What was the last movie you saw?

KGeo777 said:
Yeah that was my reaction. I felt it was strongly influenced by KRULL--the relationship between the captive women and the giant monster in that was similar. I am not a fan of the music and the songs at the end either.
Also, Jack does pretty much nothing of value in the story and as cool as Tim Curry's appearance is--and a couple of lines he has, he doesn't do much of value to me. It is very much style over substance.
I got more out of KRULL and HAWK THE SLAYER for fantasy thrills.

Robert Picardo's scene is really the highlight of the film IMO. Everyone talked about Curry but that witch is quite an achievement and the performance (while completely buried under rubber) is great. The last time I watched it--I was surprised how muted Curry is--his voice is altered, and he doesn't do much that is threatening actually. It is mostly posturing.
The water witch is the stand out for menace.
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There seemed to have been a number of similar(ish) fantasy movies made in the 80s. Willow, Legend, Labyrinth, Krull and The Dark Crystal are some of the better examples.

For me the best of them waa Labyrinth, as it had the right balance of action, humour and imaginatuon; Henson was really on top of his game with this one. Plus David Bowie was brilliant as the Goblin King. Also loved the puppet 'disco' at the end!
 
paranoid marvin said:
There seemed to have been a number of similar(ish) fantasy movies made in the 80s. Willow, Legend, Labyrinth, Krull and The Dark Crystal are some of the better examples.

For me the best of them waa Labyrinth, as it had the right balance of action, humour and imaginatuon; Henson was really on top of his game with this one. Plus David Bowie was brilliant as the Goblin King. Also loved the puppet 'disco' at the end!
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I like sword and sorcery but there are so many underwhelming examples of that.
Jason and the Argonauts is probably the best of those kinds of things.

It's hard for me to think of something with elves and goblins that I really like.


Labyrinth is the only one of those listed I didn't see because the Dark Crystal was not a fun ride for me despite memorable visuals and David Bowie would not have been enough of a magnet lure. But whenever I saw Jennifer Connelly in something--I would think of Labyrinth adverts.

Willow? Ehhh....that one doesn't work for me.

Krull has the advantage of not being grounded in any known mythology and just throwing all sorts of weird things at you (the fire horses) with familiar actors.



"I am Ergo the magnificent, short in stature, tall in power, narrow of purpose, and wide of vision."
 
Pre-Code Old Dark House Films Double Feature:

The Phantom (1931)

The title master criminal makes a wild jail break via somebody in a biplane, then jumping on top of a moving train. This exciting footage obvious comes from some other film (silent?) because it looks a lot more expensive than the stuff that follows. He sends a message to the DA that he'll be at his home that night. Present are not only a bunch of cops, but the DA's daughter, a reporter who sneaks in, the reporter's editor, and some comedy relief servants. Everybody jumps to the conclusion that the reporter is the Phantom.

See the big plot logic problem? This only works if nobody knows what the Phantom looks like, even though he's been on Death Row!

Anyway, some guy wearing a black cape laughs maniacally, threatens the DA's daughter. The various folks decide to look for the Phantom at a nearby sanitarium, leaving the DA at his place guarded by some cops. Bad idea.

The place has yet another comedy relief character, a guy with a fake Swedish accent. (No other patients are seen.) It also turns out that the doctor in charge of the place is a classic Mad Scientist, intent on using the DA's daughter in a brain transplant experiment. (Into whose skull? The movie never says.) The doctor's assistant, playing the Igor role, has a Fake French accent but doesn't do much.

Amazingly, the movie doesn't have a twist ending, and the Mad Scientist is exposed as the Phantom. (The only proof of this is that the editor and the DA point at him and say "That's the Phantom!")

Ultra-cheap, badly acted, and doesn't make an ounce of sense. Either so bad it's good or so bad it's intolerable.

