Fast and the Furious
Fear in the Night
Feast of Flesh
Fiend of Dope Island
Fight, Zatoichi, Fight!
Find a Place to Die
Friday the 13th
Friday the 13th, Part 2
The
Fan (C, 1996)
Robert DeNiro is a baseball-worshiping knife salesman whose life is falling
apart. He loses his temper with clients (a really bad habit in a knife
salesman!) and doesn't make many sales, his ex-wife is getting a
restraining order against him, and his plan of being a hero to his son
is not going well due to his selfishness and crazy temper and his attempts
to push baseball on the boy. About the only thing that's going well for
him is that his favorite team, The Giants, have signed top hitter Wesley
Snipes. But Snipes is having his own run of bad luck, too. Unable to deal
with the rest of the things that are messed up in his life, DeNiro decides
to try to help Snipes out of his slump by killing the player (Benicio
Del Toro) who has Snipes's lucky number 11 uniform. But Snipes, being
a sane person, doesn't show the proper appreciation for this, and DeNiro
gets mad. A good return to Travis Bickle territory for DeNiro, and the
film hits on all levels - quality script, direction, and performances.
(This is immaterial, but here's a fun thing you can do: Snipes's character's
name is "Bobby," so whenever you see DeNiro cheering for him, you can
pretend he's congratulating himself on the great acting job he's doing.
"Attaboy, Bob-bay!" Well, it cracked me up, anyway... ) -zwolf
Fantasy Mission Force (C, 1984) AKA Dragon Attack,
Mini Special Force, Mai nei dak gung dui
One amazingly insane and stupid kung-fu thingie-whatsis starring Jimmy
Wang Yu and Jackie Chan. It's World War II and the Japanese are attacking
the world from a base that appears to be in uppermost Canada(?). Commanders
from various countries (with Abraham Lincoln representing the U.S.) try
to find someone to deal with the problem. After considering James Bond,
Snake Plissken, "the bald-headed detective" (Kojak, maybe?), a woman with
an eyepatch, and Rocky Balboa, they settle on Wang Yu. He starts recruiting
an attack squad from various criminals, Dirty Dozen style,
starting with Jackie. Jackie looks like a chimney sweep or something,
wearing a top hat and doing a musical number. Sometimes he also has a
Mexican bandito mustache, and sometimes he doesn't, although if he's supposed
to be a disguise expert or something, I missed it. Jackie fights a big
hulking fat guy, and then a guy dressed like Sherlock Holmes shows up,
and a woman in leather blows up a shack with a rocket launcher, and then
a bunch of Japanese guys dressed as Scotsmen show up and the woman takes
one guy who may be trying to look like Elvis hostage. Then some
guys with hoods over their heads ride in on horses, and a guy dressed
as a knight causes some slapstick by jamming the point of his oversized
WWI-like German helmet into someone's ass. Some more hooded guys (wearing
Tarzan get-up aside from the hoods)jump out of a roof like ninja, and
some Amazon women show up and put our heroes (if these are supposed to
be our heroes - there's not enough of a plot to tell) lock them up with
their heads through boards that have dominatrix-bodies painted under the
head-holes. Then some Japanese Nazis show up in old cars from the 70's
that have swastikas painted on them (except for the one that has a Star
of David) and raise havoc. Or, at least I think they do - by that point
I couldn't devote much more attention to this dreck. If there's a plot,
it's well-hidden, and if it makes any sense to you then you're probably
either on something or are well-versed in fever dreams. Either hilarious
or dull, depending on your mood. Mine tended toward dull today, and the
forecast calls for more dull tomorrow. People say Killer Meteors
is Jackie's worst, but they haven't seen this. I actually like Killer
Meteors. Most budget DVDs of this look and sound like they were filmed
off a screen in someone's basement. -zwolf
Farz (C, 2001)
Made-in-India combo of Cobra, Lethal Weapon, and... Cop
Rock! And layer heavily with the John Woo film of your choice. Some
terrorists are running rampant, blowing things up (with some of the craziest,
most extreme explosions you've ever seen - Bollywood has some ace pyro
guys) and a police commissioner nearing retirement is getting fed up with
them. So he gets saddled with loose cannon Sunny Deol, a guy who bears
a vague resemblance to Sylvester Stallone and who sports a comb-over hairstyle
even though he's not going bald. Sunny is ultra-tough and doesn't play
around with criminals; he just wades in with a .45 in each hand and guns
them all down... stopping every once in a while for the prerequisite Bollywood
song-and-dance numbers, or to munch carrots. Sunny is so tough and cool
that it's hilarious already, always blowing things up and not even flinching
when they go off - smirking, in fact. He steals lines from Cobra
("Crime is the disease for which I am the cure!") and stunts from Lethal
Weapon (jumping off a building and taking a criminal with him... 'cept
with Sunny there's no air bag waiting!) and he drives his partner insane...
especially when he starts a whirlwind romance with the guy's daughter,
and even ends up marrying her - which makes her a target for the killers.
