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Reviews
Blood Orchestra: Cacophony of Death (2016)
More like Blood Busker
The title sounds promising but you quickly realize it's just pretentious gore with no connecting theme. 47 mins of "what's the grossest thing I can do with my rudimentary gore effects?"
Why is the guy brushing his teeth until blood pours out of his mouth and then gouges his eye out and eats it? Who knows. OH! Wait! Maybe that's what all the shots of the moon are about!! God. How could I haven't seen that??
One of the weirdest things (and I've seen this in other gore films) is not the hatred for women but a certain revulsion to female nudity. It's complicated. One of the vignettes has a woman aborting a baby by stabbing her vagina with a crucifix (so edgy, right?). She's naked in a bathtub. The stabbing part is concealed. Then they show her pulling the baby out of her vagina in close up. She coddles and coos to it. For some reason she stands up. But at no time do they ever show her breasts. I'm not talking about camera angles, either. She keeps her hands over her breasts the whole time.
It's the only interesting thing in this movie...and even that's annoying.
Justine (2016)
Very Much A Let Down
After enjoying the ode to Jean Rollin, Olalla, I thought perhaps Avila and Hasketh might have gotten Justine right. They didn't and missed on too many levels to call it a good try.
At the core, deSade is boring. It's not a story. It's a treatise on unfairness and injustice. Literally dozens of pages of monolog and tortured logic to prove, for instance, that a father should not only be allowed to have sex with his daughter but to kill her as he pleases. It's endless. And tedious reading. The other thing to know is that there's no sex scenes in deSade. Just talking about sex and what has and may yet be done.
So you have two choices for trying to make a movie about it. Attempt to make a cohesive story out of it with a lot of BDSM...or just focus on the BDSM. They chose the later.
I kind of checked out at the very beginning when Justine is "raped" in the pillory. It was more like dry humping and prematurely ejaculating. Hasketh really does try to sell it but it's just a scene of two guys bumping lightly against a woman. That's not "sadistic." Don't misunderstand me, I'm not implying straight out porn but...at least *pretend* something is happening.
If you're a fan of grindhouse movies, you know how Hershel Gordon Lewis use to pad out running times just...walking the camera around. Avila does this with the bondage scenes. Do you *really* need to show all 50 lashes taken out on Justine? AND have them counted. One screen. Really?? Obviously not. Is there a way to make something like that work and increase the horror of it? Yes. But that takes skill. Similarly, the rack and the wheel were just as dull. First contestant #1 on the wheel for 5-7 mins. Then contestant #2 on the wheel for 5-7 mins. Then contestant #3 on the wheel for 5-7 mins. And the same thing with the rack.
Sadly, Justine refuses to push anything boundaries. That is a shame because I do get the sense that at least Hasketh truly has some things to say about power, control and injustice.
Bliss (2019)
Self-destructive artist....GET IT??
Maybe that a little too snarky but it's true nonetheless.
Desi is yesterday's flavor of the month in the art world. She's overdrawn on her advances and cannot get her masterwork done. She's rapidly becoming a joke. Her agent drops her. There's no income and the rent is due. What's a fallen artist to do?
GET WASTED!
I'm too old know what she was snorting but the street name is Bliss and the brand name is...(waaaait for it) Diablo. She does a threesome with her BFF and her boyfriend, absolutely wrecked and passes out in a club bathroom where she watches her BFF nom on a patron. Desi somehow ends up home and...she started actually finishing the painting during a blackout. Hijinx ensue.
It may sound like I didn't like it but, despite its incredibly heavy handedness I really did enjoy it. Dora Madison did a very nice job not completely ripping the scenery apart, as probably any other actor would. Tru Collins played her annoyingAF best friend. Probably the best thing is that the men were all himbos and ingenues standing around, waiting to get offed.
I loved the vibe it had. The editing was fun and surprising. There's a scene where she's wandering around her loft with a steadycam harness and it's great effect catching all the jerky movement of Desi as she slides down into the abyss.
Lots of blood, a fair amount of nudity, a good sex scene that could have been a tad less chaotic.
I think they tried to make something new like some Gaspar Noe thing but it didn't quite gel. Oh. And did I say it's pretty heavy handed?