The 9th Guest (1934)

Eight people with Dark Secrets, many of whom are already enemies of each other, get telegrams inviting them to a fabulous penthouse apartment for a party. A voice coming from a radio tells them they're there to be killed, one each hour. Proof that this isn't a macabre joke comes from the fact that there's a dead man, identity unknown until the end of the film, in a closet.

The intended victims can't leave, because the front gate is electrified. There's a bottle of prussic acid if they want to take the easy way out. Whodunit, and who will survive?

One interesting point is that the victims, for the most part, walk into their own traps. The first death occurs when a rich guy decides to put some of the poison into the drinks of the others, hoping that way to eliminate the killer. Poison on the cap of the bottle kills him instead. Another victim simply kills herself when her Dark Secret is exposed. Another is shot dead during a struggle for a gun, and the one who accidentally shot him kills herself by running into the electrified gets.

Nicely filmed, with decent acting. The set design is great. There's this groovy clock on the wall that consists of a lighted dial and, below that, a "pendulum" that's only consists of a lighted arc with a dark square moving back and forth, making a "tick tock" sound that amps up the tension.

Not bad at all, and a masterpiece compared to the first one.
 
STRAIGHT TIME - 1978 --This didn't go the way I assumed it would. I expected it to be a drama about how hard it is for an ex-con to make it on the outside--but then it took a different turn when Dustin Hoffman freaks out on his obnoxious parole officer (M. Emmet Walsh) and resumes a career of crime. The robbery scenes are intense especially with Harry Dean Stanton as his partner.
 
The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! (1972)

I dive back down into the microscopically funded gothic horror films of Andy Milligan. Be warned, the title is, by far, the best part of this thing.

In 1899, young woman comes home with from Scotland with her new husband. Present are her father (who will later claim to be 180 years old), her much older sister (who, we will later find out, was much too close to her father), a couple of brothers (one pretty much just an ordinary guy, the other hardly more than an animal, kept locked up in a room full of chickens), and her younger sister, a perpetually angry sadist who torments the mentally challenged brother. She also buys some flesh-eating rats (never seen eating flesh) in the rat-themed scenes that were added later and have nothing to do with the rest of the film. She also kills one of her weird friends, pretty much at random.

Incoherent and filled with long, long scenes of people just talking about irrelevant subjects. The director shows up in two roles, as a guy selling the younger sister rats and as a different guy selling the middle sister a pistol and turning her husband's silver cross into bullets. The werewolf stuff comes at the very end, via poor makeup, and there's a twist ending. Bad, bad stuff.
 
Tunnel (2016, dir. Kim Seong-hun). A man gets trapped underneath a collapsed tunnel, and the whole country watches the operation for his rescue.

Like most Korean movies, Tunnel is a mix of drama, comedy and social criticism. The rescue forces and the press are ridiculed and shown as incompetent and unethical (in most movies, it’s the cops); the protagonist is a car seller for Kia Motors, and his car doesn’t help him.

The director of this movie also directed the awesome Netflix Series Kingdom, which I still hope to watch till the end.

Oh, Bae Donna is also in it, and she brings her adorable dollface with her.
 
Andy Milligan's Poverty-Stricken Gothic Horror Films Of 1970 Triple Feature:

Bloodthirsty Butchers (1970)

Retells the familiar story of Sweeny Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, with no budget. Spends a lot of time with soap opera antics. Todd, although married, is fooling around with both the maker of human meat pies (she claims they've killed 285 people for their riches) and a music hall singer (who gets killed.) The human meat pie maker is also married, to a disabled husband. Naturally, the two unwanted spouses get killed. The human meat pie maker has a good female servant, due to be married to a good guy. She also has a bad married servant who is fooling around with a woman he's made pregnant (naturally, she gets killed) but he also tries to force himself on the good servant. The version I saw on YouTube cuts out the gore scenes, which is OK with me. All these films have terrible, inappropriate public domain music on the soundtrack, but this one is particularly bad, especially when it tries to convince me we're listening to music hall performances when we're back stage in a long, long, long scene of an argument between singer (who never sings) and her boss, followed by other people coming in and talking, talking, talking.

