What was the last movie you watched?

[Charles Castle]

My first impression of Suitable Flesh (2023, directed by Joe Lynch) during its first act was that it didn't feel like a horror movie at all. It felt like one of those direct to video "erotic thrillers" of the late 1980s/early 1990s. Do you know the ones? They often starred former centerfold Shannon Tweed (who in her defense was a pretty good actress in a limited range) and/or Andrew Stevens. Suitable Flesh has the same shot on video look to it and the same baffling erotic impulses. I mean, sure. The film starts with an autopsy about to begin, and a psychiatrist visiting her friend and colleague after that colleague has been locked in a padded cell. And this all happens at "Miskatonic Medical School." But once that mental patient begins her story, you can queue up the candles for a night of soft-core. Or maybe not. Because this film doesn't get very naked, even if it does include oral pleasures. And once the film gets to the horror parts of the program, it goes at it full bore. It goes so over the top that I found myself giggling at two of its more outre` set-pieces. The second impression I had in its early going was that this was a film with a serious case of gender. The source material is Lovecraft's "The Thing on the Doorstep" which has as protagonists Lovecraft's usual neurasthenic male academics. This film gender swaps the leads and then mixes the novelty of female sexuality into the story's body-hopping shenanigans. Old Howard would run screaming from this, I'm sure.

The plot is related by Dr. Elizabeth Derby, a therapist in private practice, to her friend, Dr. Daniella Upton, who is a psychiatrist at Miskatonic Medical Center. Derby has been brought in because she's showing signs of paranoid schizophrenia and because there's a dead body involved. According to her, it all began when a young man named Asa Waite came to her office complaining that his father, Ephraim, was switching bodies with him and that if it continued, the switch would become permanent. In the middle of his story, Asa receives a phone call from his father, then has what appears to be a seizure, after which, his personality is much changed. Asa comes on to Derby, but she brushes him off and ushers him out of her office. Later that night, she imagines having sex with Asa while having sex with her husband, Edward. When Edward is asleep afterward, she goes to Asa's address and is confronted by his father, who is ill. He seems to be hanging on to life out of spite. Ephraim has an old book with strange drawings and unfamiliar letters in it, and when Elizabeth notices it, he threatens her with a knife. She leaves. The following evening, she's summoned to Asa's house again, where Ephraim appears to be dying. When she tries to administer his pills, Asa tries to prevent her. He claims that they must destroy Ephraim's body before he can invoke the spell that will transfer his mind into Asa's body a third and final time. But they are too late. Ephraim speaks the words, and Asa has another seizure, after which he is again much different. He seduces Elizabeth, and speaks his father's incantation into her ear while they are in the middle of intercourse, briefly transferring her out of her body and into his. Ephraim, however, isn't dead yet, and claims to be Asa in his father's body. Asa--or Ephraim in Asa's body--murders his father and cuts off his head. Unfortunately for Elizabeth, whatever is inside of Asa now covets her body. Things get messy from there.

This is a loving forgery of the films Barbara Crampton made with Stuart Gordon in the 1980s. It's more From Beyond than Re-Animator, but has elements of both of them. Crampton, who stars as Dr. Upton and who produced the film, has gotten as much of the band back together as she could manage for this film and dedicates the whole thing to Gordon's loving memory. The screenplay is by Dennis Paoli. Brian Yuzna is among the executive producers. The film lacks only Jeffrey Combs, perhaps as old Ephraim Waite; the part is played by Bruce Davison. Crampton herself is a secondary heroine as Dr. Upton. Her career renaissance continues apace and this might be the best film she's made since You're Next. If the whole thing can't match Gordon at his own game, there's no shame in that. He was a singular talent. The end result is still pretty good, and manages the not inconsiderable feat of capturing the spirit of Lovecraft even when the letter of the story is drastically different. This was one of Gordon's main gifts.

The film's heavy lifting is done by Heather Graham as Elizabeth Derby (the character in the story is "Edward Derby," a name given to her husband). The film requires her to assume multiple personalities over the course of the film and she mostly convinces the audience that those personalities are the body swapped characters played by the other actors. I imagine that there was some workshopping among the four principle actors where they decided on specific character cues that would unify their performances, though the filmmakers have used props for this, too. In truth, I wouldn't have thought Heather Graham a capable enough actor to pull this off, but she surprised me in this film. You pretty much always know who is in charge behind her eyes, which is a neat trick. The other actors are similarly able to convey who's driving--Bruce Davison is an underrated actor while Judah Lewis and Barbara Crampton are both genre vets who know what the material demands of them. None of the other actors--except maybe for Crampton--shoulders the burden of the film like Graham does, though. On the evidence here, I should probably reevaluate my opinion of her abilities.