Loving Highsmith (2022)
Far too broad with at least one massive inaccuracy
The movie starts off with the filmmaker saying "I started reading her diaries and fell in love with her."
I'm currently reading her diaries and it really doesn't feel like the filmmaker read them. The docu portrays her as a man-hating lesbian. That's not true. Her diaries show that, while she preferred women, she certainly slept with men. On purpose. And even enjoyed it sometimes.
The relationship with her mother, too, was much more complicated than the filmmaker lets on. She and her mother actually talked about her lesbianism with her mother sometimes commenting about her current girl friend. Both of her parents read her work and, as Highsmith tells it, were helpful and supportive.
The oddest choice was continuing the Texas theme throughout the whole movie. Highsmith left Texas when she was 6. To see the movie, you'd think that Texas was all she thought of. That's just not the case, at least from her diaries.
I suppose I went into this expecting this to blow me away since the diaries are so powerful. The interviews were interesting...except when the white subtitles blended into the white background. Why is this still a thing??
She's a fascinating woman and deserved a better tribute to her.
The Deep End (2022)
Frightening but cold...like her
My main issue with this (and the new crop of documentaries) is that it's so pretty, you always see the camera. They compose the shots to perfectly I feel like I can here the dialog between the filmmakers and subjects before the camera rolls. Like anti-verite. Blake doing interviews on his side on the bed. Graci in her tub as the camera hovers on her fingers. Teal endlessly jogging towards the camera and stopping to get a side shot as she bends over, exhausted. It's all so perfectly crafted; not a documentary but a movie of a documentary.
That said, how absolutely insane do you have to be to pay someone to find out if you're evil and, when you are, argue with them about it?
If you dig deeper (which the documentary didn't do) you find out that Teal got sent to the therapist at the center of the Satanic Panic scandal which induced false memories in people. Given that you see that happening in a scene in after effect of a role play ("I felt like there was anger and inappropriate touching") and the resulting judgment that the subject's parents were evil I'm stunned this thread wasn't followed.
Also, weird that there's no approximation of the company's wealth which would establish a motive to continue this nonsense.
That's not to take away from the story, which grabs you by the throat, but there's a superficiality to it - style over substance - which, while it fits Teal's personality, keeps the view at arm's length from the subjects by making them look like actors rather than people.
My gasp/LOL moment came listening to Teal attempting to guilt trip Blake about breaking his promise and Blake saying "ok...bye." The scene shows just how weak a personal foundation Teal has that she resorts to emotional blackmail rather than following her own teachings.
Blood Hands (1990)
Just...what??
I came into this about 10mins in right when they made their first kill and the classic, "HE'S NOT BREATHING, MAAAAAAN!!" Oh, you boys! I guess it's always fun until someone loses and eye...or their life. They bicker about who dealt the death blow since, I suppose, that even when you're all beating the crap out of someone, the actual death only belongs to one person. Next, they jump into a car that breaks down and need water for the radiator. Whaddya know! One of the guys knows the wife and husband who live there! What would YOU do if you were on the run from Johnny Law? Try to rape the wife, right? DUH! Just their luck the husband comes and, oops, they kill both of them. And I swear that one of them says, "SHE'S NOT BREATHING, MAAAAAAAAN." Bad fight, bad fight. Bad fight...and the bad guys win in the end. JK.
This movie isn't one dimensional it half-dimensional. This isn't even up to a 80's Thailand war picture.
The only saving grace of this picture is that music completely overpowers most of the dialog so you don't haver to listen to how badly it's written and how miserable the acting is.
2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus (2021)
"Thank you, Lord, for your gifts, little or small."
This movie answers the question: What if we made a movie with actors who had no charisma?
Synopsis: By 2025, COVID turned the world into an ill-defined totalitarian regime run by five people who hate freedom and Christianity. Four or five Christians manage to covert most of the world back in about six days or so using DVDs.
This is a prime example of a movie that could (and probably should) have been written by a precocious twelve year old. As it stands, it feels like they tried to Spinal Tap the dialog since so much of it is "um," "so," "yeah." Even lines that might have been written cannot be recited without either awkwardness or error. I could barely follow the pretty simplistic plot.