Then he kills the brother of a master terrorist and things intensify even
more, with the terrorist enacting a relentless (and brilliant) campaign
to discredit and disgrace Sunny and drive him insane before killing him.
But making Sunny crazy and enraged might not really be such a brilliant
idea, seeing as how he kills dozens of people even when he's calm and
happy. In between the songs and stylish slam-bang mayhem, there's a parody
of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire with kids winning Pepsis, and
our hero bench-presses a bus! Oddly, people start spontaneously speaking
English for a few sentences now and then, my favorite outburst of which
is an impassioned "I... hate... your... FACE!" Unbelievable action epic
with lots of violence and plot twists that don't stop. Granted, it's all
so over-the-top that it's not anywhere near realistic, but so what - it's
entertaining as hell! Check it out... all nearly 3 hours of it. -zwolf
Fascination (C, 1979)
From one of the opening images - a woman in a lacy white dress standing
spotless in the middle of a blood-splattered slaughterhouse - you know
you're in for something weird and artsy. But, what else would you expect
from Jean Rollin? A runaway thief finds an ominous old castle to use as
a hide out, and there he finds a pair of pretty lesbians who have fun
teasing him. It soon becomes clear that something strange is going on
and he's in over his head, but he can't leave because some other criminals
whom he ripped off are outside gunning for him. The girls warn him to
leave before dark, because some "guests" are coming. One of
the girls goes out to deal with the criminals - she stabs one while having
sex with him, then picks up a scythe and dispatches the others, like a
combo reaper/angel of death. Then darkness falls and the guests - described
as "death" - start arriving. They're a club of seductive women
who worship Satan, drink blood, and tell the thief that at midnight they're
going to ritually murder him and use him as a main course. He doesn't
take them seriously and he's having a ball dancing and playing games with
them, but then midnight comes.... Beautiful-looking film has more plot
substance than most Rollin films, mainly because the sex (while still
there in abundance) isn't the primary motivation for the film. Lots of
nudity but pretty mild gore. Classy horror sleaze. -zwolf
Fast and
the Furious (B&W, 1954)
John Ireland is a hood on the run after killing a trucker, and he kidnaps
Dorothy Malone to go along for the ride because she has a fast car. She
proves to be quite a handful, though, and gives him a lot of trouble.
The cops are looking everywhere for him, so he figures out the only way
to stay incognito is to join in a car race to Mexico. Meanwhile, he and
Dorothy start to like each other. Fast-paced '50's drive-in fodder that
was one of Roger Corman's first production jobs. Has absolutely nothing
to do with the Vin Diesel movie of the same name. -zwolf
Fatal Needles Vs. Fatal Fists (C, 1980)
A couple of top law officers - the guy with the hat and the guy without
one - catch a lot of bandits until they meet up with some guys called
The Four Devils and the guy with no hat accidentally kills the guy with
the hat (who was the more charismatic of the two... I think it was because
of the hat). The remaining guy (Don Wong, who you'll also like in The
Hot, The Cool, And The Vicious) becomes a drunk out of guilt, swears
off fighting, and starts working as a laborer. But then his friendly employers
get targeted by a colorful gang of thugs (including a little guy with
Elvis sideburns, a huge fat guy with a toupee in the middle of his chest,
and a guy with long white hair who kills by throwing acupuncture needles.
This provides our hatless hero with a chance at revenge, and redemption.
Better than usual plot, and the acupuncture needles make interesting weapons.
The DVD contains an interesting and very informative commentary track
by Ric Meyers (a kung fu film buff) and Bobby Samuels (a martial artist)
that's worth the (modest) price of the disc all by itself. -zwolf
Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid (C, 1986)
AKA Zeisters
Two drug-taking lowlifes are stuck with a huge, drooling, farting, crying,
puking fat guy who's severely retarded and has a pinhead haircut. They
take him to town and the viewer gets to laugh uproariously at his handicaps
and see jokes about retards being shot, called names, and depicted as
monsters. Sound ugly? That's because it is. This indefensible low-budget
piece of shit from Troma productions is vulgar, unfunny, mean, and juvenile.