The body swapping shenanigans here are extrapolated into gender-swapping shenanigans by casting women in the two main roles while leaving Asa and Ephraim the way you find them in Lovecraft. As a result, you get a certain amount of lascivious interest in female sexuality from a male perspective here. When Ephraim first jumps into Elizabeth, it's during sex and he treats it as a novel experience. The second time, he pauses to feel her up before having sex with her husband. At some point he tells Upton that he "thinks" he was born male, but having now experienced sex as a woman, he's no longer sure. There's a strong thread of transgender wish fulfillment in this movie and the body swapping trope is common in transgender fan fiction. But whatever wish fulfillment might be present here, there's an abject horror of identity death in this film that comes along with it. And an even larger horror of being "trapped in the wrong body." For a film that isn't really interested in transgender themes, it gets tangled up in them in spite of itself. This is a trans movie without any trans people, unless one takes Ephraim at his word. I don't know whether to credit the film for not finding horror in transness specifically--it's main horror is the death of identity--or to shrug it off because the filmmakers maybe didn't notice what they were doing. I can't imagine such a thing in 2023, but you never know.

If you're going to be trying to do a Stuart Gordon horror movie, there's a certain obligation to provide the audience with one or two scenes of outrageous violence. Gordon was in the one-upmanship business, and you had better be ready to play if you come near his cinema. In this, Suitable Flesh doesn't disappoint. The murder of Asa when he's in Ephraim's body is as stomach-turning as anyone could want, and it's placed relatively early in the film. The film then does that scene one better when Elizabeth must defend herself against Ephraim in Asa's body, and winds up running him over repeatedly with her car. I won't give it away, but the shot in which this is done is really clever. If none of the gags in this film are the equal of Dr. Hill peeling a skull like an orange in Re-Animator while Herbert West snaps his pencils, well, some senses of grotesque humor are unique.

Director Joe Lynch isn't totally a slave to Stuart Gordon or Charles Band for his effects. He knows how to place the camera, and he knows when to move it a little or a lot. When the plot of the film flies off the handle, so too does the camera. When the film reaches its nasty ending, he lets the world spin off its axis both metaphorically and literally. This is a radical horror movie in the end, in which the audience is not assured that all is right with the world. The form of the film sees no reason to even suggest such a thing.

[Pastor of Muppets]

I watched The House Bunny last week.

Playboy bunny Shelley is abruptly kicked out of the Playboy Mansion.  The next day she wanders around a nearby college town and stumbles upon Zeta Alpha Zeta house, an unpopular sorority full of dumpy, socially awkward girls.  Zeta house is in danger of losing their charter because they do not have enough pledges.  Shelley shows up and gives the girls makeovers and teaches them how to throw good parties and teaches them social skills and how to attract boys.

It's hard to figure out what to make of this movie. On the one hand, you have this group of about 8 strong willed, independent women who are taught to essentially discard their personalities and make attracting boys the most important thing in their lives.  That seems kind of regressive to me.  On the other hand, they're in a sorority and it seems like this is something they signed up for.  You have to be vapid and shallow to attract like minded girls who would want to join your sorority.

Still, it's a fun and enjoyable movie.  Anna Faris is simply adorable and I couldn't imagine anyone else starring in this.

[Charles Castle]

What an odd collection of talent on display in The Burning (1981, directed by Tony Maylam). It was written by Harvey and Bob Weinstein of all people, and it's littered with soon to be familiar faces, including Holly Hunter and Jason Alexander. Rick Wakeman provides the music. Tom Savini provides the grue. From all that, I think it's Savini who's responsible for the movie's cult status (I have a lot of friends who love it). Really, there's not any reason to see this beyond the many and varied special effects gags, a fact that landed this film on the infamous "Video Nasties" list. This too, contributes to its cult, because there's no surer way to build a cult than to be banned by the bluenoses.

The story here is pretty stock. A pack of kids at summer camp play a prank on the camp's caretaker that goes horribly, horribly wrong. The caretaker is horribly burned. A few years later, most of the kids responsible are still at camp, now as teenagers, and the caretaker is out for revenge. He's pretty indiscriminate about it, too. He's internalized his hatred of the kids responsible into a hatred of ALL kids. Soon enough, the bodies are piling up.

For the most part, this isn't very good. It looks just like any other seventies-era summer camp movie, complete with dodgy day for night shooting. It is interesting, perhaps, to see a proto-slasher movie made before the "rules" of the slasher movie were codified. There is no Final Girl here. Nor is there any element of punishment for moral failings. It doesn't matter how good or bad you are, you're likely to get a pair of hedge clippers in the chest in this movie. The killer does travel around the film via copious off-screen teleportation, though, which is a hallmark of the form. That said, Savini's effects are pretty damned good. He was at the height of his creativity at this point. Savini also generally directs his own scenes, and there's a notable shift in quality when there's a special effects gag on screen.

