Ah, the Butthole Surfers. Technically my 11th most listened to band of the last 18 years… But oh so much more than that.
In my teens, I was a metal guy… I primarily listed to metal (mainly Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Mercyful Fate, Saxon) and Hard Rock (mainly AC/DC, Van Halen, Def Leppard). But by 1983-85 all of those band’s started to suck, releasing lame album in attempts to become more commercial (well, not Mercyful Fate) and I needed a new musical direction. Cut to a fateful trip to our beachhouse with my sister and her “punk rock” boyfriend. The hearing of one song specifically led me down a whole new musical direction. Not only in terms of the style of music that I listened to, but also in terms of having “expectations of intent” in terms of what I think that musician’s should be expected to uphold. The Surfers provided a “purity” of non-commercial “we’re doing just what the hell we want, just because we want to” ethic that I have generally looked for ever since.
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I was a bit skeptical about this one…
The Dracula Saga
(★★★½)
Berta (pregnant with her first child) and her husband Hans are heading back to Berta’s homeland to visit her grandfather. When they get to the area, they find that the locals are full of superstitions and maybe even some concerns about her grandfather’s castle. Then, while on a walk, they find a wounded and bloodied young gal in the forest! Once the villagers bring the girl in to examine her, more crazy superstitious talk happens, especially from the priest who’s all up in arms about evil women and temptation!
Finally, they get the ride up to the castle! But, alas, it turns out that her grandfather isn’t just any grandfather… He happens to be Count Dracula! And he is very quite interested in the baby-to-come.
This was actually a pretty interesting take on the Dracula story, taking many of the standard elements (nervous superstitious villagers, Dracula and his three ladies, the crypt at the castle, gypsies, a young and naive couple), but put a bit of a different twist on the story. I quite liked it, though the narration at the beginning and the end was a bit awkward, and the final scene could have been skipped.
Cure
(★★★)
Another in the “how have I never seen this?” category. I got really into Japanese movies in the late 90’s and I think that this was the only “classic” from that period that I didn’t see. It was always on my radar, but I guess I was too focused on Miike, Takeshi Kitano, and Kinji Fukasaku to see a wider selection.
The story of a detective who is hunting a series of seemingly unrelated deaths that, may somehow be a serial killer, Cure has a pretty interesting idea behind it, and it definitely was suspenseful, but it didn’t really grab me otherwise.
Old People
(★★★)
This was pretty fun! A woman and her kids return to her home town for her sisters wedding. Which is a fabulous affair, of course. But most of the old folks in town seem bitter at their treatment at the old folks home and feel ignored. Especially with the exciting wedding party going on and, well, they decide to do something about it. Violent something. A lot of violent something…
I guess we will see if it’s true that old age and treachery will beat youth and exuberance…
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
(★★★★★)
I still can’t believe that they made any sequels or remakes of this! A perfect classic.
If there is a movie that I can say, more than any others, that any attempts to remake or follow it up only serve to undermine and disrespect the historical majesty of the original, this would be the top of the list. While, yes, I did find part 2 to be humorous, as with The Evil Dead, making a funny and overdone sequel just kind of damages and dilutes the greatness of the original.
Alita: Battle Angel
(★★★½)
This was pretty fun. I hadn’t heard of it so I had no idea what to expect, aside from that it starred Rosa Salazar who was my favorite character in the Maze Runner movies.
This story of the wealthy in their floating city versus the poor down below, is always a fun dynamic, And Alita is a pretty badass character and fun to watch! Except, of course, for the weirdness of combining CGI people with real people… That is very distracting and rather unpleasant to look at.
Oh and, this week we also watched The Apartment twice. Once at home and once in the theater. But re-watches of that classic are nothing new…
Hush
(★★★)
I’m a bit torn between this. It’s certainly suspenseful and the deafness of the protagonist is put to interesting effect, but the whole masked killer outside the window shtick is something that I’m a bit tired off (one of the best ways to disinterest me in a movie is to have the promotional material show the killer in a mask or a costume). And, after watching so many movies, It’s hard to keep a suspension of disbelief when people act like it’s perfectly safe and normal to put themselves into situations that are so clearly (in the movie world anyway) terrible ideas.
That said, it certainly kept me on my toes and was fun to watch.
Vertigo…
(★★★★½)
For the millionth time…
While I do love this movie just in general, and especially the character of Midge… My favorite bit is Henry Jones as the coroner. His snipes at Scotty are just great, especially since Scotty becomes such a creepy weirdo after the inquest.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
(★★★★½)
I don’t know when I first saw this… I would guess on TV in the 70’s… But, back then, some of it really stuck with me and I’ve had bits of it that I have thought about recurringly over the years. I assume I’ve seen it since then? But, even so, it’s been too long to have much of a firm memory beyond the general idea and those memorable scenes, so it was great to rewatch it!
In Close Encounters, we follow two stories: firstly, vehicles that disappeared years ago in the Bermuda Triangle are turning up, crew-less, and un-aged, in weird areas of the world. Most odd would be the ship Cotopaxi, which vanished 50 years early in the Atlantic, but turns up now in the sands of the Gobi desert. A team of scientists led by Francois Truffaut (??) and Bob Balaban are chasing these weird occurrences down.
At the same time, weird power issues start occurring in Indiana and some people start becoming fixated on subliminal images or feelings that they are having. Most notably would be Roy Neary. This is a great performance by Richard Dreyfus; watching his weird fixation in piling things into pillars is really pretty interesting, and, once he gets into his “move the garden indoors”, and you see how much he is freaking out his family, you really have to wonder just how far gone he is.
