3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Red Sonja

2025, MJ Bassett (Solomon Kane) -- download

I cover my love of Conan the Barbarian in my posts about those movies, both the original and the later one. I haven't rewatched the "original" Red Sonja (1985, Richard Fleischer) since the days of VHS - it was not very good, even in comparison to the others. This movie is not a remake of that, nor is it connected to the (other) attempt(s) at remakes, based on Gail Simone iconic adaptations which were going to be helmed by Robert Rodriguez, Bryan Singer and a few others. Obviously those properties never came to life. Bassett claims to draw upon the 70s Roy Thomas Marvel Comics source material for this movie, but that's a little disingenuous considering that the entire image of Red Sonja that we know today is that image -- the original Red Sonja by Robert E Howard was not even a Conan character. And she doesn't even do that well, because, well... a big breasted warrior in shiny bikini armour would not go over well, except in passing commentary on it.

I think you're wrong. I think it would go over VERY well. Hell knows that there are probably a thousand butt hurt reviews out there about how "woke" this movie is and how disappointed she is not a back-sore Amazon of a woman. And considering how much the trolls are taking over much of the USA, it won't be long before they control all media.

This is not a very good movie, but as I have said before, Swords & Sandals movies rarely are. So, I judge them by how much eye-rolling I end up doing, and how my genuine investment in the movie there seems to be. This is not one of those numerous "straight-to" fantasy movies that sit on Amazon's "if you like X, try Y" category -- those are generally made by fans of the genre but with very little skill, experience or budget, more akin to fan films with lofty ideals. There was a time, say back in the 1980s, when I would have jumped on every single one of these movies with gleeful abandon, completely ignoring their faults, my imagination filling in every gap & failing with wild head-canon. Alas, I can only watch these movies with a bit of tempered respect & irony now. THIS movie is a cut above those, but not by far.

And I really enjoyed Bassett's other Robert E Howard property, "Solomon Kane", which probably deserves another rewatch & post.

Like all good Conan-not-Conan movies, we start with a tribal society being invaded by an outside force. I hesitate to call either "barbarians" as we know that Sonja is supposed to be Hyrkanian, and we are supposed to reserve that word for the tribal people from the far north, i.e. Conan's people. Sonja loses grip on her ... little brother (?) or at least some young boy she is supposed to take care of, and she sees her mother killed. She flees into the forest and ... many many years later she is an adult and still looking for any signs of her people. Based on how easy it is to find them later, she didn't do a very good job of looking.

In the books and comics, the Hyrkanians were horse riding folk who lived on the steppes. This is exhibited by Sonja (Matilda Lutz, Revenge) being really really close to her horse. Not that close. Sonja's people are depicted like most fantasy movies do these days -- no matter what "culture" their tribe is supposed to represent, they are a mix of whatever extras live near the shoot. This is not "accurate" but is a far sight better than the days when EVERY single tribe's depiction was all (very white) British folk. But my original point is that nothing about Sonja's people looks like "horse people" beyond her having a good friendship with hers.

OK, but what DO you mean? What should "horse people" look like?

Years later, years of just wandering around in the forest with her horse? Well, years later, she comes across mercenaries hunting CGI animals (some sort of Megacerops) for their horns. That leads her to a fortress, something very classic Conan story-telling which just loved its forts on the borderlands. This fort belongs to Emperor Dragan (not pronounced dragon; Robert Sheehan, Season of the Witch), once a slave of the Barbarian King who raided Sonja's village but he fought his way out, and became Emperor, but by way of totally-not-natural use of techno-magical war machines and such. He has a tank instead of a carriage, control collars on the monsters that his mercenaries capture for him, and a city powered by a big shiny orb thing. And he's not a nice guy, having enslaved pretty much every tribe in the area, with only Sonja's people holding out. Apparently they didn't all die that day they were invaded, and his hunters have been having just as much trouble finding them as she is.