In all reality I don't really like slasher movies, but I'm trying to deal with this with equanimity. It's better than most. Not as good as others. It gets docked tons of points, however, for not setting any of its victims on fire despite putting a flame thrower into its killer's hands near the end of the film, and you know, being titled "The Burning."

[stethacantus]

I saw The Burning in theaters near thew end of it's original run as part of a double feature with Porky's. The audience seemed to love it. I recall them cheering "Run, Alfie run!" for the nerd character that the killer was chasing. Halloween had been in theaters three years earlier, and Friday the 13th a year earlier, so the final girl trope was already well established. But when it came to splatter films, the final girl formula was not yet a formula. What had been was basing your spatter film on a holiday. And by the time The Burning came out, basing your splatter film on a well known campfire horror story. What made the final girl trope the official formula of the genre was the Friday the 13th franchise which was not very original and kept repeating the same identical plot for every film. But any splatter film from the mid 70s through 1984's Silent Night, Deadly Night showed a wide variety of plots with the only thing in common was that characters would be killed off in some gory manor.


When Taekwondo Strikes ( 1973 )
I guess if there is any theme this week, it is films who's plots depend on characters doing a lot of stupid mistakes. With my order from Amazon being held up, I tried to find my copy of Furie, but could not. I did find my Angela Mao collection, and realizing I had not watched these films in a few years, stuck them in the viewing queue. This film was actually a starring vehicle for Jhoon Rhee, a Taekwondo  master based in California who was friends with Bruce Lee. It was Lee who insisted that Rhee become a movie star, and this became his first and last film as Lee died soon after it was released. Rhee plays the leader of a rebellion who are trying to drive the occupying  Japanese out of Korea. The problem is his implosive students ( Carter Wong and Anne Winton ) keep getting in fights with the Japanese secret police, ultimately resulting in Rhee being captured and imprisoned. Helping him out is the equally impulsive Chinese immigrant Miss Wan ( Angela Mao ) who's temper gets a bunch of Japanese killed, who then retaliate  by killing her mother. Also a victim of Japanese retaliation is father Louis, an American priest trying to convert the Koreans into Christians, who ends up arrested and tortured by the Japanese. This is one of those films with a lot of cool moments, like Rhee strangling a man in prison using the chain's on his feet, or later using the chains on his arms to saw through the wooden post he is chained to.

The Towering Inferno ( 1974 )
A series of really dumb decisions traps a couple hundred party guests made up of San Fransisco's elite on the top floor of the tallest skyscraper in the world during a fire. Throw in your obligatory villain who's negligence caused the fire ( he had the building wired with cheap cables which easily burst into flames, ) and who ruins every rescue attempt, and an all star cast of celebrities, and you got yourself a formula disaster movie. This was the first time I have seen the theatrical version instead of the television version with a bunch of deleted scenes added back in, and a few of the deaths deemed to intense for television edited out.  I was not expecting a great movie, and it isn't, but it comes close to being one. Despite it's two hour forty minute running time, and obligatory early scenes introducing al the characters before the disaster finally starts, it moves along at a brisk pace. I believe I liked watching this a lot more than the couple of times I saw it on television in the 70s. And I was sort of expecting to have weird feelings about it watching it after the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center and now knowing buildings in that intense of a blaze tend to collapse, as oppose to this building that not only stands up to about 50 floors ablaze at once, and the cheap construction it is later revealed the building had, but can withstand several explosions as well and still stand. The only real flaw is the ending, where a strategy to put the fire out could never work in real life, as there was no way for that water to reach the fire, and should have instead flowed out the windows of the floor it was released on.  With Saturday Night Live on hiatus this week, I was hoping to fit in a second film, but after realizing how long The Towering Inferno was, opted instead to begin watching the hours of extras that came with it. Extras so old that they feature long dead movie stars reminiscing about making the film, and even gushing about getting to work with O.J. Simpson. I guess these extras go back to some early 90s laserdisc release.

[Cyrusso]

I really enjoyed The Towering Inferno. Even though all those 1970's Irwin Allen big budget disaster films are more or less always the same thing... they were always very enjoyable. Yes, even schlock like Airport 79 was good for a huge laugh... even if that was definitely not the intention.

This wasn't the last movie I watched, but Barbie was really damn good and extremely enjoyable. It had a lot of things to say about human beings, and our obsession with capitalism, materialism, and challenging the age-old toxic, and cishet obsession of "I have to get the girl in the end!"(whether it be literal or metaphorical).

I totally get it, even though I'd still love to go out with Margot Robbie, who is absolutely divine, and Ryan Gosling is hilarious. Side note... I've actually performed "I'm just Ken" at Karaoke, complete with my "I Am Kenough" shirt.