Bad taste is fine, but this is just degrading, even by Troma standards.
It was directed by John Golden. Fuck you, John, I hope you and your momma
get cancer. That'd be funny, wouldn't it, John? Ha ha, fascist bastard.
I'm glad you never got to make another movie. -zwolf
Fathom (C, 1967)
Silly espionage fluff with Raquel Welch as a skydiving expert named Fathom
Harvill, who gets recruited by a British spy agency to recover something
called "The Fire Dragon." At first it's supposed to be a device that can
trigger an H-bomb, so Fathom agrees to the plan, but she later discovers
that it's really just a jewel-covered golden dragon that's been stolen
from the Chinese government. Everybody wants the artifact, including a
horny, cold-blooded megalomaniac, nearly-insufferable and oddly-prissy
Tony Franciosa (who delivers his lines like he's in love with himself
and calls Raquel "poppet" waaaay too much... I usually like the guy, but
this role makes you want to slap him, but that's part of the character,
I guess), and the British team... any and all of whom may actually be
double-crossing bad guys! A very-much '60's caper flick with happy music,
pat dialogue, and goofy plot devices. But, Raquel makes for extremely
good eye candy, and this utilizes her nearly as well as any film she's
ever done (except maybe Hannie Caulder, which desperately needs
a DVD release if anyone with the power to do so is reading this) and it's
all pretty entertaining, anyway. Heck, I know I watched it enough times
back when our local TV station used to play it in their late-night movie
lineup, back when we only got three channels and there were no VCRS or
DVDs (*Editor's Note: For you young people out there, this era was known
as the 1970's). So, maybe it's a sentimental favorite... -zwolf
Fear in
the Night (B&W, 1947)
Star Trek's Dr. McCoy, DeForrest Kelley, stars in this moody film noir
flick with a brooding atmosphere courtesy of the Cornell Woolrich story
("Nightmare") upon which it was based. Kelley dreams that he kills a man
in a mirrored room and then locks the corpse in a closet... and he wakes
up with a key in his hand and blood on his wrist. He becomes obsessed
with finding out what happened while he was asleep, and starts trying
to track down that mirrored room, using deja vu as leads. During a rainstorm
he finds the house with the mirrored room and tries to get help from his
detective brother-in-law, who helps him discover what caused the killing
and who's really responsible. Fast-paced, stylish noir with a very dark
feel to it. -zwolf
Fear Is The Key (C, 1972)
Barry Newman is a scuba expert who is forced by gangsters to help them
recover sunken jewels. He doesn't want to help them, because they killed
his wife and child years ago. In the claustrophobic climax, he and tow
of the hoods are in a small submarine and Barry turns off the oxygen.
Barry also leads some cops on a great car-chase, too - after Vanishing
Point, wouldn't you be disappointed if he didn't? Rugged, tough
actioner from a novel by Alistair Maclaine. -zwolf
Fearless Fighters (C, 1973)
Some gold-seeking bandits kill a man's family, and he breaks out of jail
to seek revenge. He allies himself with a whip expert and his sister,
and a traveling swordswoman. The bandits form a gang to combat them, and
recruit two martial arts experts called The Soul Pickers to help. One
uses golden disks that emit a solar ray, and the other uses a big metal
crescent in each hand. A guy called One Man Army also aids the evil doers.
The bad guys are also helped by a group of Vampire Phantoms who disguise
themselves as statues. One of the good guys falls off a cliff and destroys
an arm and leg, but an old master replaces them with bionic weapons. Great
kung fu movie with swordfighting instead of hand-to-hand, better-than-usual
photography, and loads of colorful weapons and neat camera tricks (which
seem to make up for a lack of true fighting skill in some of the actors).