Sonja ends up in his gladiatorial pit where she meets, in a nudge-nudge-wink-wink manner, her classic chainmail bikini which was always more scale mail than chain, but pop-culture references aside, its more beach volleyball than it is supermodel. Of course, she does a good job surviving said pit and gets to choose another suit of armour which is... not much better? WTF, after making a big deal about her bikini armour, she ends up wearing a suit with a bared mid-riff anyway; essentially adds on shoulder plates and an armoured skirt instead of the mere bikini bottom.

The idea of the movie is that Sonja's people had a book, and this book contained all the scientific knowledge that Dragan has been using to Take Over the World (maniacal laughter). But he only has half, and assumes if he finds Sonja's people, and the other half, it will allow him to finish His Great Work.

Bzzzt.

Sonja does escape his city, does find her people (basically, "Hey Lady, we're over here. We always were!") but... pretty much wipes them out as she has led Dragan's army of machines and monsters against them? Why they didn't just go back into hiding in their forest, one will never know, but Sonja has to go up against him, his army and his white-haired witchy warrior woman (Wallis Day, Batwoman). Said witchy warrior woman almost kills Sonja, but Sonja's best bud (her horse) saves her at the last second. Witchy Warrior Woman reports back to Dragan that Sonja is dead and when he finds out she isn't, they stab each other. A dying Dragan runs off with his newly acquired other half of the book, which he has learned was not going to fill in the blanks on his Dark Techno-Magic but instead focused on healing and growing and all that woke stuff. He dies with Sonja apologizing for leaving him behind all those years ago, when she lost grip on his hand, but pointing out that all the choices he made afterwards were his own. Consequences, bitch! Also, he tore up the book he was not really pissed at -- I hope they have another copy. 

The movie ends with some weak nods to Conan, a barbarian king in the west, but I wouldn't hold your breath that this movie will get a sequel.

Finally, I say again, Swords & Sandals movies are rarely good and neither are many Swords & Sorcery, but many are entirely rewatchable from my vantage point. A well-tread formula with a main character you enjoy, or an intriguing situation or a fun main villain. All can bring me back to that 14 year old who would absorb anything fantasy with relish. This movie sorely lacks in those areas. Sure, its still technically above the Straight To fantasy movies I mentioned I avoid, and it has pretty decent effects and production values. But the performances are just above phoned-in, especially Sheehan, who has done some more-than-passable fantasy roles prior, and plays his villain in pretty much the anachronistic state that Jeremy Irons did in the 2000 Dungeons & Dragons. Lutz herself is ... well, bland. Sonja is supposed to be a legendary swords woman, but this Sonja states very loudly, she is better with a knife, and the back-to-nature aspects were just ... grating; is she supposed to be a warrior woman or a forest ranger? Her supporting side kicks were forgettable and the presence of monsters almost helped, especially the mild nods to stop-motion (a cyclops) but too little, too little.

KWIF: 10 for 10

[KWIF=Kent's Week in Film
10 for 10... that's 10 movies, each written about in 10 minutes. It's an old format I'm dusting off because I have way too much in the backlog.]

This Week:

1. They Came Together (2014, d. David Wain - tubi)
2. Yacht Rock: A DOCKumentary (2024, d. Garrett Price - hbo/crave)
3. Streets of Fire (1984, d. Walter Hill - blu-ray)
4. Gladiator II aka GladIIator (2024, d. Ridley Scott - in theatre)
5. Carry On (2024, d. Jaume Collet-Serra  - netflix)
6. Drive Away Dolls (2024, d. Ethan Coen - amazonprime)
7. Distant aka Long Distance (2024, d. Will Speck and Josh Gordon - amazonprime)
8. Polar (2019, d. Jonas Akerlund - netflix)
9. Outland (1981, d. Peter Hyams , hollywood suite)
10. The Thirteenth Floor (1999, d. Josef Rusnak - hollywood suite)

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I saw the Paul Rudd/ex-Saturday Night Live star (in this case Tina Fey) romcom Admission a few years back and it was slight but enjoyable-ish in its straightforwardness. We Came Together has been popping up on Amazon, Netflix and Tubi over the years and I thought, given that it was Paul Rudd paired with an ex-SNL star (in this case Amy Poehler) that it would be much the same.