The point of Barbie is complex, but the most important aspect I took away is that maybe we all try need to be better, and not be afraid to do that. 

[Charles Castle]

Daybreakers (2009, directed by Peter and Michael Spierig) is one of those maddening films that has loads of interesting ideas built into its premise, but which never the less turns into a run of the mill genre programmer. It's kind of a waste, actually. What you get is so much less than the movie promises during its first thirty minutes or so.

The set up is magnificent: Vampires have taken over the world and hunted humans to the verge of extinction. Now they face extinction themselves as their blood supply runs out. The whole thing initially reminded me of the end of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (the book, none of the movies), when Neville sees the inevitability of the new vampire society and implores Ruth "Don't let it get...too brutal. Too heartless." This is the future that did get too brutal.

The story finds hematologist Ethan Hawke desperately working to find a substitute for human blood. An unwilling vampire, he eschews blood when he can, and finds himself degenerating into one of the enraged mutated vampires that the dominant class call "subsiders." He works for a vast corporation tasked with farming human blood even as it tries to find a substitute. Hawke's boss, played as the worst kind of elitist capitalist by Sam Neill, has no intention of completely replacing human blood. Rather, he wants to make it into an expensive delicacy. Meanwhile Hawke's character is contacted by the ragtag human underground, who appear to have stumbled onto a cure for vampirism that they don't understand, while his soldier brother--soldiers in this future are tasked with rounding up humans--is keeping tabs on him because he's been acting funny. The chase is on.

Hawke is good in his role, which occasionally requires him to look like a heroin addict. He's an underrated actor and he sells the part pretty well. Sam Neill could play his role in his sleep--he's been playing these kinds of characters since he played Damien Thorne in The Omen III. He's fun to watch, but he doesn't overreach, especially during the subplot involving his daughter, who refused to turn vampire. It's a humanizing touch, but he's still a rat bastard. Willem Dafoe's character is a caricature, really. The wise human leader who fancies himself as Elvis. I can watch Dafoe in most things, but this isn't his best role. The movie unfortunately provides a love interest, too, played by Claudia Karvan, but it doesn't really explore it. This is a surprisingly sexless movie for a vampire epic.

As I say, this is all really interesting, and the first part of the movie extrapolates its premise with a fair amount of rigor. While it's doing this, you can't take your eyes off of it. Hell, even the metaphor for bloodsucking capitalism is handled with aplomb. The second half, when the plot really kicks in, is disappointing: It becomes a stock action/horror movie with an unsatisfying "happy" ending. Frankly, we've seen all that before. This is the kind of movie that comforts the audience that no matter how dire the future may become, everything will ultimately be alright. It does this after littering the screen with dead bodies, which seems to put this impulse into some doubt, but it pursues this idea to the very end. And for my money, a horror movie should never set out to comfort an audience. But maybe that's just me.

[stethacantus]

The Perfect Weapon ( 1991 )
So Amazon said this would not be delivered until the 21st, so naturally they send me an email 8th while I was at work saying it would be delivered that afternoon. They must really love porch pirates at Amazon. Fortunately no one grabbed the package from the front door where it sat in plane view to the busy sidewalk for six hours. The Perfect Weapon was notable for being the film that introduced America to Hollywood's latest martial arts star Jeff Speakman. And that's where his career pretty much ended. It was a lot of direct to video and limited releases from that point on. Which is a shame, because even though he is a bland and forgettable actor who can best be described as a poor man's Patric Duffy, in this film at least, he showed far more moves in a film than Norris, Segal or Van Damme combined. The film is typical formula.  The Korean mafia is trying to force the owner of a antiques shop to sell their drugs, and when he refuses, they have him killed. He happened to be the friend of Speakman, who decides to hunt down and kill the crime boss who ordered the hit.  The 90s were when the Hollywood martial arts films finally began to improve, culminating with The Matrix in 1999. So you get a lot more marital arts action than some of the previous films from the 80s. But this film is still full of a lot of tropes from those previous films, like the unbeatable henchman who isn't hurt by any kick or punch, and eventually has to be  killed by being blown up instead of defeated in a fight. This goes back to Odd Job in the movie Goldfinger who bond had to kill by electrocution when he was unable to beat him in a fistfight. Also, we get the character actors we would expect to see in a Hollywood martial arts film, Mako and James Hong. Also in the cast is Mariska Hargitay, who despite being the only female character in the film, and a fellow student from the school Jeff learned his Karate, and even hinted at being a potential love interest, is given no lines. No, she doesn't play a mute. She just does not speak on screen. My guess is that her part was cut down during filming when the studio decided this would just be a 90 minute film. Still, it is odd that an actress listed in the opening credits has no lines. This was not a bad film, just a film that you feel like you have seen many times before.

