Expelled Grey Matter

It is strange the way that Dario Argento's giallo films are given a bit higher regard than those of other directors, save Mario Bava.  Argento was heavily influenced by Alfred Hitchcock, to the point where he was once called "Italy's Hitchcock" before almost exclusively working in the horror genre, and he most certainly never set out to make an "animal" trilogy, as his first three films have come to be called.  Gialli just have weird, incomprehensible titles in many cases, so Argento just kept up the trend. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage had been a goal of mine to see for years, both because it is his most Hitchcock-like and also because it was hard to find in the United States.  It wasn't really until Deep Red that Argento started to go for exaggerated blood sprays that would become trademarks of his horror films, but it seemed that the same issues with getting the uncut versions of some of his films arose.  The only "Animal Trilogy" film

Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe kind of ended with a whimper instead of a bang.  Sure, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was an important movie for a number of reasons, but most of those had to do with circumstances outside of the MCU rather than pushing the story forward.  Namor the Mariner may figure in to the main plot - whatever that is at this point - in the future, but the important thing was to make a movie that served as a decent tribute to Chadwick Boseman, and by and large it succeeded.  In many ways it was better than the original Black Panther .  Whatever the current Avengers plot may be building up to it probably as little to do with Wakanda or Namor except for another background for a grand Avengers battle.  Instead it appears to be shaping up to involve Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), a character introduced at the end of the first season of Loki as being behind the entire agency responsible for keeping time on track and preventing incursions between universe

Sometimes I question whether a movie like Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers really needs a review.  It's a Fred Olen Ray film, which means expectations are quite low even if this happens to be the best Fred Olen Ray film in his long career.  A title like this is going to get watched by the people it is intended for., and i      t's not something that is going to be set up for viewing during an overnighter with the church youth group.   Ray can't help but do some cinematic mugging in about every shot in the movie.  At the heart it's a comedy, making fun of both outrageous horror and exploitation films while also riffing on 1940s film noire.  It works occasionally, but the ultra-cheap production values and the disappointment when it comes to showing the actual chainsaws in action - save for Linnea Quigley's dance toward the end - is quite palpable.  Jack Chandler (John Henry Richardson) is a private eye in Los Angeles, and he is currently on a case to find a missing teenager

Frank Henenlotter has tried to make it clear that he is not a maker of horror movies, but rather of exploitation films.  He is one of the few filmmakers that are proud to admit this, as exploitation films are usually thought of as artless attempts to earn a few bucks by promising lurid thrills and, more often than not, not providing what was promised.  To give Henenlotter his due he at least offers what it says on the box, whether it be a monster in a basket, a brain-eating parasite or, in this case, a woman made out of hooker parts.  Jeff Franken (James Lorinz) is an inventor and a bit of a mad scientist.  His fiancé Elizabeth (Patty Mullen) loves him despite his eccentricities.  When he builds a remote-controlled lawnmower for  Elizabeth is eager to show it off and unfortunately ends up getting in its way.  She is killed and Jeff picks up what he can find, storing her head and a few other parts in a freezer filled with an estrogen-enhanced blood solution until he can figure out how t

Philip K. Dick is one of those authors many directors go to when they want to make a "smart" science fiction film.  It may not always result in box office magic - it took years for Blade Runner to truly be seen as it was supposed to and to overcome the idea of being a failure - but a movie based on one of Dick's short stories or novels has a good chance of playing the long game.  It doesn't hurt that some of his earlier material, such as the short story "The Adjustment Team", is in the public domain. As with most things in public domain it also means that the writer and director, in this case both being George Nolfi, are able to do pretty much what they want.  It isn't like that's stopped most people adapting Dick material, most of it still in copyright, doing the same thing since the author isn't around to voice his displeasure or agreement.  Still, it does give one quite a bit of leeway, particularly since the original was about a non-descript

In 1967 a high school history teacher devised an experiment to teach his students about fascism.  While it has had its own documentaries and movies, the takeaway from his fictional movement, called the Third Wave, was how easily anyone could be persuaded through slogans and manufactured superiority to look down on others and revel in the power they believe they have.  The students, all potentially good people, got caught up in the whole thing to the point where it got out completely out of control.  Dutch director Rene Daalder may have been slightly influenced by that experiment, or just amused enough by the conventions of American high schools to see the roots of fascism already there.  For his second feature Massacre at Central High he constructed a strange, otherworldly environment, one where all the adults are absent and a group of kids rule the school and do what they want, with everyone else afraid to even do so much as talk about them for fear of word getting back.  Though prett

High school was hell.  It was better than elementary school in many respects, but throw a bunch of young people just hitting puberty into a microcosm of society where every little mistake seems like the end of the world and it is no wonder that some teenagers never make it out alive.  I know it was touch and go for me at times, and it doesn't help when teachers and counselors are constantly harping on a future in college that may never come if one doesn't spend enough time in some club just to put on a resume.   Once out much of it begins to appear as silly as it actually is.  Get decent enough grades and get into a state college unless a person needs those connections to move up in the world of politics or some field that is oversaturated and needs the Ivy League experience.  The immense effort put into being popular or maintaining a certain grade average disappears within a few months of dealing with rent and hoping there is enough money left over for food after paying for te