The plot, though, isn't the point. Fanatics made this movie for other fanatics. It's as if your uncles' and grandparents' FB feed sprung to life. The characters love to talk about "the good time" when their bibles weren't burned and they could hang out with friends at Bible Study. "My parents were Christians and we'd worship in our basement. But they couldn't stand the strain and killed themselves." Soooo...Their faith in God kinda sucked, I guess.
The whole movie is like this. It's one big strawman that they're too incompetent to knock down as witnessed that at the end the movie. German metrosexual writer/director/producer/editor AND "special effects" guy, Joshua Wesely fits perfect in the center of the void that is this movie. It's all just really misplaced ego. How egotistical? At the end, he's taken out and shot by the bad guys...and that's when the movie ends. It literally ends. There's no inspirational quote. There's no "Thanks to his efforts, by 2026 Jesus returned from Heaven and killed all the bad people." He's just dead. So, the Christians lost?
Most of the leads are Germans speaking English...kind of. And the Americans only kind of speak English, too. None of these people are actors. They hem and haw, look very uncomfortable and their posture is atrocious. If you're watching on Amazon Prime, be sure to turn on subtitles since it makes it even more hilarious. It must be an AI translation since, after a woman is shot, she's asked "Are you busy?" which should have said "Are you dizzy?' But she's sitting down when asked so, yet another pointless question. Another great line is, "(These christians) are dancing on your noses."
Throughout the whole movie, the HG Lewis trick of padding out the running time with long walks and the exciting and dramatic act of watching people praying or better yet....typing on a keyboard and moving a mouse.
NOTE: I'm giving this three stars so it doesn't end up on a worst of the year list here. I'd urge you not to give this atrocity money. There are always other ways to watch it.
Savage Encounter (1980)
SA Made For TV Movie
Well, I tried to but I couldn't finish it. I'm not sure if the print came out dark or if i was meant to "foreboding" but I just literally just couldn't care what was happening. You need more than missing teeth and muteness to make villains scary. Unless, of course, you're incredibly shallow. Everyone in this thing is just bland.
I ducked out when, after his wife's rape and his kidnapping and escape, the guy and his wife have a conversation something like this.
Guy: I'm going to kill them.
Woman: We'll go to the police.
Guy: Do you really want to go to the police and tell them all about what happened? Do you really want that?
Woman: Yes.
Guy: Well.... I'm going to kill them instead.
Woman: Be careful.
Nah. I kind of hope that if he didn't get killed she leaves him.
Personal Velocity: Three Portraits (2002)
An Anthology That Works
There's a bunch of reviews on this movie that call it boring, hopeless, muddled and (in one case) de facto says that Parker Posey wrote the best line in the movie. Those people must have been playing Candy Crush or had some other reason for not paying attention.
This movie requires focus. A fair amount of focus. If you focus and think about it, it pays off. Fans of MCS or movies that spoon feed them will, as has been shown, hate this movie because it's a tone poem. The line that needs to be focused on, from the 2nd segment, is "Everyone has their own personal velocity. Every single story does just that. Do I care about the narration? No. I don't. It's from a book and some of the narration is critical to the understanding. If you tune it out you're going to miss a large chunk of it.
Given that a few people see this movie as "hopeless" I'll go over the segments briefly.
Delia was the unashamed high school slut who legitimately loved sex. At 17, a guy married her only to keep her away from other men. Over the course of having three kids he became aggressively abusive. She finally took the kids and left. After getting back on her feet and dealing with the guilt and remorse she never had as the high school slut, she lets some ineffectual loser drive her around for a bit and then jerks him off. She's recovering the sense of who she actually is and what made her happy.
Gretchen's dad was a powerful lawyer and she wanted to be him. She always thought he was moral. Driving home to tell him how Harvard Law Review published a paper of hers, she finds her dad is banging one of the junior partners, cheating on his current wife who he cheated on with his first wife. She's destroyed and stops caring about power. She takes a job editing recipe books until she gets a job editing a major authors work, which goes on to sell millions of copies and launches her as an A-list editor. She has regained her need for power.