The Body Beneath (1970)

An anomaly, because it's set in modern times instead of pretending to be in the past. I'll admit that there's one mildly interesting concept; a soft-spoken clergyman who is actually the head of a family of vampires. He takes over Carfax Abbey (thanks, Dracula!) and gets his "brides" (women covered with pale blue makeup wearing wispy gowns that make them look more like fairies than vampires) to hypnotize modern women who are somehow related to his family so they can supply blood and, eventually, baby-making wombs. (I say "brides" to give a nod to the tradition, but this vampire is actually married, to a non-blue woman who never speaks and is constantly knitting [so she can kill somebody with the knitting needles, of course.]) There's a hunchbacked servant named Spool. The big scene near the end, when a whole bunch of vampires show up to debate whether or not to move to America, is filmed in sepia-like tones, with Vaseline (or something) smeared all over the lens to make things blurry, and with the vampires wearing all sorts of crazy costumes, the leader decked out in full bishop's array. Maybe the Milligan film with the most camp value.

Guru the Mad Monk (1970)

At some vague time in the past, the oddly-named Father Guru runs the Lost Souls Church of Mortavia (as a very modern-looking sign tells us) on an island somewhere in Europe. Acting almost like a good guy at first, he helps a woman escape from imprisonment at the place (where people go to be tortured and/or executed for various crimes) by giving her a potion that makes her appear dead, in Romeo and Juliet style. The catch is she has to remain at the church, and her boyfriend has to serve as a gofer for Father Guru. It seems he sells bodies to a medical school. Meanwhile, we find out there's a woman present who needs fresh blood to survive; no fangs or anything, but apparently a vampire of some sort. Also present is a hunchbacked assistant named, in traditional fashion, Igor. In the most notable scene, Father Guru (who is mad indeed, but not a monk) has an argument between his good and bad selves while looking in a mirror. Some church official shows up to kick Father Guru out, he gets killed, etc. Has the virtue of being less than an hour long.
 
Savages From Hell (1968)

Florida-based low budget biker movie. Starts with stock footage of a parade, intercut with brother and sister riding in a swamp buggy (kind of like an ATV with four big wheels and the open body way up high), supposedly in the parade. The siblings are the children of Hispanic migrant workers; brother has an accent, sister doesn't. Brother gets a steady job as a mechanic, so his folks should be able to stop moving around making a living.

After all this domestic drama goes on a while, trouble arrives in the form of motorcycle gang leader "High Test." He is attracted to sister, and, amazingly, she's attracted to him. Too bad he's got a jealous girlfriend. (She gets in a catfight with some random young woman, dressed like a housewife, over her attraction to High Test. The scruffy guy is a chick magnet.)

It all leads up to High Test kidnapping sister and taking her out to a shack in the swamp. Along for the fun is another mechanic, played by Sidney Poitier's older brother. Along the way we get stock footage of a swamp buggy race, and bikini-clad young women dancing on the shore, as if this were a beach movie.

Not a good film.
 
Back in the 1930's, Universal made some B mystery movies in association with the Crime Club, an imprint of Doubleday books, adapting novels in the series. Here are the first two.

The Westland Case (1937)

Man is on death row, convicted of murdering his wife. Looks like an open and shut case; he was divorcing her, he stands to inherit a bunch of money after her death, and she was shot with a rare type of gun he owns in a room that could only be opened, from either side, by a key only she and he had. A note arrives from some guy stating that he can prove he didn't do it, so the condemned man's lawyer hires a private eye to investigate the case.

The 'tec is a hard-drinking, perpetually tired guy with a comedy relief assistant. That's often a bad sign, but this film manages to integrate the comedy and drama pretty well. There's plenty of plot and action; early in the film the guy who sent the note is shot to death by some folks who just walk right into a crowded restaurant and do the killing in front of a bunch of witnesses. Later, another person who might have evidence is killed by a hit and run driver.