I hadn't realized it was from writer/director David Wain (of The State/Stella/Wet Hot American Summer), and it was aiming for a Zucker/Abrams/Zucker-style parody of romcoms. It's marginally successful.

If you've watched Wain's work before with the likes of Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter, then you will have an idea of what to expect. Arch, very winking, fourth-wall breaking, and a lot of word play and juvenile humour and visual gags, often in the same beat.  The style is very rapid-fire and try-anything.  The problem with this style is it's not refined or honed, and it comes off as sloppy and unfocussed more often than it comes off as funny, even if there is much funny to be had.  

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Yacht Rock is a musical genre coined by four comedy writers for a web series that was a satirical reenactment of a specific era and sound of music in the late 70's and early 80's. Yacht Rock, as a term, did not exist before this comedy web series that was both taking the piss out of the dominant personalities of the genre and a loving tribute to them and the music they were making. Sometimes something can be both respectful and disrespectful at the same time.

The men who coined "Yacht Rock" have also been acting as the gatekeepers of what is and isn't "yacht" via podcasts since the mid 2010s where they judge whether user-submitted songs are "yacht or nyacht", but the genre has, since its gestation, gotten out of their control. There are ironic parties playing yacht rock music where everyone wears captains hats and boat shoes, and there are dedicated satellite radio channels just for yacht rock music.

Director Garret Price decided to unpack this retroactively coined "genre" of music with the musicians whose music has been subsumed by the genre. People like Kenny Loggins, Michael McDonald, and Christopher Cross, and bands like the Doobie Brothers, Toto and Steely Dan.  As important, if not moreso, are the people behind the scenes like the session musicians like Steve Lukather, the Pokaro brothers and Jay Graydon.  

This is a fun, but hardly robust documentary. It covers all the ground it needs to in pretty expedient time, but there's not a lot of depth. As most of the artists interviewed state, they were just playing the music they liked to play, there was never any concept of a genre beneath it.  Some have argued, there is no actual genre there, just the whims of four comedy writers. 

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I recall seeing Streets of Fire in the video store as far back as I can remember going to video stores. Streets of Fire always seemed like a "video store" movie. I never really knew what it was about, or even what type of movie it was. I guess I just assumed it was a crime drama, something that has never been of great interest.

Recently YouTube essayist Patrick Willems did an extensive video on his love for Streets of Fire, a film he acknowledges has its problems, but he feels has merits that outweigh its problems.  What stuck out most to me, having watched that essay, was Willems' insistence that the opening 20 minutes of Streets of Fire are, for lack of a better term, pure fire, and that the ending comes close to reaching the same heights. The middle is a bit mushier.

Willems was right, the opening moments of Streets of Fire are absolutely lit up, with a massively energetic rock opera track in the vein of Meat Loaf or Bonnie Tyler (because the opening and closing songs were written by Jim Steinman, who wrote rock opera hits like "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)" of which opening track "Nowhere Fast" and closing track "Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young" are easy-fitting siblings of).

Streets of Fire is also a gorgeous-looking film, sweat-soaked streets - like it always just rained - reflect the vibrant neons that light up the backlot of an unnamed city where pillars holding up a skyrail interrupt every street. It's fantasy city, like Gotham, but much more condensed and even grottier. 

It's just too bad then that the film's exceptionally weird tone and style of 40's noir, 50's greasers and 80's rock just don't blend, especially when you add a Ry Cooter score that sounds like it belongs on The Dukes of Hazzard and not a semi-dystopian greaser-punk near-musical.

It's a weird one.