Airport ( 1970 )`
Back to the disaster films, and the first of the four films in my Airport franchise set. This barely counts as a disaster film. The disaster here is a man with a briefcase bomb looking to crash the airliner so his wife can receive the flight insurance. Which doesn't happen because the airline figures out he has a bomb. So he heads to the bathroom and blows himself up, putting a hole in the side of the plane. So the disaster is that they need to land the plane during a snowstorm before it falls apart, which is basically the final 30 minutes of the film. Most of which is the only airport still open trying to get a stuck 747 off of the runway so the damaged plane can land. A lot of this movie is typical soap opera plots between characters, and the disaster flight does not even take off until one hour and ten minutes into the film. However, it is considered the best of the Airport films, and the only one nominated for an Acadamy Award for Best Picture. I found it slightly slow, but that is to be expected when this was more of a character driven drama and the rest of the series were pure disaster movies.

[stethacantus]

Jukkalan ( a.k.a. This Girl Is Badass  )  ( 2011 )
Still no word from Arrow Video if there will be a Shawscope Volume 3, or if plans for more Shawscope volumes has been cancelled. I knew that Shout! Factory released three volumes of Shaw Brothers box sets, but I didn't want to get those until I could find out if the same films would be in future Shawscope sets. I finally decided to go for the Shout! Factory box sets, but decided to wait until Cyber Monday to order them in case there is a discount offered. Which means I am back to rewatching the movies I have. One of those was Jukkalanwhich I grabbed out of a box of other martial arts films. It was the only Jeeja Yanin film in my collection I could find. And yes, I know some great films like Chocolate and Raging Phoenix are somewhere in those boxes. I just forgot this one was one of her worst films. Her career went into an unnecessary downward spiral. Jukkalan (  called This Girl Is Badass for the English Language releases ) was released as her third starrig role, even though she was clearly not the star of this film. Much like Hong Kong's Lucky Stars series, this film was an ensemble film with a bunch of Thai comedy stars , and Jeeja just providing the action scenes. The studio releasing this film must have realized how big of a star Jeeja was, and released it with the name of her character as the film's title. But the character Jukkalan is only in a third of the film. Perhaps even less of it as the film shows signs of editing  on the other characters plots. The comedy here is bad. Jeeja's action scenes are really good, if full of NGs. Sadly, this film would be her final starring billing to date. Her next film, The Kick, gave her a smaller role. She had a better role in Protector 2, But after that smaller and smaller guest starring roles, with her final film as an uncredited stunt double for another actress. For a while she was to return in a sequel to Chocolate,  but it has been nearly five years since that film was announced, and it no longer appears on IMDb as an upcoming project.


Airport 75 ( 1974 )
Why was this titles Airport 75 when it came out in 1974? Best guess is that it was supposed to be released in 1975, but Universal rushed it into theaters late 1974. I have no idea why. They already had Earthquake scheduled for release, and both woud be going up against Irwin Allen's follow up to The Poseidon Adventure ( 1972 ) called The Towering Inferno.  So for the holiday season, there were three big event disaster films competing in theaters, two from Universal. For many my age, Airport 75 was the doorway film to the disaster movie genre. In 1975 Universal re-released it for the summer as a double feature with Earthquake, and for all of us unable to get our parents to allow us to see Jaws, the disaster double feature was what our parents allowed us to see instead. Airport 75 was shown as the A feature in the first slot, with Earthquake shown second as the B feature. This is usually cited as the film parodied by Airplane!( 1980 ), specifically because Airplane! also had a young girl on board in need of an organ transplant. However, Airplane! was actually a parody of a forgotten 1957 disaster film called Zero Hour! which in turn was a remake of a live television production called Flight Into Danger written by an up and coming screen writer named Arthur Hailey, who also co-wrote the script for Zero Hour!, and a year later adapted it into his first novel Flight Into Danger. Realizing he made more money from novels than from screenplays, Haley became an author, his fourth novel being Hotel, which was adapted into a hit movie of the same name. Since Hotel was a success, Universal wanted to adapt Haley's fifth novel Airport, which was also a success. Looking to make a sequel to Airport, Universal thought the next logical step was  to adapt his first novel Flight into Danger which also involved an airliner in trouble,  but ABC beat them to the film rights, releasing a new adaption of Flight Into Danger called  Terror in the Sky as a television film in 1971. So a sequel to Airport was abandoned, until The Poseidon Adventure became a hit, and Universal once again decided to go ahead with a sequel to Airport.  Clearly Airport 75 ripped off the plot of Flight Into Danger, by changing the way the pilots get incapacitated from food poisoning to a midair collision with a small plane which rips a hole in the cockpit sucking the co-pilot out and injuring the pilot. Having a new pilot make a dangerous midair transfer from a nearby aircraft to the 747 was the only real original thing this movie had. Clearly Airport was the better film, yet I prefer this one, not just for the nostalgia of it being my first disaster movie, but because it is a tighter film with more action and suspense.