Total fun superhero-fu! -zwolf
Feast of
Flesh (B&W, 1967) AKA The Deadly Organ
A crazy pervert in monster get-up goes out drugging women to make them
into sex slaves whom he can control by playing an electronic organ. He
also kills them by shooting them up with heroin, then dumps the bodies
on the beach. Meanwhile swingers at the South American nightclubs are
partying away, providing him with loads of potential victims. The dialogue-less
scenes of him injecting women and then kissing them (with his monster
mask still on) in his shadowy beachhouse are pretty weird, but the partying
and police-investigation all get pretty tedious. The movie seems built
mainly around people making out and brief titty-exposure scenes, none
of which are as explicit as director Emilio Vieyra's softcore horror flick,
The Curious Dr. Humpp. -zwolf
Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse
41 (C, 1972) AKA Joshu sasori dai 41 zakkyobou
Second in a Japanese women-in-prison series, this stars Meiko Kaji from
the Lady Snowblood films as Sasori ("Scorpion"), a woman
who's been wrongly imprisoned and is on a vengeance hunt. She's so dangerous
that they keep her locked in a dark, cold, wet cell. When an inspector
comes and they let her out, she tries to jab a sharpened spoon through
a guard's other eye (apparently she got the other one in the first movie).
So they chain her to a log and let the guards gang-rape her as a lesson
to the others. Soon she stages a breakout from a prison truck and does
some hideous things to the guards before leading some of her fellow inmates
through the mountains. And that's where things get weird and mystical.
They meet a crazy old woman with a knife, whose house falls down around
her. She dies and a big wind springs up, covers her with leaves, and when
they blow away again, she disappears. Then the cops start catching up
to them. When some tourists rape and kill one of the girls, waterfalls
turn to blood and Scorpion hijacks their bus and lets the girls torture
them. When the abuse spreads to the innocent tourists the movie becomes
a surreal production number about infanticide. At a roadblock the girls
push Scorpion off the bus as a decoy, and the cops capture her and use
her to try to free the busload of hostages... and she plays a trick, getting
revenge. Very strange and effective hybrid of exploitation and art, poetic
scenes mixed in with gore and sleaze. And it works! Kaji is stunningly
beautiful and her acting is haunting, even though she says less than a
half-dozen words the whole film; she has a feral, thousand-yard stare
from hell... she's convincingly dangerous. Damned cool, completely punks
out Xena. -zwolf
Female Vampire (C, 1973) AKA
Erotikill, La Comtesse Noire, The Bare-Breasted Countess,
The Loves of Irina
If you have to see one Jess Franco film (and believe me, you don't), this
is supposed to be the one - his best work. Lina Romay wanders foggy forests
wearing a cape, boots, and a belt... and that's it. She's mute and looks
like somebody killed her puppy right before she went catatonic. Still,
men don't ask any questions when she wanders out of the woods and bites
them on the penis. She laments her fate in voice-over narration and drives
a car with a flapping-bat hood ornament, for she is Countess Irina Karlstein,
a descendant of a long line of vampires. Director Franco himself plays
Dr. Roberts, a VanHelsing type who wants to put an end to the countess's
suckfests. Meanwhile she's solemnly going about her business, gnawing
the crotches of every man or woman she meets. Killing arouses her, so
she frenziedly masturbates over the corpses of her victims. She can also
turn into a seagull (maybe it's supposed to be a bat - everything in the
world of Jess Franco is "close enough" - hey, it flies, what's
the diff?) by flapping her arms. When she can't get a person, she sucks
her thumb or a bedpost. She also visits a lesbian torture dungeon, just
for variety. Then she meets a guy she really likes and is torn between
love and bloodlust... and that's about as close as we get to any kind
of plot. Franco's old fave, Dr. Orloff, shows up. He's blind but still
does gynecological autopsies! Pretty light on story and no gore (the scenes
from the Erotikill version at least smear some blood around her
mouth), but loads of softcore porn and cheapshit camerawork, with occasional
moments of art and atmosphere. Franco's best is still pretty sloppy, but
this has some redeeming values... or lots of 'em if you're a horndog who
can't bring yourself to watch hardcore. Lina Romay is pretty haunting
in her uninhibited, deadpan performance. -zwolf
Fiend of
Dope Island (B&W, 1961) AKA Whiplash
Charlie (played by former Tarzan Bruce Bennett) is a whip-wielding boss
who owns everything and everybody on his small island in the Carribean,
growing marijuana, dealing guns, and overacting with great enthusiasm.