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I own a copy of Ridley Scott's Gladiator on DVD. I'm sure most guys who were 20-something in the year 2000 do. It was like we were mandated to have one.  But I haven't watched the film in a very, very long time. I'm sure it's still a good watch, there's just little there to entice me.

So if I don't really have any love or affection for Gladiator, why would I bother with Gladiator II, you might ask? Because I heard there was a scene where they fill the Colosseum with water and shark and the gladiators have a big boat fight.  This level of audacious absurdity was really the only direction to go if you wanted to get butts in seats for a nearly-25-years-later sequel to a beloved Oscar-winning hit.

The film is pretty much pure spectacle while pretending to have some sort of anti-monarchy/pro-democracy stance. It has just enough substance to it to not be totally trashy, and Denzel Washington as a behind-the-scenes manipulator carries the movie, though Paul Mezcal's young, hot titular gladiator is appealing enough.  

I honestly don't have much to say about Gladiator II, except that if you like this sort of thing, then you will like this sort of thing.

[Toastypost - we agree]

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We haven't had a competent mid-range action-thriller like Carry-On for a while. A young TSA agent is blackmailed by a high-tech mercenary black-ops team into letting a bag through security screening. The TSA agent clearly believes the threat on the other end of the earpiece he's been handed, but he also just can't let the bad guys get away with whatever it is they're trying to get away with.

What results is a tense, pulpy cat-and-mouse game where the cat is tracking every movement the mouse is making, but the mouse is just sly enough to get away with the occasional movement. 

Carry-On is a pretty taut action-thriller that of course feels Die Hard/Die Hard 2 inspired, but also Speed and a dozen other entries in the genre. It is not at any point exceptionally unique, but it does what it does very well. The minimal backstory on our protagonist, played by Taron Egerton (Robin Hood), is just enough that we get the sense of a man who has been coasting, underperforming, and unsure of how to step up in life. Here he finds his moment, and Egerton plays this everyman, and his struggle with confidence but also his determination quite well. The main bad guy is, surprisingly, Jason Bateman. Even more surprising is how effective Bateman is at shedding any sense of being the comedic straight man, and being a damned cold-hearted capitalistic bastard.

It's a really fun watch, one of Netflix's best originals this year.

[Toastypost - we agree-ish]

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Drive-Away Dolls (aka Drive-Away Dykes) is the first solo directed narrative film from Ethan Coen (one half of the Coen Brothers pairing). Co-written with his wife, editor Tricia Cooke, it follows lesbian friends as they take a "drive-away" gig (wherein you are basically driving a car from one destination to another for compensation) in order to get out of town after Jamie (Margaret Qualley) has a bad break-up with her cop girlfriend (Beanie Feldstein).  Unfortunately there's a mix-up at the drive-away agency and they wind up getting the wrong car with the wrong items.  They are pursued by the mobsters who want the item recovered, but the women decide to take a series of lesbian-hotspot detours which are effective at throwing the mobsters off their trail.

It's hormone-fuelled (and sex-filled) journey as Jamie is flirty and dirty, while her traveling companion Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) is buttoned-up and reserved. Jamie wants to loosen Marian up, and Marian just wants to read her book.

The mobsters (Joey Slotnick and CJ Wilson) are patented bumbling boobs in the Coen vein. Obviously they have some proficiency, or else they wouldn't be given any job to do other than clean toilets, but their proficiencies are definitely lacking refinement. Coleman Domingo, an always welcome presence, plays their boss, and Bill Camp's Curlie, the drive-away owner, needs a film (at least a short film) of his own.

The film is briskly paced at 84 minutes, and is maybe ever-so-slighly undercooked, in an over-before-it-begins kind of way, but I think I like it more for its lack of overstaying its welcome. The maguffin of the piece is so absurd that once it's revealed it's best it books it for the finale rather than lingering with it too long.

The artsy flourishes, particularly the weird 60's kaleidoscope/lava-lamp LSD-tripping interstitials are so out of place, and yet has its relevance. I recall disliking The Big Lebowski's weird flourishes on first watch too, so maybe they will grow on me. 