[Pastor of Muppets]

Daybreakers (2009, directed by Peter and Michael Spierig) is one of those maddening films that has loads of interesting ideas built into its premise, but which never the less turns into a run of the mill genre programmer. It's kind of a waste, actually. What you get is so much less than the movie promises during its first thirty minutes or so.

I like Daybreakers but there seem to be a lot of plotholes.

The vampire police and military wear special suits that shield them from the sun.  They are completely covered in thick armor with nothing but a small hole covered by smoked glass, through which one eye can peer.  Therefore, the only effective way the humans can kill them is through crossbow bolts through the heart.  So why didn't they put some kind of extra plating over the heart?

Also there seems to be some significant infrastructure made to support the vampire society.  They have cars that block out all light and provide vision through a series of cameras.  They have a network of tunnels between areas called the subwalk.  I thought these were really cool and I have recurring dreams about vast underground pedestrian tunnel networks.  Still, I keep wondering when they had time to build this stuff.  The vampire plague would have shut things down pretty thoroughly and pretty quickly.

[Cyrusso]

I recently watched the Amazon prime exclusive Totally Killer(2023), which features a killer in a very Max Headroom-esque mask. The absolutely adorable Kiernan Shipka is Jamie Hughes, a young lady who goes back in time to 1987 to stop a murderous rampage of a masked killer.

It was fun, and Kiernan Shipka is fantastic. She was great as Sabrina, and she brings the same frantic energy to Totally Killer.

[stethacantus]

Dang it. Spent Thanksgiving with the in-laws. We were supposed to return on Friday, but on Thanksgiving evening it was decided against my wishes that we would stay through Saturday, and that we would be waking up really early on  Black Friday and going to The American Dream Mall next to Giant Stadium.  Were parking the car when the mall was evacuated because terrorists had  put bombs in the Mall, so we got the F*%k out of there and returned to the in-laws house, only to find out the bomb threat was a hoax. So we returned to the mall, this time having to drive through traffic from the tail-gaters going to the Giant Stadium parking lot for the Jets game. Didn't see anything worth buying or any mind-blowing door buster deals, so that was all a complete waste. Was hoping to start for home early Saturday morning, but then they wanted to celebrate mall Business Saturday? ? ?  Did they realize that meant no shopping at any of those corporate Stores? Except for some of those budget stores ( formerly 99¢ stores ) we fond nothing in the in-laws town that wasn't a real local store. So that was a bust. Wound up not getting home until 7pm, so the weekly martial arts film on Saturday was out. However, since SNL was a rerun this week, decided to watch another movie in the 5-Film Disaster Collection.

Death Comes From Space ( a.k.a. The Day the Sky Exploded ) ( 1958 )
I guess this counts as a disaster film. Something I am amazed MST3K somehow missed. A dubbed Italian science fiction film from the late 50s. A nuclear powered rocket is sent on a trip to the moon, but goes out of control and ends up exploding in the Asteroid belt. As a result, a swarm of asteroids is sent towards earth. About 90% of this film is about scientists trying to calculate when the asteroids will hit, with a super sensitive computer that breaks down with the slightest change in temperature. One of those films that relies heavily on stock footage, the only special effect made specifically for the film being a very confusing encounter between several asteroids and the moon. A lot of this movie was ripped-off for the 1979 disaster film Meteor. The best I can say for this is that it is watchable.

Airport '77 ( 1977 )
The Airport franchise had been in a niche of their own. While most 70s disaster films had been about mas destruction and watching characters getting killed off one by one, the previous Airport films  had been about the initial disaster which disables the plane, and from that point on about trying to get the plane down in one piece. There was an all star cast who basically went along for the ride and survived the incident. Airport '77 figures out a way for there to be mass casualties. A plane crash that kills off a few characters, then the plane sinking below the ocean with the passengers trapped inside, with the opportunity for them to be killed off one by one as the water makes it's way into the plane.  This was supposed to be where the series went downhill, but I thought it was a good film. Maybe not hitting the heights of the previous two Airport movies, but one of the better disaster films of the 70s.

[Cyrusso]

The Water Babies(1978) - This is actually one of my more favorite animated films... but it's one of those weird ones where part of the story is live action, and a HUGE chunk is animated... then at the end the movie goes back to being live action. It's got an interesting cast, including Bernard Cribbins and James Mason. I'm guessing they filmed their scenes in less than a day, then they were done with their parts in the film.

The water babies is still one of my favorites because even though the animation is pretty janky at times, it's got some very beautiful music, ESPECIALLY the beginning theme of the movie which has a very powerful air of melancholy about it, and honestly it still makes me cry thinking about it.

