More Movies in May

Tuesday May 20th, 2008
Metropolis (1926/86) **** - I watched the 1986 re-scored version of this Fritz Lang classic that at that time caused quite a stir in the film world. This version was then the longest existing cut of the film, but then hot composer Georgio Moroder decided to score the film himself (as well as do the subtitled and inter titles too) and use modern musical acts such as Adam Ant, Loverboy, Billy Squire, Pat Benetar, Bonnie Tyler and others to augment the film. Basically it was considered a bastardization of a classic and important piece of cinema being turned into MTV. The film also was tinted and had some colorized special effects added as well. So basically it had something to piss off every film purist going. But I watched this version often as a kid (though I had seen the original, though much, much shorter version, before too) and loved it. Watching it now as an adult I can see how this was an ill advised thing to do, but some of it still works pretty well, the the things that don't work still don't diminish the power of what is a simply incredible film. For the few who have no experienced this masterwork, the film takes place in the distant future of 2026 where the world is dependent upon machines to run. the rich elite who live high on the hog are never even aware of the scores of working class that live below the city working 10 to 12 hour days running this huge lumbering machines, pushing their bodies past the point of human endurance. But the some of the richest man in the city sees a woman from below and is smitten. He follows her down and sees the unholy conditions of the workers and is horrified. he trades identities with one worker, thus working his shift to experience how the common lives. It almost does him in. He soon realizes that the woman, Maria, is trying to rally the workers to a better life, though through peaceful means. Meanwhile, a mad scientist has built a female robot to replace his lost love. Our hero's Father demands that the Robot be given the likeness of Maria to keep the workers in line. Instead it causes a revolt that almost destroys the city. The movie was a technical marvel in 1926 and most of that still is amazing now. The architecture, set design and general look of the movie has been influential to just about everything you can think of. Our very pop culture is deeply rooted in images from Metropolis. Everything from Star Wars to Music videos, TV Commercials and modern buildings have been influenced by this film. But for all the technical marvels on display it is an amazingly warm and heartfelt movie about how emotions have to mediate lives to make decisions. How the dreams of those on high cannot exploit those who can make it happen from below. The film is about how heartache can drive you to madness, and how the lust for a beautiful woman can drive men to insanity. And finally it is about people overcoming prejudice and class structure to come together to make change. In the 1986 cut that I watched tonight Moroder's score is surprisingly sparse and grinding, clearly inspired by the architecture of the movie and the British industrial musical scene of the late 70's early 80's. But the pop music used has a few moments of magic as well such as when the Evil Maria is preaching to the workers while Bonnie Tyler's "Here She Comes" plays or her seductive dances scene to Freddy Mercury's "Love Kills" that literally sets the men in her audience fighting and killing each other of committing suicide. I'm not sure if the songs were written and recorded for this new cut of the film, but the lyrics of several including those mentioned as well as the Pat Benetar, Billy Squier and Loverboy tunes all make me think they were. All in all Metropolis is a classic in any version (there is a DVD from KINO that is the longest version available that I have not seen but need to) and if you call yourself a film fan, you need to see it. Simple as that. This version is an interesting experiment that has some value, but not the end all be all version of the film. Seen this before.

Thursday May 22, 2008
Prisoners of the Lost Universe (1983) ** - This fun and fairly decent Sci-Fi actioneer from the director of the cable favorite Hawk The Slayer is one of those I have fond memories of from my child hood. I remember it premiering on Showtime and hanging out at my friend Smitty's house and watching it with his crazy ass family. We all got a kick out of it, and I watched it multiple times on cable after that. The movie star's the original Battlestar Galactica's Richard Hatch and Kay Lenz as a couple of mis matched people who by pretty contrived circumstances get sucked into another dimension along with a crazy scientist. The other world looks pretty much like some national part outside of a few funky plants and some dorky yet amusing dime store monsters running around (the pygmies with light up eyes are great, and the zombies that you can see their blue jeans under their robes are another highlight). Kay Lenz gets kidnapped by the evil meanie play by a scenery chewing John Motherfuckin Saxon who intends to keep her as his bride because there are no blonds in this world! Along the Way Richard Hatch picks up some supporting players to help him out including a gentle giant, an annoying dwarf (who was in Hawk The Slayer playing the exact same character) and a guy painted blue, but in the movie everyone says he is green, who is super smart and looks like Nicholas Schrek's long lost alien brother. they have some surprisingly bloody fights with along the way until we find out that the scientist has been working with Saxon making guns and nitro for him to save his own skin, leading to an explosive finale. Basically this is Flash Gordon on a shoestring budget. If you can get into that idea there is plenty of fun to be had. Its cheesy as all get out, and moves at a herky jerky pace in places, and the effects are bad at times. But it is fun all the same. Richard Hatch makes for a fine hero, and Saxon is the villain you love to boo and hiss at. There is some off screen S+M too. All in a PG rated flick! this premiered on Showtime, but played theatrically in the rest of the world and was probably huge in someplace like Malaysia were they love goofball low rent shit like this! Seen this before.