Paula is a runaway who was taken in by man who helped her. The man whose walking her home is killed in an accident that should have killed her. She panics and starts driving. She picks up a hitchhiker, a teenage boy who she finds has been tortured. She's freshly pregnant and plans to abort it because she knows she can't care properly for it. It's not who she is. In the course of the segment, she winds up surprising herself and taking care of the teen like a mom. She wants to take him home to her boyfriend, who reluctantly agrees but tells her to take a train. Which she has to because the boy winds up stealing her car. It's unclear at the end whether the stress caused her to miscarry but either way, she's happy know that she can care for people.
It's a great movie and the performances are stunning. But, again, if you think The Notebook is deep, you'll probably hate it.
Memorial Day (1998)
It's like if you got The Parallax View from wish'
90 mins of a not quite there conspiracy movie that's not hurting anyone and just trying to make back its budget without embarrassing itself.
A government assassin bolts the ranch after having a crisis of conscience/nervous break down. He went to the media with a tale of space lasers launched to be used as kind of a proto-Space Force thing. Naturally super secret shadow gov't has him committed. They put the project on ice for awhile and bring him back as a pawn in an overthrow of the US gov't. As if anyone would try to over throw the gov't!! Will he clear his name and prevent totalitarian rule of the US?? I DON'T KNOW!!
All of the actors, also look like Wish version of actors. Wish Lee J. Cobb. Fat wish Martin Sheen. Actually two Wish Lee J Cobbs. Wish Peter Finch. They're mostly taught and tan and talk in a growly voice. None of them are horrible. One of the cast won a primetime Emmy.
It was nice of the writers to write one underused woman into this sausage fest.
A perfectly decent movie that you can mute if you have an important call to take. You won't miss anything.
This Is This (2008)
A Nothing Burger
The guy likes to look in the mirror. The woman on the bed is only wearing panties. She goes to sleep and he wakes her up which she oddly doesn't mind. He gets up, puts a gun in his pants, takes the elevator, gets in his car.................and makes a phone call threatening a pedophile. The end. Literally. That's the plot and it ends with him huffing an puffing into the phone.
My first thought was why was he watching a video involving pedophilia? Also, how did he get the guy's number? Mostly, though, why do I care about any of this? There's nothing compelling about the static shots. There's nothing to dig into.
Save 5mins of your life and don't bother with this.
Breeding Farm (2013)
Fecal Poop Crappy Poo
Sometimes I watch this kind of 5th grade foulness just to imagine the "writers" in a circle jerk in their mom's basement. I get it. You're too lazy to come up with a coherent plot and, besides, you met some strippers you can throw $100 at while deceiving them that this movie is going to shock the world.
It's not. Right from the get-go you're like "who cares?" The most you watch, the less you care? No one is good in this. It's the equivalent of musical staring a guy who just had a stroke.
There are craters of dead space throughout this pus on film.
Cannibal Guy: is she as good as the last one?
(Pause for a full five seconds)
Unknown Voice: Yeah.
(Pause for a full five seconds)
Cannibal Man: You ever had Kentucky Fried P*ussy? It's tasty!
It doesn't get any better. When you're shooting a reporter doing a remote for live news (and maybe you don't know this) you need a mic that *DOESN'T PICK UP WIND NOISES*.
Also, another quick tip: Lights and lighting equipment can be used so you can actually see what's on screen.
Finally, if the father figure is an obvious rapey psychopath then she won't have friends over to the house. For example: If the father says to his daughter's friend something like "I watch ya grow up. Ya filled out real good. If ya ever wanna know a REAL man, jus' gimme a call" then that friend will get the hell out of Dodge really quickly. There may be some ways to find a way to make it work, but that would take far more skill than you could ever hope to have.
I'm giving this a 2 just so it remains buried and hopefully never sees the light of day.
BONUS: Can you find the sock puppet review?
Call Back (2009)
Good Movie Killed By The Soundtrack
Not since Neighbors has a soundtrack completely killed a movie for me. The script was good. The main actors were good. The directing was good BUT...
Some sub-pretentious idiot who was given a "Classical Music For Dummies" CD walked in and said, "Ya know what'd class this picture up? Classsssical Mee-ewsic!" Add proceeded to put every song from Classical Music For Dummies on the soundtrack. Only Bolero at the beginning made any sense as a clever throwback to the movie 10.