He abuses everybody around him, but they don't dare stand up to him until
his right-hand man is surred on by "Yugoslavian bombshell" Tania Velia,
a woman Charlie had shipped in for himself. She thinks Charlie's a scumbag
and his cantina a dump, but she tries to manipulate him and does a lot
of dancing, but that does no good, so she and Charlie's pal lead a native
uprising against him, and if you thought he was overacting before... Dude
must drink waaaaaay too much coffee, and use it to chase down meth-amps,
because there's nothing left of the scenery but sawdust when he's done
with it. Decent pseudo-sleazy island-adventure flick made a must-see by
Bennett's jaw-droppingly hyperactive performance. He's so enthusiastic
about his role that he's acting as fast as he can... it's like one big
long spasm! He looks like he could fly to pieces at any second, and that
makes the otherwise-standard story more compelling. -zwolf
Fifth Day of Peace
(C, 1969) AKA God With Us, Crime of Defeat, Last Five
Days of Peace, Dio e' Con Noi, Die im Dreck krepieren
Franco Nero and his friend are deserting German soldiers on the run as
WW2 is ending. Hundreds of other German soldiers are being put in prison
camps when Franco and his friend show up and turn themselves in, little
knowing that a German Colonel von Bleicher is still commanding the loyalty
of the German prisoners in the camp, and he's still exercising strict
discipline. When some prisoners try to escape without checking with him
first, he has them whipped to death. When he finds out that Nero and his
pal are deserters, he wants them executed for it. A Canadian captain in
charge of the camp has a power struggle going with von Bleicher, who has
the audacity to ask for guns so he can execute the deserters, claiming
it's not about the war, but about military principle. When the request
is refused, the Germans protest by banging on their mess kits, en mass,
nonstop, taking shifts so the monotonous noise never ends. Will the Canadian
captain decide that the struggle to save a couple of deserters is worth
it... or will he knuckle under? It'll only cost you a couple of bucks
to find out, but be aware that the DVD's not great quality. Not bad military
drama, with an Ennio Morricone soundtrack. -zwolf
Fight For Your Life (C, 1977)
AKA I Hate Your Guts
Riveting low-budget suspense flick about a black family held hostage by
three brutal thugs. The hoods - one Latino, one Chinese, and a redneck
leader (William Sanderson, who's amazingly different from his funny Newhart/root
beer commercial characters - he's completely despicable here!) - call
the family every racist name in the book and generally abuse them. The
father (named Ted Turner!) Is a preacher and doesn't believe in fighting
back, but the incredibly nasty hoods push him far past his limits, and
the family must take some much-needed vengeance. With a little nudity
and mild gore, plenty of tension, and particularly scurvy criminals. Rather
crudely made but very effective, should have you on the edge of your seat,
and if it shows anybody how ugly racism can be, so much the better. -zwolf
Fight, Zatoichi,
Fight (C, 1964) AKA Zatôichi kesshô-tabi, Blind
Swordsman: Fight, Zatoichi, Fight, Zatoichi 8
The eighth Zatoichi film begins with a close-up of our blind swordsman
hero almost stepping in horse shit, and, of course, it gets better from
there. Some officials are on the hunt for him, and a lot of other blind
masseurs pull a "I am Spartacus" trick to help him give them
the slip. Then he gives his palanquin ride to a woman and her baby, not
knowing that enemies were lying in wait for him, and they kill the woman,
thinking he was still in the palanquin. Zatoichi takes the baby under
his protection and sets out to return it to its father and avenge the
murdered mother. So, Ichi doesn't only have to contend with fending off
killers, but has to change diapers as well... sometimes simultaneously!
He still finds time to do a little gambling and, as usual, proves impossible
to cheat. A money-grubbing woman helps him look after the baby so she'll
have a chance to pick his pocket. Things get a little bizarre when Ichi
tries to nurse the baby, but overall the combination of Ichi's gentleness
with the innocent child and his brutal slaughter of some truly unscrupulous
enemies gives star Shintaro Katsu plenty of chances to show off not only
his fighting skill but his acting range as well, including a flair for
comedy (which, not surprisingly, often stems from incidents where the
baby pees on somebody). The twist ending also delivers some strong pathos,
and the fiery climactic fight is inspired. -zwolf
The Final Comedown
(C, 1972)
Well-thought-out, more political than usual Blaxploitation (it's almost
not exploitative... but then it includes plenty of sex and violence to
keep its hand in that pool, too). A young black militant's story is told
through interconnecting flashbacks as he's dying of a bullet wound received
in a war with the police. Played by Billy Dee Williams, he's very intelligent
but his impatience and rashness lead him astray, and open to manipulation...
but such anger is hard to avoid, since he gets turned down for jobs when
they find out he's black, he gets hassled by cops who think he stole a
car he bought, and he has to watch is friends trying to escape into drugs.