[Toastypost - we agree]

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I don't tend to go into any film cold anymore. I've always seen a trailer, or read a review, or heard discussion on a podcast. There's always some prior awareness that draws me to a film (or repels me from).

Distant, aka Long Distance, just popped up on AmazonPrime with no fanfare and no promotion (at least, not to me). It featured an image of two people in space suits with an alien-looking-planetary backdrop, something which used to be an immediate interest pique, but these days elicits more of an eye roll as there's so many low-budget sci-fi stranded-in-space movies that pop up on streaming, especially Amazon and Tubi.

I clicked the "trailer" button and the brief clip it started showing (not a trailer) had good enough production values that I just pressed play on the movie. 

Starring Anthony Ramos (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts), the film opens with an asteroid colliding with a large bulky cruiser of a space ship. It's passengers are in long-range hibernation when the alarms go off, and they're all ejected in pod into space hurtling towards a nearby planet. Most burn up in the atmosphere. Ramos survives. He's on alien terrain in a space suit low on oxygen and there are hostile creatures stalking him. On his comm, he's talking to another survivor, pinned in her pod, and he must make the "long distance" trek to her while they connect as distant voices.

There is very little original about this film, but it manages to scratch a very satisfying itch. It does what it does inoffensively enough, and with a very healthy production that propels it well past other low budget features that try to do the same thing.  It's not an immediate favourite, but I was engaged throughout.

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Despite what I said about Carry-On above, Netflix's reputation, generally, is that it makes terrible (or, if I'm being generous, not so great) movies. Polar is a prime example of this, a Netflix original, adapted from a comic book, by a director who is primarily experienced in working with musicians on concert videos, music videos or documentaries. The flash-over-substance of music videos really doesn't translate into feature-length storytelling, even if some of our best directors of the 90's and 2000s came out of music video production (like David Fincher or Spike Jonze).

Polar is an unchecked production, clearly having little oversight from the producers. It is a tonal mess of a movie that looks to capture the frenetic energy of a Crank-like action feature, riddle itself with excessive sex and nudity, and at the same time attempt to have a pensive reflections of later-in-life character looking to retire from his profession as a hitman.

It's an assaulting production (as well as an insulting production) that features an assassin character whose "finishing move" is to get her target into position of her sniper by giving him a blow job. The opening sequence of the film find a just-killed Johnny Knoxville's erect penis going flaccid (beneath his swim trunks I should clarify), which then cuts to a very sombre, sterile medical examination of star Mads Mikkelsen. That's the tonal whiplash of this film in a nutshell.

The thrust of the plot is that the organization Mads has worked for is pruning all their retired-or-retiring assassins to save on their pension. Hell, if this were a smarter, more contemplative movie, they could have really said something about the nature of big business and how they undermine the working class, but it's anything but a smart movie. 

I don't even know how, in the time I have left (I'm over time) to talk about the whole subplot featuring Vanessa Hudgens as a traumatized neighbour who Mads befriends.  It's like something out of a completely different movie. This was bad.

[Toastypost - we agree]

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It's quite amazing that a film like Outland exists. Made in the wake of Star Wars fever, Peter Hyams' stab at a "space" movie is so not interested trying to be Star Wars. Instead he seemed to take more inspiration from the grimy, industrialized future of Alien, minus any aliens.

Set at a mining colony on the moon of Jupiter Io, it's a suspense thriller about a newly assigned marshall (Sean Connory) who starts looking into the increasing rash of deaths happening in the colony, only to find drugs and conspiracy.

I had seen Outland a couple decades ago and it stuck with me how low-key the film was, in terms of its sci-fi elements. It could have been a thriller set in any remote mining town at any time, but the choice to set it in space and capitalize upon Star Wars mania was a brilliant stroke.  The sets are like a mix of industrial working environments, 1980's near-future technology, and prison-like living conditions. It's a sweaty, unpleasant looking atmosphere, where it seems everyone is just trying to get through their tour.