The Black Doll (1938)

Shady businessman receives the title object and is killed soon after. Plenty of suspects. Our hero is a private detective, the boyfriend of the dead man's daughter. He's more of a nice guy than a hardboiled 'tec. The first part of the film is deadly serious, with plenty of atmosphere; it's almost a horror film. Then a bumbling sheriff shows up, adding very broad comedy that is way out of place. (Contrast with the decently mingled comedy and drama in the first one.) Other than that, it's not bad.

Given that it's Universal making these things, they're a step above most hour-long B movies.
 
Victoria Silverwolf said:
The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! (1972)

I dive back down into the microscopically funded gothic horror films of Andy Milligan. Be warned, the title is, by far, the best part of this thing.

In 1899, young woman comes home with from Scotland with her new husband. Present are her father (who will later claim to be 180 years old), her much older sister (who, we will later find out, was much too close to her father), a couple of brothers (one pretty much just an ordinary guy, the other hardly more than an animal, kept locked up in a room full of chickens), and her younger sister, a perpetually angry sadist who torments the mentally challenged brother. She also buys some flesh-eating rats (never seen eating flesh) in the rat-themed scenes that were added later and have nothing to do with the rest of the film. She also kills one of her weird friends, pretty much at random.

Incoherent and filled with long, long scenes of people just talking about irrelevant subjects. The director shows up in two roles, as a guy selling the younger sister rats and as a different guy selling the middle sister a pistol and turning her husband's silver cross into bullets. The werewolf stuff comes at the very end, via poor makeup, and there's a twist ending. Bad, bad stuff.
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OH YES! I am now not the only person I know who has seen this horror!
 
When Evil Lurks (2023).
This is a very good Argentinean possession horror. Starting with a near dead, and corpulent, possessed person who the landowner decides needs to be moved before death so the possession is not passed on in the local area. It's not particularly scary, but is disturbing in parts and definitely has some shocks and entertainment value. Different to the run of the mill possession movie. Partly as a key point is human character flaws, including of the main character. Worth a watch!
 
Victoria Silverwolf said:
Andy Milligan's Poverty-Stricken Gothic Horror Films Of 1970 Triple Feature:

...

Guru the Mad Monk (1970)

At some vague time in the past, the oddly-named Father Guru runs the Lost Souls Church of Mortavia (as a very modern-looking sign tells us) on an island somewhere in Europe. Acting almost like a good guy at first, he helps a woman escape from imprisonment at the place (where people go to be tortured and/or executed for various crimes) by giving her a potion that makes her appear dead, in Romeo and Juliet style. The catch is she has to remain at the church, and her boyfriend has to serve as a gofer for Father Guru. It seems he sells bodies to a medical school. Meanwhile, we find out there's a woman present who needs fresh blood to survive; no fangs or anything, but apparently a vampire of some sort. Also present is a hunchbacked assistant named, in traditional fashion, Igor. In the most notable scene, Father Guru (who is mad indeed, but not a monk) has an argument between his good and bad selves while looking in a mirror. Some church official shows up to kick Father Guru out, he gets killed, etc. Has the virtue of being less than an hour long.
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I think I have seen this; weird.
 
Make Me a Star (1932) decades later, this was remade using the novel's title Merton of the Movies, with Red Skelton in the title role.

A nobody working at a small town grocery store dreams of becoming a movie star, just like the cowboy hero he adores. Merton Gill (Stuart Erwin) takes all he has, goes to Hollywood, and nearly starves to death. He cannot just walk into the studio that makes his favorite cowboy movies, because the guard at the gate. Finally, 'Flips' Montague (Joan Blondell) has pity on him, after he had literally been camping out at the office where extras are hired, and buys him a meal, and a train ticket home. It seems nobody had respect for his home-study acting school, but suddenly, Montague got him an extra part in a cowboy film, but he flubbed it, and after four failed attempts at one scene, they dismissed him.