It made me hate this otherwise 6-7 star movie and give it a 3.
Seriously - get a not-stupid music guy and rescore the whole thing. Listen to Mahler's 5th, for instance.
GRRRRR!
Snow: The Movie (1982)
Abominable Snow, man
Whoops! They fell down on their skis again! Whoops! They fell down on their skis again! Whoops! They fell down on their skis again! Whoops! They fell down on their skis again!
Oh, look! A poster with a monkey holding skis! Hilarious!
A bar with a talent show with a pudgy host and two sing the song "I Like Tits." A wet t-shirt contest??
I don't know anyone except the cast and crew that would give this movie the 10/10 reviews. It's NOT a satire on ski culture. It's just a lot of bad sex jokes and falling down.
Camp Blood 5 (2016)
Complete Incompetence
I missed the first 30mins (happily) but the set up seems to be that some girl from earlier in the series (Raven? I'm not sure) is talking to a psychiatrist in his...den? I'm really not sure what the room was supposed to look like. Everyone thinks she's crazy because she saw some murders take place so the whole movie consists of exposition and then flashing back to the murders.
The linear time is:
She witnesses the murders
The shrink writes her a scrip for anti-psychotics.
She decides to take two girlfriends into the wood to kill the guy.
Oh. And the killer wears a bad, evil clown mask.
The ONLY thing this movie has going to for it is an NC-17 sex scene featuring a couple with matching tattoos. The rest is horribly shot on video. It's either too dark to see or the white balance is way, way off.
How bad is the actual direction? There's a scene where one of the girls is being chased. It's a static shot. First the girl runs left to right. Then Mr. Killer Clown follows her. THEN, without seemingly moving the camera, the girl run right to left. Then Mr. KC. Again she runs left to right. There's like a 5 second pause before Mr. KC follows. The scene may have been lit with a MagLite.
It's also a perfect storm of really bad writing and really bad acting. It's really bad. Not fun, bad. Just bad.
Now I'm going to see if the cast and crew who gave this POS 10/10 have written glowing reviews.
Avoid this.
Lune de miel (1985)
Creepy And Well Worth A Watch
I don't get the hate on this movie. I missed the first 15mins (it was on B-Movie TV) so perhaps the setup is bad but I couldn't turn it off.
John Shea is one of the creepiest stalkers I've seen in a while. He's handsome, charming, a bit of a schlub and very charismatic. Pauline Kael once said that Dustin Hoffman was so great in Rainman because he finally didn't have to be bothered with other actors. But Shea uses this to great effect, clueless as to what's going on around him and set in his certainty that his cause is just and the world is there for him.
Nathalie Baye does a look with the thankless role of the victim. She's not an idiot, simpering and powerless. She takes control of a horrible situation and while it doesn't get better (and the script gives her bad choices) she's compelling to watch.
Richard Berry, Baye's incarcerated boyfriend, has possibly the worst role which is to sit behind plexiglass and try to look sympathetic...and he succeeds. His line readings are pretty amazing. He asks Baye if she's screwing anyone while he's in jail but it's not accusatory as much as it is resigned.
Some of the supporting cast is annoying and some of the scenes are contrived but the lead up to the final scene where Shea take Baye to slice her up is still steady and controlled. Shea's speech about what her death will feel like is chillingly comforting. He truly wants her to feel safe as she's dying and not be scared.
Is it action packed? No. It's not that kind of a movie. But it's claustrophobic and effective.
Bandaged (2009)
The Growth Of Maria Beatty
I started off on Maria Beatty's fetish films, gothic and black and white. She has a powerful eye for looking beneath the sex and showing the need, desire and power dynamics. She knows how to work with the actors to show honest performances rather than burlesques of D/s; how to focus on the faces, limbs and fingers where the story is told rather than the actions.
I felt a little nervous going into a feature film of hers but also pretty confident that she would pull it off...which she did.
Even from the first encounter, where Joan touches Lucille's face, you can physically feel the tension between them. It drips with desire but at the same time, its understated and true. Because of the stifling claustrophobia built up from start, the light in Lucille's eyes illuminates the whole room as the look at each other. The script and Beatty's direction bring this off as the alchemy that love is - ethereal and organic.
