Re: Track the Films You Watch (2006)
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| Perhaps. But I've also given thumbs up to some of the most respected and loved horror films ever made, including Psycho, Frankenstein, Rosemary's Baby, Silence of the Lambs, Jaws, Misery, Wait Until Dark, Alien, The Most Dangerous Game, The Birds, and others, though admittedly none of those are cheesy B movie horror films. |
Perhaps this is true but FRANKENSTEIN and THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME would probably fall into the "B" genre since that's what they were to the studio. You have to remember that studios in the 30's didn't look at their horror films as anything but B pictures (in my opinion, this continued up until recently). Just look at the cast of FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA. Universal didn't go out of their way to get "stars" in either of them. Heck, I guess you could argue that Karloff and Lugosi never got out of the "B" movie state, although both men appeared in small parts in some "A" productions. Even PSYCHO was a lot smaller than several Paramount pictures that year and a lot smaller than anything Hitch had done since his British years (or perhaps ROPE).
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| Cause I don't judge films without seeing them. I hated all the Bunuel films I saw, but kept watching them, and viola, found a great one that he had done - The Exterminating Angel. Who's to say Carpenter hasn't done a great one? Not likely, but still possible. |
I actually agree with you here. You won't know until you try them but if someone doesn't like to see animals get slaughtered on screen then I think it's a safe bet they should stay away from the Italian cannibal genre. If someone doesn't like extreme torture, rape and graphic violence then I think it's a safe bet that I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE isn't for them. I know you didn't like HALLOWEEN because you called it "a gory, slasher flick" so with that in mind, I'm not sure I'd pick FRIDAY THE 13TH to watch with you if you came to my house for a movie night.
But hell, who knows. I keep hearing people say BRAZIL and THE LADY EVE are classics but they certainly went over my head.
12/26/06Harem 2000 (2001)
Joe D'Amato's hardcore flick is about...... I'm not sure what it's about but it takes place in a "whore traders club" so I guess you know the rest of the story. Once again, it's rather hard for me to review a film like this because well, I'm really not sure how to review one. D'Amato's greatest talent was that of a cinematographer so he had an eye to use and the work here is very well done. On the other hand, I think most of the slow motion, never stop moving camera tricks would turn off the majority of people who would watch a flick like this very entertainment. I've seen D'Amato's earlier horror/sex films like
Erotic Nights of the Living Dead and
Porno Holocaust and I found both quite distasteful. This film here is tastefully done but I didn't find it very erotic or very sexy. If it weren't for the director I wouldn't have wasted my time on something like this but apparently I've got over fifty more to go.
Body Count (1987)
Ruggero Deodato, director of
Cannibal Holocaust, tries his hand at the American slasher genre but fails on pretty much all levels. A campground is built on an old Indian burial ground and then a bunch of teenagers show up to party and have sex. Guess what happens? The gore scenes are decent but we've seen this type of film countless times and the director doesn't try to do anything new. Instead of trying anything new, he rips off films like
Friday the 13th 3, Psycho 2 and various other slashers of the day. The performances are all rather poor and the dubbing is bad as well, although this leads to a few laughs. The film tries so very hard to be "American" by throwing in the names of American movies and actors but this too comes off quite poorly. David Hess has a small role.
12/27/06Return of the Thundering Herd (2006)
Documentary about the 1970 Marshall football team that died in a plane crash. I didn't realize this while watching
We Are Marshall but this was the very first time that any athletic squad at the university had ever taken a plane and wouldn't you know that it would crash. I'm really not sure why this story has hit me so hard but once again I found myself getting really sad watching this thing. Perhaps it's because I played sports when I was younger so the idea of losing an entire team is something I can think about. The documentary runs 45 minutes and is basically a warm up for the film but it does a nice job at telling the story, which is more unbelievable than anything Hollywood could have written on their own.
Bobby (2006)
Emilio Estevez's look at the assassination of Robert Kennedy seen through the eyes of twenty-two various characters. Estevez has created a pretty good, if somewhat unnecessary, look at the day of the assassination and he gathered an all star cast to tell the story. The cast includes: Harry Belafonte, Nick Cannon, Estivez, Laurence Fishburne, Heather Graham, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, Joshua Jackson, Ashton Kutcher, Lindsay Lohan, William H. Macy, Demi Moore, Martin Sheen, Christian Slater, Sharon Stone and Elijah Wood. However, this wonderful cast is part of the problem because everytime one of them popped up I wasn't thinking of them as a character but as the stars they are. Seeing so many stars, some just coming in for a few scenes, is rather distracting and takes away from the stories trying to be told. Estevez does a terrific job holding everything together and the movie has a wonderfully poetic flow throughout. I think the political nature is a bit over the top at time but the ending packs a nice little punch and will have people leaving the film with something to think about.
And even for myself, I have a hard time explaining it adequately. It's especially hard to explain to others why I think a comedy is or isn't, because good comedies are often silly, etc., but that doesn't make them cheesy. To me, what's clearly cheesy is when a non-comedy (such as a horror film or a drama) dips too much into silliness and bad acting.