A lot of John Waters fans long for the days of Pink Flamingos and Desperate Living , but even by the time he did Female Trouble it was obvious he was tiring of having to come up with ways to shock audiences.  After Pink Flamingos that was pretty much just treading old territory, and he said at one point that he didn't want to be an old man making comedies featuring colostomy bags.  So, beginning with Polyester , Waters started cleaning himself up.  I don't think he ever aimed for the mainstream - Hairspray is a rather strange movie when one gets down to it, despite it being PG, while Cry Baby was an interesting flop of a follow up that still has its charms.  Arguably his best movie since his mainstream breakthrough with Hairspray is Serial Mom, a fact that Waters would be in agreement on. Beverly Sutphin (Kathleen Turner) lives in a sunny, well-kept Baltimore suburb with her husband Eugene (Sam Waterston) and two children, Misty (Ricki Lake) and Chip (Matthew Lillard).   She is

The selective outrage of critics and those who feel they must guard the gates of society against moral outrage often amuses me.  Take a movie like The Driller Killer , for instance.  It was director Abel Ferrara's debut feature film, partially funded by doing one adult film previous.  It's pure exploitation, but since Ferrara throws in connections to the New York art world as well as the punk scene, critics were willing to talk it up as art rather than trash.  William Lustig's  Maniac , a much better film that still invokes the grittiness of New York at the time and follows Joe Spinell as a serial killer with mommy issues, was trashed as being a misogynistic film that promoted violence just by the virtue of showing it.   I'll admit that I have issues with Ferrara's films.  Bad Lieutenant is probably the closest I've ever come to liking any of his movies, and that has less to do with Ferrara's pretentions and more with Harvey Keitel's performance.  If he

Joe Spinell was a character actor who knew all the right people, appearing in movies such as The Godfather, Taxi Driver and Rocky.  He often played sleazy characters, sometimes thugs or corrupt cops.  William Lustig had come from the porn business when making adult films was still risky and, in many parts of the United States, illegal.  Caroline Munro, in contrast, had a long career starring in b-movies that required here to wear next to nothing, but was a well-known actress and a former Bond girl.  Her husband had some money and was willing to fund Spinell and Lustig's low-budget serial killer movie if Munro got a part.  In addition, they managed to get Tom Savini, who had been noticed for his work on Dawn of the Dead , as their special effects artist.  For all intents and purposes - and what the critics seemed to think, some of them forming opinions and writing reviews of the movie without ever seeing the whole thing -  Maniac was originally considered the misogynistic, depraved

Part of the blame for this movie lies with McDonalds.  The purveyor of plastic food and plastic toys was not happy with Batman Returns  and its dark themes, struggling to find ways to market a tie-in with a movie that features a lecherous, fish-munching monster as its villain, not-so-subtle S&M themes and a plot to murder a few million people.  McDonalds absolutely refused to work with Warner Bros. on a tie-in with the next Batman film if Tim Burton remained as director. In all honesty, though the film has become a cult favorite, I found Batman Returns to be indicative of both some of Tim Burton's excesses as well as a bad sign of where the series was going.  Though the Joker was deformed, he was a normal, if evil, person at the beginning.  While it was stylized, Batman had a lot in common with the  film   noir  of the 1940s.  It had plenty of flaws, but Michael Keaton was not one of them, and Burton still hadn't had his ears filled without how brilliant he was.  It was si

Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz formed Troma Entertainment in 1974.  Initially involved in purchasing and distributing low-budget films, Kaufman also directed a number of sex comedies in the late 1970s.  By the 1980s, however, it was horror that was selling, and it would be what Troma would eventually become famous for.  Troma's take on horror, however, was rarely serious.  As bloody as the films were they often had purposely over-the-top acting and a puerile sense of humor.  It was 1984 that their particular style caught on with midnight movie fans and was aided by the new age of video rentals.  Although many of their films had small theatrical releases, it was on home video that Troma prospered, and one of the first of many hits was The Toxic Avenger .  A combination of violent horror film, mob flick and superhero movie, it was the studio's first major success.  Melvin (Mark Torgl) is a janitor at Tromaville Health Club.  He is developmentally challenged, and often the butt of

There are those films that are made for little more than to try to make money off the fact that most people would only see them on a dare.  Quality is of no concern, only the wretched contents enclosed within.  Ironically, those contents are usually quite less than what is promised, although occasionally one gets a bit more.  Some of these movies, like Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom have a reason, or purport to have a reason, for the depravity shown on screen.  Others, like A Serbian Film , use some sort of symbolism as a pretext when the truth is the makers just wanted to see what they could get away with.  Bloodsucking Freaks , originally known as The Incredible Torture Show, is kind of the latter, except without the pretense. Sardu (Seamus O'Brien) runs the Theatre of the Macabre in Soho, New York.  With the help of his lecherous dwarf Ralphus (Louis de Jesus) he kidnaps young women and physically, as well as psychologically, tortures them until they do his bidding.  Some, howev