The power dynamics between the couple are interesting; bring up what the nature of care is. Given that Lucille is "bound" to the bed you expect that Joan would be the dominant one but that's not the case. Lucille is calling the shots as she does when she tells Joan to wash her feet "like you did the last time" and Joan carries out her command. This plays out in the actual bondage scene where Lucille ties up Joan and forces her to tell her just how much she's really devoted to her.
The only thing I can quibble about is Joan's backstory which could have been fleshed out more. It's not clear whether Joan is a true angel of mercy or a serial killer, insinuating herself into families and profiting off the euthanizing of the loved one. It's also not clear if she seduces all her female patients. The backstory seems to exist only to get into the third act to raise the stakes higher. This also might be one of the rare films in which the male character is an underwritten character much like females characters are so...good for the writer!
Still, it's not really about that. The story it tells is wonderful and disturbing.
Parole Violators (1994)
mybabymyBAYbee
I came in maybe 1/4 into it on B-Movie TV. I thought, "Huh. Maybe I missed a bunch of plot because this make no sense." But I hadn't. It just makes no sense.
The woman's a cop (maybe?). The guy is a talk show host but I only know that from the synopsis. Again, didn't see it from the start, but I guess that's why he reached for his video camera...I mean...camcorder, puts it down and then picks up a GUN instead. Duuuuuuuude!
A girl is kidnapped by a Mexican dude 3 seconds after the kid waves hello to her as she rides her bike in the street. Oh. You didn't see that POS car RIGHT across from your kitchen window? Bad cop, no donut.
Apparently, they know who did it because they go straight the hideout...and get their asses kicked. I mean...brutally...for the next 45 minutes.
The man. woman and the bad guys all wind up in someone's back yard. The girl is sitting on a milk crate floating in a blow up boat in the middle of a pool that apparently the producers couldn't find the budget to clean. Mom, in possibly the least convincing maternal wail ever on screen says "mybabymyBAYbee" and continues to say this over and over again.
The bad guy has a deal: Talk Show Host will fight the seven guys there and every 30 secs fought, he'll poke a hole in the blow up boat....which is tiny and doesn't even look that deep. Look who's futile getting his ass kicked again!
The kid falls unconscious. They try to resuscitate her while Mom says (with little emotion) "breathe damn you." Then she feels badly because she "cussed" her kid.
More asskicking of the heroes. Some dude from Internal Affairs shows up out of nowhere talking about (in the middle of asskicking) "This won't look good on your record."
Asskicking...asskicking...asskicking...some new wave chick who shoots and walks like Robocop...well... more like Robo Vampire and then in the end...
Honestly I have no idea. My wife came in with the groceries so I turned it off.
(Pretty sure the kid died though)
(NO-OOT!)
Killers (1996)
Incompetent hack...er...homage of Natural Born Killers
Two brothers kill their parents and escape from death row. Fine. Got it. Pretty standard. They do a home invasion of a nice Christian family who just watched the news of the escape on TV. Mom and the two daughters (17 and 12) have crushes on the guys. Older sis has a shrine to one and has sex with him. Dad is tied up while his wife and the other brother throw darts at him. Dad slips his bonds to watch his wife have sex with the other brother...and just watches. The cops show up, raid the home and Dad kills most of them.
Yes. it's a family of psychos and the brothers picked the wrong house. But it's so poorly and confusingly done there's no real revelatory moment.
THEN we find out there a dungeon in the basement with at least 10 captives. And it all goes to hell after that. The lead cop also has a crush on one of the brothers. Dad has sex with his older daughter. There's a mutant transgendered guy who's never really explained. Everybody dies except one brother who then finds out....I'm not making this up...that the whole town is full of zombies. Yes. Zombies. Is this supposed to be a surprise ending? Because it's stupid.
"Um. How do we end this abortion?"
"I...dunno...the town is full of zombie."
"Sure. Whatever."