Saturday May 24th 2008
Run & Kill aka Woo Sue (1993) *** - This incredibly vicious category III Hong Kong roughie is a near classic among the genre. Only hampered by some black comedy near the end and a sense of Terminator like false endings. Fatty Cheung is a slob who's day keeps getting worse and worse. He loses his job only to come home to find his sexy wife cheating on him. So he goes out on the town and gets shitfaced drunk. While drunk he spends the last of his money paying a gal and some low life hustler to have his wife killed. But he's so drunk he has no idea what he is doing and really doesn't want this to happen. Naturally they do ahead and do it and once its done want the other $800,000 he drunkenly promised. Instead of paying up he tries to get some local street gangs to help him out causing a small scale riot in a porn theater (a great action scene) that ends with him, the girl who organized the whole thing and the guy who set up the kill all being taken hostage by those who want the money higher up. They are done playing games you see. What they don't realize is the dude who set up the initial kill has a psycho killer brother, played by Hong Kong favorite Simon Yam, who has tracked them down. But once he gets there his brother has pretty much bled to death. Yam promises Fatty that if his brother dies he will take it out on Fatty's remaining Family. Well, his brother dies and the remandier of the film is Yams horrifying revenge on Fatty and his family. And boy does it ever get ugly. This movie goes where most movies fear to tread in the last reel. ***SPOILERS AHEAD*** Once Yam has Fatty's Mom and daughter hostage he goes about killing them. He pushes Mom (who is an old lady) out a window. But the most horrifying moment is when he burns Fatty's six year old daughter alive. even worse her charred, blackened corpse plays a major role in the rest of the movie! I remember showing this movie to my college sweetheart who was a very gentile gal. I have no idea what I was thinking (or how she stood watching it!). This new DVD is a German release and looks amazing. Totally cleaned up and uncut this is miles above that abortion Hong Kong release from a few years back that was just a port of the horrid VHS. This has new subs (still a few mistakes in the English translation though) and a great picture. As a bonus is another Hong Kong Category III flick also Starring Simon Yam called Intruder which is a pretty cool movie too if memory serves me. This is a non region disc, but I'm pretty sure it is a PAL, so make sure your player can play it. I got mine from Tony at www.xploitedcinema.com the BEST place to get this kind of thing. seen this before.