It's got some great songs... wait a minute... I guess Water Babies is actually kind of a musical. In any case, whatever complaints the critics have about this movie, I'll take it over An American Tail ANYDAY.... at least Water Babies didn't fucking lie to me about the proliferation of felines in the country I live in.

In short, it's a charming little film, and still enjoyable, even though I'm an adult... kind of.

[Pastor of Muppets]

Dream Scenario, a surreal drama about a man named Paul Matthews, a mild mannered biology professor, who suddenly becomes a celebrity due to him mysteriously appearing in the dreams of thousands of people all over the world.  In the dreams, he is passive and doesn't actually do anything.  So he becomes a viral sensation.  Things take a dark turn though, after the dreams turn into horrifying nightmares where Paul becomes a violent killer.  He becomes a social pariah and suffers in his real life, even though he never did anything wrong.

I saw the trailer for this movie a few months ago when I went to see Saw X, and was fascinated by the premise.  It was supposed to come out on November 10th, but it just kept getting pushed back.  Finally came out on Friday, so I was excited to see it.  It's a good movie and it's nice to see Nicolas Cage in a good movie for a change.

[stethacantus]

The Concorde ... Airport '79
So... decided to wait until Cyber Monday to order my next set of films from Amazon. Throughout the week I got various delivery dates emailed to me, including the release of Wandavision which up until Wednesday was to arrive by November 30th.  I waited until Cyber Monday because I wanted to order a couple of box set collections from Shout! Factory. The first, Volume One of their classic Shaw Brother's collection. The other, a collection of Irwin Allen disaster movies that has everything but The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno and The Swarm., but does have every  one of his made for television disaster films.  But when I went to order those sets,  I found out that Shaw Brothers Classics, Volume One was sold out, even with the third party sellers. So ordered Volume Two instead. Then later that day Amazon claimed they had it in stock again, so ordered it. It turns out a third party seller is claiming it is in stock, and had given a delivery date of December 25th. Um, are they sure about that date? Anyway, if it turns out he does not have it, then Shout! Factory claimed they had a few hundred in stock, although for $50 more than what amazon was selling it for. According to Camelcamelcamel, Amazon priced Volume One at $85 on Black Friday and immediately sold out that day.  Beginning to think that Cyber Monday is a complete waste of time if these websites are also participating in Black Friday and selling out their stock before Cyber Monday. Oh, well. At least I got to order Volume Two for $85, then late that day got to order Volume One for the same price, although was not expecting to order both at the same time.  So the delivery date for Shaw Brothers Volume Two kept changing. It was supposed to arrive Monday, then on Friday I was sent an email saying it would arrive on Saturday.  Around 10am they listed it as "Out For Delivery". So I waited. And Waited. And waited. Then around 6pm they said that it had been brought back to the Carrier Facility, and would be delivered on Sunday along with Wandavision and the Irwin Allen collection. What? Why tell me it was out for delivery? Had I known it was not coming on Saturday, then I could have watched  a different film. So, no martial arts film on Saturday.  Then at 8pm they suddenly sent an update saying it had been delivered. There it was, to late to watch anything on it.

For my evening film, I completed the Airport: The Complete Collection set with The Concorde...Airport '79. A film that for a while Universal was claiming wasn't actually part of the Airport franchise. And then after the success of Airplane!, re-released it as Airport '80, claiming it was a comedy. Well, unintentionally funny, yes. Basically Universal ran out of ideas for airline disasters, so decided to have a bunch of mini disasters with the same cursed jet.
Disaster One: The Concorde  nearly  crashes into a hot air balloon while landing.
Disaster Two: Is attacked by an Airforce drone.
Disaster Three: Is attacked by an unmarked fighter jet.
Disaster Four: Due to damage from the jet fighter, the brakes on the Concorde do not work when it is making an emergency landing in France, and stops just a few feet short of the end of the runway.
Disaster Five: While taking off again, runs over a guy who ran out onto the runway ( for a very dumb reason. )
Disaster Six: The luggage compartment opens up mid flight, causing the bottom of the plane to rip off.
Disaster Seven: Because of the damage caused by the open luggage compartment, the Concorde ends up jettisoning all of it's fuel and is forced to crash land in the alps.
Not to mention a near disaster when a flair gun goes off in the cockpit.
None of these disasters were good enough to be the plot of an entire film. So, they just keep happening one after another. With exception to the hot air balloon, every disaster is caused by Robert Wagner, who plays an arms dealer who's news reporter girlfriend has just found out that he has been selling weapons to enemies of the United States. To shut her up, he decides to kill her on her trip on the Concorde to Moscow. You know, as opposed to having a hitman kill her on the ground. As if the military attack drone his company was testing suddenly going off course and hunting down the Concorde would not be suspicious. After being damaged by the unmarked jet fighter, the Concorde lands in France for repairs, then everybody just gets right back onto the twice attacked plane to continue their trip as if nothing happened. Yep, this film is very dumb.  George Kennedy returns as Joe Patroni, the only character to be in all four Airport films, and the only character to be in more than one of the films. While he only had an extended cameo role in the previous film, in this movie Patroni is the pilot, so the main character. Which for some reason still results in him getting bottom billing. So in the first film he was a mechanic. In the second film somehow graduated to the vice president of operations for the airline, was another unspecified airline executive in the third film, and busted down to pilot in the fourth film. The script pretty much ruins Joe's character by killing off the wife introduced in the second film and not mentioned in the third film so that he can have a sex scene with a French prostitute. And act like what they would call a Male Chauvinist Pig when this film was released, and a sexual harasser today. Ad he was such a likable character in the first three films. Now he is imbarrasing stewardesses by telling them, "They dont call this the cockpit for nothing, baby."  The ending seemed incredibly rushed. After the Concorde crash lands, everyone on board quickly gets off before it explodes, and the film ends immediately after without any of the characters saying goodbye. It is as if Universal didn't want to spend the money on one second more of footage than they needed to. Soon after this film was released, the disaster movie genre was declaired dead. That and this movie's dissapointing box office put an end to the Airport franchise. But quite frankly, it is doubtful they had a premise left for any sequel.