Of course, these threads come together at a very exciting moment!
Honestly, the big UFO reveal is possibly just about the best reveal of anything I’ve seen in a movie. It seems so much different then other alien contact things I’ve seen, and the combination of audio and visual and the sense of amazement really makes it something. Even 48 years later it still resonates well and looks great.
Poltergeist
(★★★★)
Haven’t seen this in 20 years but I think it’s held up pretty good. Especially since I got to see it in a theater this time!
I still like the cast, the TV screen, the whole haunted house bit (which usually is not a genre I like) I think is interestingly done, the build-up to it (from fun with spirits to waaay not fun) is great, and Tangina (the medium) is still one of my all-time favorite movie characters.
Strange World
(★★★★)
Second time through and I still really like this!
The fun newsprint intro, the cool biome “sets”, the floating cars, and just the story in general. The first part of the movie, while it does look great, feels like it’s overdoing the “perfect happy family” background a bit. Maybe it isn’t but just seems like that to me because because I’m ready for adventure!
Because what an adventure it is! The strange world of the title is a wondrous place. Strange, colorful, unusual, varied, just really interesting to look it and to visit. Looking like a cross between HG Wells, Fantastic Voyage (the movie), and No Man’s Sky, I find it always engaging.
And I liked the storyline a lot with the voyages that turns out to be not what was expected. And, again, the whole thing looks great and is filmed with charming characters, even if they turn up the charming a bit too much.
Sputnik
(★★★½)
Starting off with two cosmonauts who, oddly, realize something is moving around on the outside of their space capsule as they are returning from space. One of them survives the reentery and is sent to a facility to be evaluated. The fellow who runs the facility calls in a civilian psychiatrist to further evaluate him and it becomes quite clear that something is very wrong with him…
This was interesting, suspenseful, and exciting! I quite liked it.
June winds down and, I think, this has probably been my biggest movie month so far, like maybe ever…
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The New York Ripper
(★★½)
While it’s pretty spot on with its gritty depiction of the underbelly of early 80’s new York, with portrayals of sex clubs, prostitutes, etc. It’s basically the story of police trying to catch someone who is going around slashing women. And I ended up with the same feeling I had a few months ago when I finally got around to seeing Maniac: I don’t know if I am up for watching movies anymore where the main point is meanspirited slashing and killing women, just because they are women.
Aside from that, not a bad movie, just not my cup of tea. I guess it was a giallo, which is a genre I don’t normally like. In that case, it was certainly more engaging than most of those. And was also one of the more engaging Fulci movies I’ve seen. But I mainly watched it because the idea of “donald duck” voiced phone calls reminded me of the Weepy Voiced killer so I was curious how they’d play that.
Ash
(★★)
The story of a crew who have landed on a distant planet and, well, something went wrong. Not clear at all at first, as everyone seems to be violently dead, except for our main character who doesn’t remember anything (except for in annoying flashbacks). It starts off with a very unclear story, some unconvincing attempts at jump scares, unconvincing scenes of grooviness, and far too many scenes that sound and look like bad Industrial music videos.
Frequently reminiscent of The Thing, with some Alien(s) moment. It’s just not particularly engaging. But, for what it’s worth, I found the second half (once they do the weird maneuver with the rock that starts all the problems and the movie starts being more clear what is actually going on (and we get some pretty interesting gore/creature effects)) to be more engaging than the first half.
Kind of a hodge-podge this last week of June…
Lastly, The Dark and the Wicked
(★★★½)
This was certainly creepy and kept my attention. Maybe even too creepy at times, but I have a hard time with “ghost/unseen forces” kinda movies.
As a creepy movie, I’d probably give it 4 stars, but the whole “the devil wants this one person’s soul and somehow can’t get it without killing other people first” story just doesn’t make any sense to me. I mean, why wait for one person to die to get their soul if you can easily kill a bunch of other people? Feels like a whole lot of supernatural work for a small payoff… Are some people’s souls just worth more effort? I don’t get it.
Oh and pro-tip: if you rush to the old homestead and yer mama says she doesn’t want you there… Maybe you should just leave.
Predator: Killer of Killers
(★★★)
This was interesting. As a general rule, I’m not too into animation (well, aside from Pixar and the old LOTR and Hobbit cartoons), and the story was pretty basic, but there was some nice animation here: I especially found the Samurai portion to look good and the final part was pretty exciting.
The Predator’s, though, looked not too good… Which was a bit distracting.
Heavy Trip
(★★★★)
Now this was great fun! Ridiculous, yes, but Metal and fun!
A group of small-town Finnish metalheads are just riffing around through their days, play cover songs and record their demo. When a chance meeting, awash with reindeer blood, with a metal festival promoter ignites their hopes, they (Impaled Rektum, that is) head off on a road-trip of errors to try for their big break!
A lot of fun, very funny, and with some quite charming characters, this Heavy Trip was also a very memorable and enjoyable one.
And, thinking of the newly released 28 Years later, I re-watched 28 Days Later, for like the 10th time or something…
28 Days Later
(★★★★)
Still a classic, all these 23 actual years later. Still one of the best zombie movies, even without any zombies. And even though I always knows what’s about to happen, it’s still suspenseful… And, sadly, it still has that lame ending tacked on…
But I don’t think I really have anything to add to my old review here: 28 Days Later 17 years ago