But Hyams makes sure to put his space environment to good use, adding it as the dangerous x-factor in the whole scenario. The deadly vaccuum of the inhospitable Io environment is made know pretty quick.

The mystery and dangers aren't complex or anything revolutionary, but this remains a hidden gem of 80's sci-fi.

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I wrote about Rainer Werner Fassbinder's TV mini-series World on a Wire, about 15 months ago, and found it to be an incredibly surprising, engrossing, and far ahead of its time in terms of how it contemplated virtual realities and artificial life, as well as being really sharply made with some brilliant choices that used its budgetary limitations to its storytelling advantage.

The series was based on the novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye from 1964, putting these ideas of simulated reality even further ahead of its time. I was surprised to learn that the 1999 flop The Thirteenth Floor was based off the same story, because The Thirteenth Floor left no impact on me whatsoever. 

My meagre recollection of the film was merely that I didn't particularly love it nor did it make any cultural dent.  It was released in the wake of The Matrix, which, as we all know, had its own take on simulated reality and had the benefit of revolutionizing filmmaking and being a complete visual spectacle, among other things.

The Thirteenth Floor really couldn't help but be seen as a poor man's also-ran.

The film opens with Armin Mueller-Stahl inhabiting a glossy 1930's reality where he's clearly living the high life, only to learn that he's actually from 2024 and was engaging in a very realistic VR.  He is killed at a nearby bar and his successor in the tech firm, played by Craig Bierko, investigates his death in two realities while also being suspect number one of police detective Dennis Haysbert.  And in walks Gretchen Mol, as the femme fatale of this very noir-styled techno-thriller, who claims to be Mueller-Stahl's daughter, and the rightful heir to the company and claims it was her father's wish to shut it all down.

It's honestly not a bad production. Its 1930's replication looks really amazing, and it's layered realities storytelling is competently handled. It's key problem is the worlds the film inhabits feel pretty claustrophobic.  There's really only about five meaningful characters in the whole production, which hems the film in as it tries to tease out a murder mystery.  I suppose since I was already familiar with the story's foundations there weren't many surprises to be had anyway.  This film is fine if you're, say, bored of the Matrix, or as an exercise after watching World on a Wire if you can track it down.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Gladiator II

2024, Ridley Scott (Napoleon) -- cinema

I don't remember much about the first movie. Its been years, likely decades since I saw the 2000 flick. Sure, it was great then, all spectacle and excitement, but obviously, nothing has compelled me to return to it. I am not a Ridley Scott fan, but nor am I a detractor. He just ... is. That said, I do own Kingdom of Heaven, its on The Shelf, and I semi-regularly watch it. But not Gladiator.

Weird, but I also have anachronistic memories of this movie, as in I feel like I saw it in late-high school, back when everything "swords and...." would have been fodder for my D&D games, and I can viscerally remember applying the cool Maximus face mask to a character.

It also should be said that I went to this movie because in Sault Ste-Marie, ON, everything is pretty much closed on a Tuesday AND the snow storm that started when I arrived on Monday morning had not yet abated, so I trailed along behind Chatzz to see the movie. He is still of that age where he absolutely LOVES movies, seeing them in the cinema, the whole experience. Otherwise, I would probably have waited to pirate this movie.

So, that means I did not catch up before going to see. I recall he died. I recall he had a son. The movies does some brief, in story, recapping for us but mainly the movie is about Rome some 25 years later, the latest conquers, the latest turmoil and how Maximus's son fits into it all.

Its a two and a half hour movie I spent the trailing third twitching painfully in my seat. My personal seat does not like sitting that long, and it takes a LOT of distraction / attention span to ignore the inevitable pain. This movie did not distract nor keep my attention well enough, which should say enough.