BoardingHouse (1982) *** - Totally retarded and fun eighties horror/splatter (supposedly comedy but I'm not convinced it is intentional) that has been rescued by the new (sort of) company Code Red. There is simply no other movie quite like this one. I've been a fan for a number of years since I bought the VHS at a going out of business sale at Castle Video in West Dayton (Man do I miss that place!), but I'm glad to see people buying into it's bizarre ass charms. the story barely makes any sense; A house that had some sort of incest driven murders occur sixteen years earlier is bought by a dude who only wears pastel colors and leopard print bikini briefs. He decides he will make it a boarding house only open to hot chicks and himself. Somehow the ploy works and a gaggle of babes immediately move in. so when he isn't working on his telekinesis by making shit fly around the room, he's getting group run downs (did I mention he is played by the writer/director John Wintergate?) and banging all the babes. He teaches one of the babes to control her mental powers and make shit move with her mind too. she torments the other girls out of jealously with her new powers instead. Meanwhile some unseen person or force is making bad things happen, like spontaneous bleedings, knives hurling out of cu bards or babes fall on ice picks. There's a pretty juicy disembowelment early on and all the girls get nekkid at some point, or at least down to skimpy lingerie. The director's wife, Kalasu plays the main babe with the new mental powers who also happens to be the lead singer of a band called 33 1/3. Naturally they sing a song. Add to all this more bad fashions, jacuzzi seductions, more of the dude in his briefs, the funniest love scene ever, a cop with a giant afro, eyeballs in the tapioca pudding, the drunk who finds the eyeballs and talks to them, and the climax of mind against demon and you go one of the weirdest, stooooopidest movies ever. Its fucking great! I also failed to mention that it is shot in "horror-vision" which means that they shot it on video tape. which now is no big deal, but in 1982 that was a new and exciting (and cheap) way to make a movie. And they managed to get the thing released into theaters too! This was the second film to entirely be shot on video and released theatrically (The first being Frank Zappa's 200 Motels). The new DVD from Code Red looks as good as something like this can. The color still shifts around and there is an occasional glitch of static, but it is a huge improvement over the old Paragon tapes. They also did a really nice job on fixing up the soundtrack with some cool separations. I haven't listened to the commentary track, but I looked at the on camera interview with the director and his wife and i have to say this is the most shittily shot extra I have ever seen on a DVD. Its like they just grabbed a crackhead off the street to run the camera. People are cut half out of the frame, the thing zooms in and out, they are not professionally miked, the camera jiggles and shakes. I seriously hope they didn't pay the guy for his work. Wintergate and Kalasu look oddly the same 25 years later. Their daughter appears on screen as they plug the script for a BoardingHouse 2. I'm not sure the world is ready... Seen this before.

Monday May 26, 2008
Reality Bleed Through (2008) *** - Extremely ambitious, thoughtful and well done experimental low budget horror film that has more on its mind that a dozen movie in its peer group combined. Trying to encapsulate the plot of this is a difficult thing since there is so much going on, but I'll try. Ethan is pretty much trapped in his house. It seems since the war broke out the outside world has descended into chaos. The sun has grown hot to the point that exposure will melt your skin, a religious cult has taken over that are addicted to hallucinogenic pills that make them see God. Worst of all the Government, to fund the war, called in everyone's debt at once. So if you owed a mortgage, car payment or student loan it was time to pay up. If you couldn't you had two choices. The military or forced experimental research as a lab rat. Ethan took the lab rat route which has left him where he is at now. trapped in his house having hallucinations, with a constant stream of self dialogue in his head. He watches the static on TV because he remembers that he is supposed too, but cannot remember why. Meanwhile in the outside world a soldier and his two buddies come home to find the soldier's wife fucking his best friend. A murder later the wife and the friends are on the run. Also on the run is a woman and her plague stricken brother. None of the houses have running water due to some inexplicable government shutdown (something the soldier was trying to help fix when he came home). They meet one of the religious fanatics along the way and they all end up at Ethan's house to escape the rising sun. Soon soon everything will rise to a crescendo of bloodshed and violence and a lot of talk of the existence and importance of god. Now that is the linear plot. What this movie is REALLY concerned about is the various dialogues about god, the need for god, how people create god, recreate god, deal with their gods in a time of crisis etc. This is a full on theological deconstruction of the various viewpoints on existence and the need for something greater than ourselves. the salvation complex if you will. Heady themes for a shot on video project that largely takes place in one house. But you know what? Write/Director Jimmy Creamer pulls it off. The movie is a non-linear assault on the senses that never really stops long enough to allow you to notice things like the low budget or at times weak acting. Instead focusing on the strong editing, and terrific digital effects (yes I did just say what I said, terrific digital effects, used wisely for once) that add dimension and surrealism to the project. All of this has an accumulative effect to pull you into the nightmare at hand. By the time you get to the last reel (where it helps if you know a little Aleister Crowley to keep up) it has become a tripped out nightmare with some truly startling imagery. But all this would be visual masturbation if they movie was not engaging or going someplace interesting. But it does. far too many low budgeters are playing it safe by making zombie comedies, or slasher movies, or those awful jizm and barf filled freakshows. This movie actually goes someplace you have not seen before. A true treat for the eyes and mind. And a breath of fresh air for the no budget arena. Is it flawless? Not a chance. There is some ropey acting along the way (though some very good too), and the make up effects aren't so hot. There are also a couple of camera set ups that are clunky. But all of this is small change when looking at the bigger picture which is that Reality Bleed Through is an original and bold piece of Indy filmmaking. A must see! first time seeing this. http://www.myspace.com/draconianfilms