And finally, some well-meaning but flaky and incompetent white hippie
types don't back him up like they promised and leave him hanging in a
bad situation. The structure of the film is pretty smart; whenever the
rhetoric of the flashbacks starts to get a bit heavy, they go back to
more action scenes, which aren't badly done and include occasional blood-spraying.
Doesn't hang together to be as powerful as it could have been, but definitely
not just another black-action film. Worth seeking out. Also stars genre
stalwart D'Urville Martin. -zwolf
The Final Countdown (C, 1980)
Kirk Douglas stars as the captain of the modern nuclear aircraft carrier
The U.S.S. Nimitz, which, with full crew and modern jets, gets whisked
back in time to the day of the raid on Pearl Harbor. Kirk must decide
whether or not he should attack the Japanese forces and perhaps change
history. Watching modern jets dogfighting old Japanese Zeroes is kind
of strange, but there's not much action overall. Interesting concept,
though. Also stars Charles Durning, Martin Sheen, Katherine Ross, and
James Farentino. -zwolf
Find a
Place to Die (C, 1968) AKA Joe... cercati un posto per morire!
After a rockslide caused by fending off bandits who are after their gold,
a man is trapped under debris and has to send his pretty wife to a disreputable
town for help. She finds this help in the form of a sweaty young man who's
apparently driven to desperation by listening to a senorita sing the bad
theme song. He was court-martialed from the cavalry and is hunted by the
law and so he doesn't want to go there, because there's a torture-loving
gang of Mexicans roaming that area. Money convinces him, though, and they
gather a group of hard-luck guys who can use guns and head out to free
the trapped husband. Soon they find dead bodies left by a bandit leader
named Chato. Chato's found the husband first and tortured him to death,
so the rescue party decides to take the gold instead, but Chato's gotten
that, too. And he still wants the woman, so he sets up a standoff against
them. Plenty of action and a fast-moving story, but this lacks much of
the usual spaghetti-western style, coming across as more of a traditional
American product. But not a bad one. -zwolf
Fist Of Iron, Feet Of Steel
(C, ?)
...and brains of stone! Sorry, couldn't resist. Actually, this is a pretty
good kung fu flick. A martial artist beats up some hoods on a bridge (only
using one hand!) and makes them mad, so they come to his house, slap his
mom around, and beat up his friends. He gets righteously pissed and, although
he promised not to fight, he comes back to bust their heads. One of the
main hoods is Yang Sze/Bolo Yeung, that incredibly muscular Chinese guy
who's in so many of these movies. All the head gangsters wear hats that
usually stay on even during fights. Stylish! Some crooked gambling with
beans is also featured, as is some whorehouse humor. Good, bloody fights,
including an amazing end battle with tonfa clubs and a staff. Better-than-average
chop-socky. -zwolf
Fists, The Kicks, and The
Evils (C, ??)
This is a retitling of god-knows-what. Some evil creeps (including Bolo
Yeung, who's amazingly keeping his shirt on in this one - you can hardly
recognize him!) start taking over kung fu schools and charging merchants
protection money. Bruce Liang has to go up against them when they murder
his father for knowing Crane Fist. Another teacher who's already dying
from a previous fight with Bolo trains Bruce in Crane Fist before Bolo
catches up to him and murders him. Bruce continues his training under
an old master (kind of a Simon Yuen figure - this seems to be a variation
on Jackie Chan movies). He starts ramming his hands into a bucket of rocks
and smashing walnuts with a crane-form hand. Then he goes for revenge.
It's about as standard as kung fu movies get, plot-wise, but it's very
well handled and features good fight scenes (and lots of 'em - the climactic
fight goes on for 10 minutes straight), so even if you've heard this one
before, you'll like it again. Some plots are just classic, y'know? -zwolf
The Five Deadly Venoms (C,
1970's)
Kung fu classic about a rather goofy student who has to seek out five
superwarriors from The Poison Clan, each of whose identity is a secret,
and each of whom has been trained in a fighting style based on a different
poisonous animal - snake, centipede, lizard, toad, and scorpion. Better-than-usual
Chinese martial arts film plays like a video comic book, with super powers
(amazing speed, iron-hard skin, the ability to walk on walls, etc.) and
phenomenal fight scenes, and even a decent plot and some visual flair.
