in reality it was more on the corny & garishly gay side. Dreadful.

Salambò (1914)

Pretty good once the story settles down but a mess of sorts!

I'm a fan of silent films and try to watch as many as possible when the opportunity arises. I'm also a fan of Sword & Sandal films and I had the chance to see the 1914 version of SALAMBO. Compared to the masterpiece CABIRIA, also made in 1914, this film is a mess of sorts.

The film lasts 75 minutes and for the first 25 minutes or so we *only* see a series of establishing shots with intertitles telling us what's going on. That's it. No close ups. No panning or anything interesting. Only wide static shots of large crowds scenes with the main characters somewhere in there. This wouldn't be so bad if the scenes weren't filmed in such an uninteresting way (angle, composition, etc). Once Matho climbs up the aqueduct of Carthage the action finally starts(this scene is very much like when Maciste and company climb the fortress in CABIRIA). And by action I mean the camera follows the characters and the characters exchange dialogue, not necessarily action as in action-packed stuff. Movies were still in its infancy which might explain the odd and confusing narrative structure of SALAMBO. 25 minutes of mostly static shots to set-up a story is way too long, even for that time.

Once it settles down to a visible storyline, it's pretty good and the magic of silent cinema finally takes hold but it's still a mess of sorts. Unlike CABIRIA, you can't really identify or empathize with any of the characters here. They're more like figures or shadows moving across the screen than characters. There are things that happen to the characters and I'm not quite sure why. No intertitle or dialogue telling us what just happened. There are some close-ups but they are rare. I think the first close-up within the story itself occurs 40 minutes mark. There are some close-ups of the actors at the beginning but those are there just to introduce the name of characters.

The sets are pretty good, the crowd scenes are grand. But these things can't overcome the sloppy editing and the wobbly, unfocused narrative. The one interesting aspect of this film is one of the main characters is black, Spendius, and he's not played as a caricature or as unimportant. He's vital to the story and it's cool to see that in a film made in 1914. When Spendius enters the statue of Tanit, and what happens afterward, it's probably the best moment of the film.

When the film on the DVD starts the words THE PRIESTESS OF TANIT appear, not SALAMBO. But the intertitles have the name SALAMBO on it. It seems the title is missing from this reel which goes straight to the introduction of the characters. The distributor of the DVD used the artwork of the 1925 made-in-France version of SALAMBO, which confused me. By the artwork, I thought I was buying that version but I really got the 1914 made-in-Italy one. The distributor should use different artwork or a photo from this film to sell this version. Oh well.

The music, credited to Lou McMahon, often didn't go with what was happening on screen but this is not uncommon with silent films in general as the original score is lost. A new score or finding the original score would be an improvement over this one. I had to turn off the sound to enjoy it more.

The story was adapted into another version, in 1960 titled SALAMMBO, starring Jacques Sernas and Jeanne Valérie. You can see some similarities between the two but the 1960 version, even with its faults, is more successful than this one.

I giganti della Tessaglia (1960)

Excellent PEPLUM; contains one of the best S&S sequences ever made

THE GIANTS OF THESSALY is one of the better PEPLUM films made during the PEPLUM/Musclemen/Sword & Sandal explosion of the the late 50s/early 60s. The assured hand of Riccardo Freda keeps it going even if there are some weak spots in it, the weak aspects being the acting (there's a scene with an actress tied to a rock and her acting is pitiful) and some cheesy sets and effects. But the bad aspect of this film do not diminish the entire overall effect and it's pretty cool. British actor Roland Carey makes a nice change over the usual Steve Reeves or Mark Forest or Gordon Scott. Physically, Roland is imposing. He looks tall and built but not too built like a body builder. His physique is believable. Roland plays Jason and the story is basically the quest for the Golden Fleece (part of this story was already incorporated in HERCULES(1958) ).

He leads a boat filled a beefy crew and they got through a bunch of great and not so great adventures, culminating with the finding of the Golden Fleece. The scene when Roland Carey gets the fleece is one of the greatest moments ever made in a PEPLUM. From the boat, to climbing up a cliff that leads to the statue where Jason as to climb all the way to the top of the statue to retrieve the fleece is simply amazing. Combined with the rousing score (one of the best and most familiar scores in any Sword & Sandal) and you have a brilliant scene. It makes the movie and Riccardo Freda's direction really shines here.

The DVD available in the US is of terrible quality. I've seen a clear fully widescreen HD version and it's amazing. The US DVD doesn't do it justice.

And to those who think this is nothing more than a weak rip-off of the Ray Harryhausen version of Jason & the Argonauts, well THE GIANTS OF THESSALY was made 3 years before the Harryhausen flick.

Chloe (2009)

Totally risible!