[stethacantus]

A Jackie Film and an Australian thriller with car chase scenes directed by George Miller? Sounds like a kick ass weekend.  But......

Lady of Steel ( 1970 )
The Shaw Brothers Classics Volume One did not arrive until Sunday. This after a couple of weeks of the delivery date constantly changing. And it would say one thing on my Amazon account, and a different date according to my e-mail updates. They both agreed the delivery would be on Saturday before 10pm, which meant it didn't arrive until Sunday afternoon. So I begin with the Shaw Brothers Classics Volume Two. Not much of a problem. These are all stand alone films, so aside from watching how the Shaw Brothers martial arts films progressed over the 25 years they were making them, watching the early 70s films prior to the 60s films should be no problem. Lady of Steel is one of the films Cheng Pei Pei made for the studio, but is more known for being one of Jackie Chan's early films, where he has an uncredited bit role as part of a gang of beggars. Could not tell which one he was. Perhaps when I watch the audio commentary I will find out. Lady of Steel is basically a potboiler. When she was just a toddler, a villain killed her parents. Discovered and raised by a martial arts expert, she grows up o be a martial arts expert herself. Helping other martial artists weed out the traitors who have been aiding invaders to China, she discovers that one of those traitors is the villain who murdered her parents.  So, an okay 90 minutes of entertainment. But something that Shaw Brothers had by then done dozens of films with the same plot. Also, this was in their swordplay genre, so not as thrilling as the later basher films.


Chain Reaction ( 1980 )
So... Last week the Irwin Allen Master of Disaster Collection finally arrived. And it was a used copy that didn't even have a plastic seal.  Amazon promised to replace it  immediately, but it did not arrive until Sunday. Well, no problem. I could watch the Wandavision set. Except, when I went to play it, it would not play. It was only then that I noticed that  they had shipped me the 4K Ultra edition. So, the only thing left to watch was my 5 Film Disaster Movie Collection. The next in line was Chain Reaction, an Australian film that is as dull as paint drying. A company that disposes of nuclear waste begins to leak radioactive water after a minor earthquake. Only one employee was at the facility at the time, and becomes doused with the radioactive water while turning off a valve so that no more water would drain out. The company is run by an evil prick who choses to cover up the leak rather than warn the town downstream, and attempts to keep the  contaminated employee, who is given three days to live, as a prisoner until he dies. However, he wants the world to know about he accident and escapes, ending up with amnesia at the vacation home of a married couple on their second honeymoon. Not much need to tell the rest. The copy on the DVD appears to have been mastered originally from a third or more generation VHS bootleg, and then compressed. Another full screen transfer stretched into widescreen. Slightly muffled soundtrack, which makes two thirds of the dialog unintelligible, although the accents and frequent use of Australia slang are also to blame. Wow, what an ineffectual hero this film has. Always getting beaten in fights and captured. Driving a Holden HQ which was at he time the fastest car on Australian roads,  yet always getting chased down by what should be slower cars. Isn't even the one who eventually brings down the villain. Ahh... but there is the  car chase scenes directed by George Miller, just a month after directing Mad Max.  But most of these are achieved with sped up footage and quick edits rather than some sort of Road Warrior style action.  The film was low budget to begin with, and according to Wikipedia, the director was overbudget by 40% at the time Miller was brought in to direct the car chase footage.  So Miller was basically there to get the job done as cheaply as possible rather than creating any memorable action scenes.