Suddenly, somebody got the idea that this guy would be great as a parody of the cowboy hero he wanted to emulate. Too bad he hated those silly movies, especially ones with cross-eyed Ben Turpin in them. Just don't let him find out!

7/10
 
COUNTERPOINT 1967 - Overlooked Charlton Heston film with good reason--it's not bad per se just so odd in idea. He is a orchestra conductor who is captured with his musicians behind enemy lines in WW 2 and gets into a war of wills with Maximilian Schell, who wants him to play a concert. Anton Diffring (who else?) is the evil German who schemes to ruin the show. The banter is unusually witty--everyone seems to have a bon mot ready in reply to something.

"Prostitution isn't the only profession ruined by amateurs."
 
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The next two Crime Club associated B mystery movies from Universal (and probably the last for me, since number 5 doesn't seem to be on You Tube):

The Lady in the Morgue (1938)

The same sleepy, hard-drinking detective as in the first film in the series returns. A woman is found hanged in a hotel room. A fellow trying to find out if it's his runaway sister, as well as two different gangsters, each of whom thinks it's another woman. Then somebody steals the corpse and kills the guy in charge of the morgue. Things get pretty darn complicated, with another murder, an empty grave, and people who aren't who they seem to be. Decent mixture of drama and comedy.

Danger on the Air (1938)

The fact that the murder victim is named Caesar Kluck and our hero is named Benjamin Franklin Butts proves this isn't the most serious mystery ever filmed. Obnoxious sponsor of radio programs is killed in a way that isn't clear for a while. Heart attack? Poison gas in the ventilation system? Poison pills? Something else? Two radio station employees have to play detective, meanwhile falling in love. There's a fellow who imitates sound effects and a bunch of celebrities on the radio. Frothy satire of the radio business, the workings of which are of interest to modern viewers.
 
The Mystery of Mr. Wong (1939) dir. William Nigh; starring Boris Karloff, Grant Whithers, Dorothy Tree, Holmes Herbert (seen on Amazon Prime)

A despicable collector of Chinese art and artifacts is apparently trying to drive his second wife insane like he did with his first. He's also acquired a precious Chinese bauble, "The Eye of the Daughter of the Moon," which looks like a large, milky marble, and asked Mr. Wong (Karloff) to authenticate it. He's killed during a dinner party which Wong attends and at which, among others with ulterior motives, his wife (Tree), his secretary (Withers), and a criminologist friend of Wong's (Herbert) mingle. Who coulda dunit?

Based on two things, the James Lee Wong stories by Hugh Wiley and Monogram Studios wanting to cash in on the popularity of the Fox Studios' Charlie Chan movies. The make-up for Karloff is -- interesting; for instance, his hair is so plastered down it looks like a helmet (and maybe it is). More interesting is that Karloff doesn't change his voice, but speaks like a cultured Brit who eschews faux-Chinese aphorisms; note also a singular lack of a number 1 son and comedy relief. If you have a yen for old movie mysteries, this might fill the bill, but it's not really a fair play mystery -- there is information that solves the murder only revealed near the end.
 
AE35Unit said:
Ghostbusters, Afterlife (2021)
Not at all like the original but a decent nod to it with some fun moments.
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Agreed. The wife and I took the kids to the drive-in to see it Friday night. I'm a huge Ghostbusters fan, and I got a kick out of the nods and callbacks to the original films. I actually enjoyed this one a little more than Afterlife, but that might be because there was a bit more for the classic characters to do this time around (well, some of them), but also because they got away from Gozer and rehashing what was done before.

I've seen reviews and articles where it's compared to the "Monster of the Week" formula of the tv series The Real Ghostbusters, and while I agree with that, I don't think it's a bad thing.
 
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