CHLOE is the most risible film I've seen since, well, WHERE THE TRUTH LIES. The story is totally whacked and one wonders who in their right mind thought this story made any sense: a spoiled rich gynecologist believes her husband is cheating on her. She suddenly feels invisible: her husband is having sex with one of his young students. Friends are dating young chicks. Her son his sleeping with a hot chick in his bedroom. People all around are boinking chicks. The wife suddenly realizes "Heck, I'm missing on all of the hot action" so she decides to hire a hooker, with the idea of seducing her husband to see if he'll sleep with her, but it's all a ruse really because she's the one who ends up having sex with Chloe the Hooker. Chloe invents all these "hot" stories of her sleeping with the husband, to dupe the silly wife; these stories are so hot the wife decides to have sex with the hooker, because the wife feels she's invisible and by having sex with Chloe it's like some transference thingy going on and part of the passion the husband is sharing with the hooker the wife thinks she'll feel it too.

Got that?

The logic in the story is so whacked, it had me rolling on the floor.

First of all, I can't sympathize/empathize with the wife's pain/grief. She's a wealthy spoiled woman who hires a young woman to trap her husband. Nice character.

Second, the couple is a corny couple. Who cares if they don't make it or anything about their happiness.

Third, the two women, the silly wife and the hooker, are shown as being total nut jobs: the wife is gullible and accepts every little detail the hooker tells her without any proof of what she's claiming is real and the hooker is shown as being mentally unstable in the SINGLE WHITE FEMALE kind of way.

So basically the degrading screenplay portrays these two neurotic women as crazy, conniving, manipulating, narcissistic and out of control with their emotions. They both end-up coning each other while object of the initial target, the boring husband, doesn't even figure in the story. The two scheming women end up looking like two monkeys fellating each other at the zoo. I wanted to throw peanuts at them to make them stop. The ending elevates the level of degradation when Chloe the Hooker sleeps with the son in the parents' bedroom and when they're found out Chloe the Hooker then tries to seduce the wife again, which is seen by her son. The wife, embarrassed, literally pushes Chloe away to her death. Nice.

Though the story hints at Pasolini's brilliant TEOREMA, the storyline is straight out of the 1970s Black Emanuelle trash epics. Well, I would rather watch any Laura Gemser flick than this risible piece of "serious" filmmaking. The sex scenes in CHLOE were not hot for one second. Just unconvincing.

When the wife suddenly realizes the truth with those fake encounters Chloe has been telling her, she tells the clueless husband what she did: that she hired a hooker to entrap him and that she also ended up having sex with her (and in turn became the cheater here), the husband shrugs it off as if it was normal and OK. Again, this is me on the floor laughing my butt off. If I was the husband, I'd ask the wife to seek professional psychiatric help. I mean, the money she spent on the hooker could have been spent on something more important, ya know, like a brand new flat screen TV for that ridiculously overly designed house of theirs.

Even though it's a remake of a French film CHLOE reminded me more of the trashy Italian film called DELERIUM starring Mickey Hargitay. Same insane logic in the storyline with the women being completely crazy and degraded. The excellent Julianne Moore needs to get better projects than this laughable & embarrassing stuff.

Clash of the Titans (2010)

The uneven original is remade into an abysmal, joyless adventure

Remakes these days are almost always terrible and having seen production photos of COTT before its release, photos that didn't inspire much confidence, I decided not to see the remake on the big screen, opting to wait for it on DVD or download. I always had a love/hate approach to the original which I saw at the cinemas when I was a young teen. So take this as someone who's not a fanatic of the original and was going to hate any remake from the get go. With that said the new film is thoroughly awful in almost every way possible. Except for the beginning (which is OK, not great), the action packed but not suspenseful Medusa scene and the clearly OTT ending, there's nothing much else to see. The entire cast of characters is uniformly unpleasant. Not one likable character in the whole thing, including a growling Perseus (played by one-note Aussie actor Sam Worthington). This is difference with the original. I basically liked almost every characters, no matter how cardboard they were.

Here's a breakdown of the film:

• the changes to the story (humans vs gods) doesn't make any sense.

• Adding the religious/cult storyline with the crazy leader was awful. It added nothing and the character was annoying as hell.

• It doesn't really look Greek at all but more Pompeiish than anything else. The design of Argos, though spectacular during the climax, has absolutely nothing to do with Greek design/architecture.

• the look and design of Mount Olympus is tacky. Looks like a cheesy sci-fi movie.

• Like the original, the other Gods do not have much to do.

• In the original, Perseus had to tame Pegasus which made sense, for a Heroic journey. In the remake, Pegasus, who's black, appears to him and, well, that's it. Totally dull. The original was much better in this regard. And the reason they made Pegasus black because the CGI is more forgiving than if it was white. 