One of the best. -zwolf
Flareup (C, 1969)
Luke Askew, who looks a little like Chuck Connors with an even more embarrassing
haircut, kills his go-go dancing ex-wife because she wouldn't take him
back. He also decides to gun down Raquel Welch, another go-go dancer whom
he blames for "corrupting" his wife. He snuffs another dancer,
so Raquel gets wise and changes locations, but an idiot from her old club
(the "Pussycat A-Go-Go") tells the psycho where she is, and
the chase is on again. Raquel gets a new boyfriend who helps her deal
with the assassin. Good suspenser with Las Vegas and L.A. scenery, go-go
dancing, a goofy music score that everybody seems to love for some reason,
and, o' course, Raquel, Raquel, Raquel! Good pacing, total 1969 atmosphere.
Don't miss if you're into that kind of thing. -zwolf
Friday
the 13th (C, 1980)
Critics hated it and would later call it a harbinger of all-things-bad
since it helped start the slasher movie craze, but nobody can say it wasn't
influential. Plus its gore effects are still a hell of a lot better than
you get nowadays, because Tom Savini studied medical texts while FX artists
nowadays just seem to study other slasher films. An infamous camping ground,
Camp Crystal Lake, a.k.a. "Camp Blood," is re-opening years after it was
closed down because a couple of counselors were murdered. Soon after it
opens, the murders start again, lots of 'em, via great gore effects -
slashed throat, arrow emerging from throat, axe in the face, a beheading,
etc. - and that's basically all the plot you need. Which is good, 'cuz
it's all the plot you have. Led to sequels with no end in sight,
but the best are Part 2 and Final Chapter. -zwolf
Friday
The 13th, Part 2 (C, 1981)
A lot of people in short pants getting killed. It's very difficult to
elicit sympathy for people in short pants. Anyway, the first sequel was
also the first "Jason" film, and he's scarier here than in the others
- he wears an Elephant Man-style pillowcase mask and has long hair and
beard stubble and wears overalls so he seems more like a crazy mountain
man instead of a crazy... electrician, or whatever the bald coveralled
hockey-masked version resembled. The camp counselors are an especially
unappealling, not-very-characterized lot, such at the guy with the hat,
the girl with the farty Volkswagen, the girl whose only redeeming feature
is a nice butt and that's not nearly enough, the guy in the wheelchair,
obnoxious nerd "Ted," etc. - absolutely nobody you won't be happy to see
impaled, slashed, or bludgeoned. And thusly do they go, via ice pick,
garrote, machete, the infamous spear-through-two-bodies-at-once, a hammer,
a pitchfork... damn near everything done in Mario Bava's Bay of Blood.
Jason's creepier and not as cartoonish here, and the gore effects aren't
quite as flashy as those Savini did for the first one, but Carl Fullerton's
work is quite serviceable. One of the better entries in the series, although
time - and a thousand imitations that have since made cliches out of any
innovations - haven't been particularly kind to it. -zwolf
Frogs (C, 1972)
"Today the pond... tomorrow the world!" Before this film was
released, frogs were nowhere near the top of the "most frightening
animal" list... and the release of this American International Pictures
masterpiece did absolutely nothing to change that. But it's still a damn
cool eco-horror flick, despite the low-fear-factor of its title heavies.
A freelance photographer (Sam Elliott at his most clean-cut) is taking
pictures of swamp pollution, and then falls in with a family of spoiled
rich folk. The patriarch of the family, Ray Milland (none of whose movies
ever air on television before midnight, I think) is especially abrasive
and responds to an overabundance of frogs by trying to poison them. This
just drives the swamp life to converge on his property, seeking revenge.
Snakes, spiders, lizards, Spanish moss, leeches, alligators, quicksand,
snapping turtles, and, yes, frogs, all bring their moist-and-slimy vengeance
down upon the foolish humans. Unless you have some kind of phobia, this
ain't all that scary, but it's not boring. Weird music score, lots of
croaking (no pun intended), a funny little cartoon clip if you stick through
the credits, and one of the classic movie posters of all time - a frog
with a hand sticking out of its mouth. (Nothing like that is in the movie,
but that's okay...) -zwolf
From Hell (C, 2001)
A Hughes Bros. film, you'll either love it or hate it... such is their
polarizing power. Same goes for Johnny Depp, who's solid enough in his
role as an opium-addicted police inspector who uses his psychic visions
to solve crimes. Heather Graham is also good, though a beautiful hooker
with perfect teeth in Victorian London is as tough to buy here as it is
in My Fair Lady. Basically, this is a shallower retelling of the
graphic novel of the same name by Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell, which
may be the definitive graphic novel of the 20th century. I can
only recommend the film to those of you who've already read the book,
as it takes care to explain in detail much of what the film glosses over
or cuts out all together. I enjoyed this film. -igor
Full Contact (C,
1992) AKA Xia dao Gao Fei
Crazy damn hard-ass Hong Kong action flick directed by the god of such
things, Ringo Lam, and starring an at-his-most-badass Chow Yun Fat. When
Chow's buddy ends up owing money to a gang of psychotic criminals - a
prissy-but-deadly magician, a mohawked steroid case, and a laughing sadistic
slut who's named "Virgin" for the same reason that huge guys are often
called "Tiny" - Chow tries to help out, but even though he's in full-on
one-man-army mode he gets betrayed and messed up pretty bad. Some monks
take a few bullets out of him, replace some missing fingers with prosthetics,
and as soon as he's healed - sooner, even! - he starts gearing up for
some cold-blooded, single-minded revenge. Meanwhile his betraying "friend"
has been rising in the criminal ranks, and has regrets for betraying him.
