Posts

So Evil, So Young (1961)

Image
"Girls caged without their guys!"  So the one-sheet for this movie screams, highlighted by a young woman in a nightie.  What are these young ladies getting up to at this reform school?  What kind of naughtiness are these bad girls capable of?

Well, this is 1961.  In England.  That means the poster is about as raunchy as things are going to get. 

Teenagers Lucy (Jocelyn Britton) and Claire (Bernice Swanson) decide to rob the house of Lucy's former employer.  While going through their haul, the owner arrives.  Claire knocks him over the head with a candlestick, and the girls flee.  Lucy knows it's only a matter of time before the cops come calling for her, but Claire was not able to be identified.  Lucy decides to trust her to hold on to the jewelry until she gets out.

While waiting to get nicked she decides to stop by a diner she frequents, only to find that Tom (John Charlesworth), a musician that she is infatuated with, has found a more permanent interest in Ann (J…
Post a Comment
Read more

Next of Kin (1989)

Image
Patrick Swayze made two action films in 1989 as Hollywood tried to figure out what to do with him after Dirty Dancing made him a major star.  I guess it was nice that he didn't keep making sappy dramas and such at the time, though his acting ability was often quite superior to the movies they placed him in.  Despite being silly and exploitative, Road Housemanaged to have just enough of the elements to make it a cult favorite down the road.  Next of Kin, unfortunately, remains just the other movie he did that year.

I say unfortunately because, while not as over-the-top entertaining as Road House, it is still a decent '80s action film and features a number of actors right at the beginning of their careers.

Truman Gates (Swayze) is a Chicago police officer,  Born and raised in Kentucky, he is on the outs with his relatives for abandoning their small-town life for the big city, where he lives with his musician wife Jessie (Helen Hunt).  His younger brother Gerald (Bill Paxton) ha…
Post a Comment
Read more

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

Image
I am often fearing that each time I review a movie from the Marvel Universe series that they are getting almost as repetitive as the movies themselves.  In truth, there are only so many ways to rephrase my opinion that, while the movie is okay, I feel like I'm watching the same thing over and over again. 

It is for that reason I was really looking forward to seeing Spider-Man: Homecoming.  The first two Sam Raimi directed movies were pretty good, even if the third was a silly mess that, instead of getting a chance for redemption, ended prematurely, with Andrew Garfield replacing Tobey McGuire in the role and beginning, again, with the origin story.  The Amazing Spiderman movies represented some of the worst handling of a superhero franchise, and a third movie was ultimately scrapped.

Thus it was nice when Spidey showed up in Captain America: Civil War, already bitten by a radioactive spider and whatever drama with Uncle Ben in the past.  No origin, just an overambitious, and freq…
Post a Comment
Read more

Wonder Woman (2017)

Image
While the Marvel Universe has had its ups and downs, the DC Universe has largely languished in a series of awful, empty spectacle films.  I have to admit I have largely avoided seeing many of their films just simply because I don't purposely seek out bad movies just to torture myself so I can write a snarky review.  I honestly watch movies hoping that I will enjoy them, which is why so many of my reviews tend to the positive.  I see no reason to slog through something like Suicide Squad to be the umpteenth person to verify that, yes, it's terrible.

Despite the poor quality of the other DC movies, Wonder Woman was hailed as the shining exception.  Patty Jenkins's film got the MRA trolls all up in arms just simply because it existed, while the contingent of critics that thinks even the lightest of box office fluff must have some sort of progressive political content hailed it as if no movie in the last century had ever had a strong female lead. 

Meanwhile, the truth is that…
Post a Comment
Read more

Alphabet City (1984)

Image
I know about as much about Vincent Spano as I do about Alphabet City itself in the 1980s.  I largely decided to watch this since I recently reviewed the Paul Morrissey movie Mixed Blood, which was filmed in the Lower East Side neighborhood itself in the same time period as both of these movies are set. I assume, with the dilapidated buildings and urban wasteland, that a good portion of this was filmed there as well.  Amos Poe, whose biggest claim to fame at this point was the 1976 film The Blank Generation, which introduced the world to New York City's punk scene, is definitely no stranger the environs.

Still, the movies couldn't be more different in tone and feel.  In many ways I was wondering just what type of film Poe was trying to make. 

Johnny (Vincent Spano) is an upcoming player in a mob family.  He controls the drug flow and all the business in the Alphabet City area of Manhattan.  He has had considerable success, enough so that everyone knows and fears him.  He lives…
Post a Comment
Read more

Mixed Blood (1984)

Image
Here is an element of truth: except for some of the obvious movies, or ones that I pick out specifically because they have not yet been reviewed on his site, I often have no idea about a movie before I choose it for review.  I typically check out the blurb to make sure it's a format that fits my blog, and that's really about it.  Typically when the movie starts playing, or I look up some info right as I'm starting it, I get surprises - and not always good ones.  But, by that time, I'm committed.

Paul Morrissey is not one of those directors I specifically seek out.  I largely know him from his two '70s Andy Warhol funded horror films, Blood for Draculaand Flesh for Frankenstein.  Both had their good points, but they were over-the-top camp.  It was really hard to take much of it seriously, which I think was largely the point.  I really never had much desire to check out anything else Morrissey did.

So, as I sat down to watch Mixed Blood and realized it was a Paul Mo…
Post a Comment
Read more

Massacre Mafia Style (1974)

Image
Who was Duke Mitchell?  That was the question I had when I saw the credits come up for this.  I was wondering if this was going to be another Italian production where someone used an American sounding name to hide the fact that it was a foreign film.  However, no dubbing, Los Angeles locations instead of New York or Rome; had to be American, but definitely not a typical Hollywood film.

I should have known who he was. Not from music, surprisingly.  He was a crooner, the "King of Palm Springs" in fact, and friends with Frank Sinatra.  However, recorded output from him is pretty scarce.  Since primarily I collect records, it may be a surprise that I didn't know who he was, but even someone with a large collection will not know 99 per cent of the artists that have recorded in the last 140 years unless they get something in their collection.  Surprisingly, I knew who Vic Caesar was immediately, even though he is an even more obscure crooner.

Mitchell's main claim to fame…
Post a Comment
Read more