• the scene with the scorpions doesn't make any sense whatsoever. In the original, the Medusa's blood mutates the scorpions into big monsters but in the remake, Calibos' blood (after his hand was cut off) drips on some sand and the scorpions appear from the ground, killing most of the men from Argos but then Perseus and his men team up with the mysterious beings that use the big scorpions as transportation like nothing had happened! Huh?

• the set for the Medusa scene is pretty good and the Medusa is OK as a superfast slithery creature but the scene is more action than suspense. And Sam wears flesh-colored tights during many shots, which makes it look very silly.

The ending is so over-the-top that it's almost a thing of beauty. Here's a breakdown:

• It takes the Kraken 15 minutes to surface. There's slow and slow, but man, that beast is constipated.

• The Kraken looks like a turtle/octopus/that monster from Return of the Jedi thingy

• The climax occurs during an eclipse. Why?

• The ending or confrontation between the Kraken and Perseus is ridiculously drawn out, extended by having those winged demons snatch the bag with the head of the Medusa (how did they know what was in the bag?)

• the action is often so confusing that the characters have to tell us what's going on such as when the winged demons snatch the bag, Perseus yells that they stole it because we clearly couldn't see what was going on.

• Andromeda, which is not the love interest in this version, hangs from the sacrificial altar hundreds of feet above the sea, strung up by her arms, which she never seems to find painful. Unlike other Sword & Sandal films where people were in extreme pain when hanging from their arms, Andromeda is remarkably calm and nonchalant about it all.

• When the Kraken becomes a statue, the whole thing is beyond silly. It looks like the monster has a sudden rash. It crumbles from its own weight and Andromeda falls in the ocean and yet Perseus is able to find her underwater amidst the whole chaos. He must have a heat seeking device on him.

- Sam Worthington's Aussie accent can be heard throughout the movie. Plus the fact that his hair is not in style with the times, the less time Sam is on screen, the better it is.

The score is totally forgettable, unlike the Laurence Rosenthal score for the original, which is beautiful and soaring.

All in all, this remake is at times so bad that in its own way becomes a thing of beauty. I mean, how can a film get it so wrong on so many levels? Even the brief cameo of Bubo, which was a sight for soar eyes, was mishandled. The film was a huge success and even though the Kraken is dead and the Medusa is headless, Warner has already greenlighted a sequel!

Because of this remake, I have to re-evaluate the original, which, after watching this suddenly comes out as brilliant on almost every level, including the fact that its more in tune with Greek mythology than this unpleasant version. Well, I still find the original uneven at best but it's also more enjoyable, memorable and far sexier too.

Happy Birthday to Me (1981)

red herrings everywhere but still fun

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME will never be mistaken as great filmmaking but for what it's supposed to accomplish and certainly considering the time it was made, during the slasher explosion of the late 70s/early 1980s, this one clearly stands out from the crowded pack of gory thrillers. Though a bit too relaxed at times, with a plethora of crazy red herrings throughout and the level of acting sporadic and/or all over the place, the great things about this thriller are the quasi-Gothic atmosphere, certainly during the climax, the not-so-average murders, the beautiful location filming (in and around Montreal) and a strong score. If a horror/thriller/slasher have all these qualities than it's thumbs up for me.

The red herrings in this film are mind-boggling. Practically every scene is a set-up for a red herring. This creates a padded feeling that extends the film's running time for no purpose at all, with many scenes stretched to the point of tedium. Thankfully the good stuff keeps those scenes from destroying the film's structure.

The killings are often creative with the dumbbell death being the film's most memorable death. Ouch. The killing at the beginning was at times unintentionally hilarious. The girl was really dumb but the spirit of the scene reminded me of Italian thrillers called Giallo so I give it a pass.

The denouement is over the top and many dislike it because it's not credible enough but I love OTT endings and this one is certainly a head scratcher. IMO, the ending actually makes the movie. It's a perfect ending to the sad/Gothic/gory story of our confused heroine who believes she's losing her mind after undergoing some (graphic but not too realistic) brain surgery which left her vulnerable to terrifying memory lapses.

One bit during the climax, the flashback scenes showing a hand chloroforming someone, had me rolling on the floor. Once was enough but three times was silly.

The cast is above average for a slasher. Sure, there are the prerequisite types in these kind of films: the babe, good looking jock, the shifty nerd, all played by unknowns but Melissa Sue Anderson is surprisingly effective here and anchors the film's spotty level of acting. Glenn Ford is OK but is role is almost negligible. I'm surprised Melissa Sue Anderson's career didn't go anywhere after this. Her role was demanding and she didn't embarrass herself.

If you're a fan of slashers make sure to check this one out.