Honestly, a lot of this could be forgiven if it didn't take itself so #&$* seriously. There are looooooong, overwritten speeches that consist of pseudo-deep word salad that ALL of the characters have. Each speech sounds the same. One is about Juliet Lewis. One is about Michael Madsen. People recite poetry cuz...that's something people do. Are you sensing a pattern? That's right! The writer is REALLY edgy and deep. He wants to out stone Oliver Stone. Hard boiled. No morals. No mercy, maaaaaaaan. REAL #*$%'in life, maaaaaaan. He even stupidly puts in a commercial for action figures based on the brothers. But he fails to create a world where these things can exist. NBK actually created a world...it was a shallow world with no nuance, but it was a functional world. The folks who made this were either too dumb or too lazy to do that.
I'm adding a star because there's some good editing and the occasional glimpse of subtly. They pan past a single shotgun shell on the floor to indicate the clerk has been killed. It's well shot and lovely. The editing on the first sex scene goes on slightly longer than you feel it should which only increases the tension. Nicely done.
But, sadly, the majority of it is at the level of a precocious high-school student whose mom left him alone in the McMansion while she went on her third honeymoon. Don't bother with this unless you're under 14.
Animal Soup (2009)
Rated: Well...They Made A Movie That Someone Watched
Two "blokes" go hiking and get slaughtered. At the same time a butterface and her chubby cousin also go hiking. The butterface has so many piercings in her face that fear registers as smiling and her screams sound like a horse-laugh. Oh, and butterface wears a tiny skirt with no underwear and untied Doc Martins because...hiking.
This movie is summed up in one scene: chubby cousin is taking a dump in the woods and asks butterface to find something to wipe with and...SURPRISE!...we get the exposition from a fragment of newspaper that just happens to be lying on the ground. Seriously. After she's done, one of the (I hate to call them psychos because they just kind of grunt and screech) eats the feces. They pay such little attention to detail that when the feces-eater picks up the clipping it remains unstained.
There's several "bathroom scenes" and lots of torture including an apple gag secured through the *sides* with...chain. Yay physics! Note to torture porn makers - if you're going to tie someone done don't film the obvious slack in the ropes/chains. It just looks sloppy.
There's not much atmosphere or mood beyond screaming "I'M TELLING YOU THERE'S SOMEONE OUT THERE", the stupid shrieking of the torturers and, of course, no cell phone reception. Again, when the lead woman looks and sounds like she's laughing when she should be terrified...that's a problem.
Effectively, the disgust you'll feel is with the filmmaker, not the content.
Vampire Junction (2001)
Slo-Mo Dull
An elderly Lina Romay checks into an Old West town with vampires. A female vampire attacks a naked woman. Then shaves her cooch. The overdubbed soundtrack has a lot of bad moaning and wailing.
Can I just copy paste that to hit my sentence total? A 10 out of 10 sock puppet said something to the effect that Franco is challenging you to make sense of it. There's not challenge here. They gave him a bunch of money and he made a movie with a lot of nudity and horrible video effects. Then he took the money, said thank you and left.
It's not art. It's not subversive. *Maybe* it got shot in a day and a half. Dude. There's a long shot of an elbow. Most likely because he needed to pad out the time. As it stands, if you sped up the action, this movie would be about 30mins.
Seriously - don't bother.
I, Asphyxia: The Electric Cord Strangler III (2000)
The Title Doesn't Lie
He strangles people with electric cords. And tickles them. Why? Who knows. He apparently did it in the previous film but all we get for explanation is "it's happening again."
The first 17mins or so of this crapfest are the lead actress dreaming she's being strangled, writhing around on the bed by herself. Then we get to see inside her dream as William Hellfire strangles her. That's 17mins.
Cut to Benny coming over to say that he wants to stop pimping, shooting heroin and abusing the stable of girls he runs. (Benny is some thin, geeky white boy so...no.) Holly tells him he needs Jesus and he agrees as long as Jesus lets him shoot heroin and urinate on women. It's *sort* of clever, but not really.
After that, The Stranger does his strangling thing in overly long, overly boring ways. Pretty much an hour to do three killings. With bad lighting. And a camcorder. And horrible sound.
I don't know why I bother with Factory 2000 films. The early ones are William Hellfire with a camcorder and Misty Mundae. Oh. Wait. That's why I bother with Factory 2000 films - Misty Mundae.
Unless you're a completist, don't bother with this. It's the worst of the Factory 2000 movies I've seen and that's saying a lot.