Chow may give the guy a chance to make it up... at a price. Things slow
down a little in the middle (or, more likely, anything's going to seem
slow after the slam-bang opening) and the plot gets a little complicated
(clumsy subtitles don't help much) but overall this is one of the most
badass strings of celluloid that John Woo didn't have anything to do with.
Memorable dialogue: "Masturbate in Hell!" -zwolf
Funny Games (C, 1998)
Bizarre German art-horror in which a well-to-do family on vacation are
terrorized by a couple of clean-cut, well-mannered young men in tennis
outfits. They come over to borrow some eggs and start playing homicidal
games with the family, humiliating, torturing, and terrifying the crap
out of them. Things don't go the way you expect, and a few really odd
things happen that turn the viewer into a conspirator, testing reality
and playing on your sense of guilt, so while the smirking little psychos
are playing games with the family, the director is playing games with
the viewer... even sometimes intentionally letting you get bored with
the violence by having people sit unmoving and silent for minutes at a
stretch (negating the "movie" part of the movie), and referring
to the viewer directly and re-winding footage when things don't go the
psycho's way. This could have been brilliant, but it's a little too smug
and smart for its own good and so the black humor isn't quite as disturbing
as it should have been. Still, it's intense, out of the ordinary, and
worth checking out. -zwolf
The Furious (C, 1981?)
If you're a Bruce Le fan (yep, that's Le, not Lee - I actually like some
of Bruce Lee's imitators... sue me!), you'll be the one who's furious,
because the video box makes outrageous lies claiming Bruce is in this,
and he's not. A vicious drug dealer called The Rattlesnake beats up his
rivals and even burns some of them alive. The police do everything they
can to stop him, but since the back of the box says, "Only Bruce
Le can put an end to 'The Rattlesnake'," I guess the sumbitch is
gonna escape after all. Better script than usual, but a little less action
(there's still plenty, though). The movie's not bad, but Best Film &
Video, who put it out on tape, are some lyin' bastards. Stars Lo Lieh
and Ku Fung (?!?). Has a little nudity. -zwolf
Fury in Shaolin Temple (C,
1979)
Gordon Liu kung fu! Two fathers exchange infant sons to raise them in
alternate kung fu styles in order to defeat some bad guys plaguing the
land, who want to invade China but have the Shaolin Temple in their way.
To learn their secrets, the bad guys steal Shaolin's secret techniques
manual. Gordon (one of the sons) is introduced by footage of him working
in the kitchen that I swear I've seen in another movie. Then there's waterfall
footage (maybe from Shaolin Drunken Monk). Anyway, his kitchen
duties have trained him in Shaolin Kung Fu, and given him background for
his mission, learning Ghost Fist so he can combine it with the other son's
Dragon Fist and vanquish the bad guys. It's not bad but it's kind of disjointed
and looks like a patchwork of several films. Things unrelated to the plot
happen and kind of get in the way of coherency, so it seems padded. But
it's not boring... -zwolf
Futureworld (C, 1976)
Sequel to Westworld in which Peter Fonda and Blythe Danner visit
Delos, the ultimate resort, where people can visit a medieval city, ski
on Mars, and play around with all kinds of robots. Fonda gets to watch
one of Blythe's dreams where she makes out with Yul Brynner, and he also
fights samurai robots, faces a robot double of himself, and discovers
an evil plan to replace world leaders with robot duplicates. Sort of like
"Stepford World." A robot with no face made the cover of Famous
Monsters Of Filmland. -zwolf
