The Second mrbasehart Film Challenge!

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

The Sadist is a terrific little suspense movie.....

BTW, you did notice that the mute, loony girlfriend was played by the same actress who plays Roxy in Eegah! - and very admirably, I think.

Then again, I don't know how many episodes of MST3K you've seen.   

[mrbasehart]

The Sadist is a terrific little suspense movie.....

BTW, you did notice that the mute, loony girlfriend was played by the same actress who plays Roxy in Eegah! - and very admirably, I think.

Then again, I don't know how many episodes of MST3K you've seen.   

I've seen Eegah, but like a car-crash, I can't stop looking at Richard Kiel. 

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

The Sadist is a terrific little suspense movie.....

BTW, you did notice that the mute, loony girlfriend was played by the same actress who plays Roxy in Eegah! - and very admirably, I think.

Then again, I don't know how many episodes of MST3K you've seen.   

I've seen Eegah, but like a car-crash, I can't stop looking at Richard Kiel. 

Fair enough.  But what are you looking at while he's not on the screen...?

Arch Hall, Jr.'s creepy hair?

[mrbasehart]

The Sadist is a terrific little suspense movie.....

BTW, you did notice that the mute, loony girlfriend was played by the same actress who plays Roxy in Eegah! - and very admirably, I think.

Then again, I don't know how many episodes of MST3K you've seen.   

I've seen Eegah, but like a car-crash, I can't stop looking at Richard Kiel. 

Fair enough.  But what are you looking at while he's not on the screen...?

Arch Hall, Jr.'s creepy hair?

And his creepy inhuman eyes.  It works pretty well for The Sadist, though.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

And his creepy inhuman eyes.

And the water in the tires of his dune buggy......   

[mrbasehart]

American Madness is a 30s depression-era drama about an independent bank and its staff.  A clerk in debt to local mobsters helps them steal $100,000 from the vaults and when the news gets out, it causes a run on the bank by its terrified patrons.  The great Walther Huston plays the bank's maverick chairman, who's already under pressure by his fellow executives to merge with the big boys, and now must deal with this crisis unless the bank close and he lose everything.  The synopsis might make it sound a little more like a thriller, but the real drama only happens in the last 20 minutes, and until then, it's almost a slice-of-life look at the workers in the bank and their benevolent employer.  It's well put together and genuinely gripping in its final moments, with a typical Capra-esque finish to the proceedings.

[gojikranz]

White Dog is a 1980 movie about a young woman who runs over a beautiful white alsatian on her way home one night.  Unclaimed after she pays for its recovery, she takes it home only to discover that it's been trained as a "White Dog" which is a dog that's trained from birth to attack black people.  Despite protests from her friends, she finds an animal trainer (a black one) who tried to reprogram the dog before it can attack another person.  It's a very simple story, but what it manages to do rather brilliantly is present a portrait of racism in general, embodied in the dog as a feral, unthinking force that has no rationality beyond what colour it can see.  The movie also has the slightly unsettling air of a horror movie, and may at first glance be lumped in with a film like Cujo, but it's far more intelligent and composed than that. 

glad you liked it.  i really liked this when i saw it and was sad that it apparently has a reputation as a racist film because it was banned by executives too stupid to get it.

[THE QUEEN!!!]

Other than Walter Huston, who I love in American Madness is Sterling Holloway. "I know, I could have knocked you over with a feather."

[mrbasehart]

White Dog is a 1980 movie about a young woman who runs over a beautiful white alsatian on her way home one night.  Unclaimed after she pays for its recovery, she takes it home only to discover that it's been trained as a "White Dog" which is a dog that's trained from birth to attack black people.  Despite protests from her friends, she finds an animal trainer (a black one) who tried to reprogram the dog before it can attack another person.  It's a very simple story, but what it manages to do rather brilliantly is present a portrait of racism in general, embodied in the dog as a feral, unthinking force that has no rationality beyond what colour it can see.  The movie also has the slightly unsettling air of a horror movie, and may at first glance be lumped in with a film like Cujo, but it's far more intelligent and composed than that. 

glad you liked it.  i really liked this when i saw it and was sad that it apparently has a reputation as a racist film because it was banned by executives too stupid to get it.

Especially in light of some of Fuller's other movies, which prominently feature interracial tolerance. 

Other than Walter Huston, who I love in American Madness is Sterling Holloway. "I know, I could have knocked you over with a feather."

There was one thing that creeped me out though, and that was the clerk's eyebrows.  They looked like they were painted on and was hard to look at.

[THE QUEEN!!!]

Other than Walter Huston, who I love in American Madness is Sterling Holloway. "I know, I could have knocked you over with a feather."

There was one thing that creeped me out though, and that was the clerk's eyebrows.  They looked like they were painted on and was hard to look at.

I don't even remember that. They probably were painted on. Probably a remnant from silent film make-up, eh?

[mrbasehart]

Other than Walter Huston, who I love in American Madness is Sterling Holloway. "I know, I could have knocked you over with a feather."

There was one thing that creeped me out though, and that was the clerk's eyebrows.  They looked like they were painted on and was hard to look at.

I don't even remember that. They probably were painted on. Probably a remnant from silent film make-up, eh?

Luckily I've still got the file.  One quick screensnap and here we are:



Like I said: creepy.

[mrbasehart]

I had a hard time finding Vase de noces under its Belgian title, but searching for its translation - The Pig-Fucking Movie - got me where I wanted(?) to go.  Ooh boy, here we go: It's setting and time are unspecified, though it can be inferred that this is a post-apocalyptic movie and about a farmer who falls in love with a pig.  And then fucks it (from behind, doggy-style, if you must ask), and then surprisingly, the pig gives birth.  The man tries to raise the 3 piglets as his own children, giving them clothes and feeding them at the table, but when they reject him for their mother, he hangs them in the courtyard.  When the sow sees this, she commits suicide and overcome with guilt at his actions, he tried to bury himself alive within the sow's grave.  Unsuccessful, he eats a lot, and I mean a LOT, of his own boiled poop and then hangs himself.  The end.  Completely silent and in black and white, the movie tries its utmost to shock and repel the viewer with its various obscenities, but whereas with someone like Jodorowsky or even John Waters, I can see a point behind those acts, Vase de noces only seems to want to shock.  I suppose you could read between the lines of what the movie's showing you, but all I really got out of it was: men will just about fuck anything if they're unsupervised.

[THE QUEEN!!!]

that is creepy--shudder

[Sharktopus]

NNNNNNYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSS?

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies

This is on my Netflix queue. Maybe I'll nudge it up closer to the top...

[mrbasehart]

A Night to Remember is a British take on the Titanic disaster of 1911.  There's not a whole lot of plot going on, and it doesn't feel the need to give the movie a romantic interest to somehow give us a reason to care, so unlike its most modern take, it's affecting and at times quite moving.  Kenneth More plays the ship's second officer and designated lead of the movie, a practically minded man who seems to take control when the ship begins to sink, and organizing the orderly departure of the women and children onto lifeboats, despite increasing pressure from the ever growing challenge of the task.  What impressed me most about the movie was its measured tone, and the lack of hysterics makes the whole ordeal feel real and more human.  There were a couple of things that I would've liked to have seen more of, like the plight of the third-class passengers, but this is a fine film nonetheless, and the best Titanic movie I've seen (so far - I haven't yet seen the Nazi's 1943 version).