Flænset (2000)
Yes....and then a HUGE no
We open up on a car engine that doesn't start. Then cut to an adulterous affair in progress. The engine belongs to the husband of the wife who cheating on him and he's on his way home. This motif continues and the tension is outstanding. It's a great device. The husband seems like a nice guy, very plain but kind looking. He ends up walking home since the engine finally dies and watches his wife having sex through the window. And bad mouthing him as a wimp. He snaps. He hides out in the back seat of the lover's car. The lover drives away.
It's all set up so nicely, you don't really question the logic of the husband killing the lover as he stops to pick up a hitchhiker. Naturally, the husband as to catch the hitchhiker, which he does, and drives everyone to his home. I don't want to get into specifics, but it's a great scene. The husband plays it perfectly.
Then it all goes to hell.
He decides to rape the hitchhiker...who ends up loving it. NO. WRONG. Rape is never enjoyed by the one getting raped. Ever. Period. End of story.
But it gets dumber.
Two cops stop by the side of the road to look at the car that died. They drive to the husband's house. One cop walks into the house. He doesn't knock. He doesn't call out. He *literally* sneaks around the house like a burglar. He comes across a bloody scene...and keeps on looking around the He finds the hitchhiker in the shower...getting ready to masturbate. Because, ya know, that's what women do after they've been raped SO GOOD.
Oh. It's not stupid enough? Ok. The cop, still being quiet as a mouse, starts to take off his jacket looking as if he's going to (you guessed it) rape the hitchhiker.
What happens after that? It descends into more ridiculous fantasy ending with the hitchhiker know *exactly* what's wrong with the car and having the part to repair it in her coat pocket. Then she drives off.
What the hell happened here? It went from gripping psychological slasher film to a complete and utter disaster. There's no allegory here. There's no good reason for any of it to happen. He just ran out of plot and started making stuff up.
It's incredibly disappointing.
Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016)
Not About Film, Really
I"m about halfway through and I'm not sure if I'll finish. The main issue is that I signed up to see a movie about lost film being discovered. What I got was a long, drawn out history of the town it was found in backed by new age, space music. That's fine. It's bound to get to people about the actual discovery and preservation of the film, right?
Nope.
It appears to be the actual footage that was found, stitched into a history lesson. Yes, it's kind of cool to see the Black Sox world series game that was thrown. Sure, it's amazing to see the gold rush documented and the Ludlow Miners' Strike but...that's not what it was billed as. PLUS, you have to listen to the spacey, trippy, sleep inducing score that drones like bagpipes on morphine.
I really do feel cheated. Had it been billed as "here's all the footage that was found put in historical context" I might have watched it or not. I was in the mood for an actual film documentary about discovery and process.
The other amazingly annoying thing is the almost complete reliance on the titles, forcing you not to blink or you'll miss something. The titles for the films are sometimes on screen for less than a second. Since their placement is not standardized in one place, you have to search them out and frequently they're gone by the time you find them.
I'm annoyed.
Bloodletting (1997)
A Lot of Fun!
This one of those movies that you read the description and say, "Hm. Maybe this'll be good." And then you watch it and it's amazing! I'm sure that the one-star people are all "Duuuuude. This movie about serial killers is just weeeeeeeird." Guys? Serial killing is weird to begin with.
The plot is simple. Girl gets off seeing her best friend raped and killed by a famous serial killer. She tracks him down to become his apprentice and they move in together. Could that happen in real life? No. That's why it's a GODDAMN MOVIE.
The premise is a set up for some great jokes, interesting situations and a logical view about how two serial killers can (or can't) live together.
The script is tight. The leads are great. Most of the supporting cast, with some notable exceptions, give wonderful performances. It reportedly cost $10k to make so, yes, the production values are severely lacking but, you know what, for 10k they did a helluva a job.
Here's the analogy for the idiots who don't like this: My mom LOVES the movie Ghost. That movie is crap. *I* love the movie Truly Madly Deeply, which is basically the same ghost/love story but it towers over Ghost. Thinking she'd love it, I showed it to her. She thought it was "weird" because the ghosts watched old movies in the living room.
Don't be an idiot. Find this movie and watch it. It's so much fun!