So, some 25 years later, Rome is one again in dire straits. The latest loons running the empire are the brothers Geta (Joseph Quinn, Stranger Things) and Caracalla (Fred Henchinger, Kraven: the Hunter), bolstered in power by their favourite general Acacius (Pedro Pascal, The Mandalorian), who starts the movie by taking the last independent city in Africa, the Kingdom of Numidia, where Maximus's son, though you are not supposed to immediately realize this, but really, who wouldn't guess, is hiding out under the name of Hanno (Paul Mescal, Normal People). Acacius's invasion is successful and Hanno witnesses his wife's death and the enslavement of those left alive.

In Rome, the empire, not the city, when they make land in Ostia, Hanno is immediately sold to gladiator ... (googles) ... lanista named Macrinus (Denzel Washington, The Equalizer), after impressing him with his savagery. That brings him to Rome proper where  he gets mixed up in Macrinus's plots & machinations. Meanwhile, Acacius is denied the right to retire from war, and gets up in the plots & machinations of his wife and a group of Senators who wish to depose the Emperors.

Plots & Machinations. Yawn. I watched the first episode of the newish Amazon series called Those About to Die, and I realize that this is what these shows are always about, so I want to see a wee bit more to keep my attention. I also wanted .... more spectacle? I can usually be distracted from my boredom by Big Bombastic Scenes, but .... it all felt just too familiar? I mean, the only thing I was ever impressed by in this movie was Macrinus's sleeves, and in general, Denzel Washington as this character. I was just intrigued by him at every turn, as just when you think you got where he was going, he went one step further and basically did a speed run from running a dusty gladiator ring in the provinces (think of the place where Conan the Barbarian learned to fight) to (SPOILERS !!) taking down two emperors. Maybe if he hadn't moved so fast, he might have survived.

Recently, I came to a realization that I generally don't have much to write about movies that I really enjoy because I have rewired my brain to focus on complaining. Its not just in the media I watch, but also in my life in general. Ask me "how are you?" and if I don't have anything to complain about, I don't have much to say in general. But get me started and.... And yet, I don't have much to complain about this movie, I just ... don't have much to say.

Horror, Not Horror: the trash bin

"Horror, Not Horror" movies are those that toe the line of being horror movies but don't quite comfortably fit the mold.  I'm not a big horror fan (Toast is the horror buff here), but I do quite like these line-skirting type movies, as we'll see. 

In the past few months I've been wading more and more into the underexplored depths of genre cinema.  Some of this has been on my own, at random, and some of it's been prompted by the films discussed by Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avery on the very fun Video Archives podcast (noted by an asterisk below).  These are, to a one, not good films, but the hope is always that, for as maybe limited in budget, or as tossed off as they may have been, they still have something going for them. Oh, but surprise, one of these is a prestige picture that was nominated for Oscars!

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Hercules Conquers Atlantis (1961) dir. Vittorio Cottafavi - Tubi

(AKA Hercules and the Captive Women)

What is it? One of the many, many iterations of Hercules in the "sword'n'sandals" genre of action/adventure movies, largely made in Italy throughout the 1950's through 1980's.  In this one Hercules, played by the handsome and beefy Reg Park, is ostensibly kidnapped by his friend and taken on an adventure where he discovers Atlantis, but the place is a nefarious one, and only the might of Hercules can stop their evil plot (whatever it was).

Why watch? I had, on a whim, picked up a copy of the Mario Bava directed "sequel" film to this, Hercules in the Haunted World, so I thought I should just give this one a shot first.

The good? Bava served as a director of photography so there are some pretty nice shots in this.  Reg Park, former Mr. Universe, is really nice to look at.  Bava does this tilt-down/pan-up shot in the cave which is really sweet, and there's a high-up crane shot of.  The shot of Hercules bounding through a courtyard of dead bodies is kinda nuts as is the reveal of the Atlantian elite guard which is a little provovative.  It's impressive seeing Hercules driving a chariot of 10 horses, if only there were a Hercules movie that could sustain that sort of scale.  Hercules being a petty dick was pretty fun, as were all Reg Park's muscles.  Fay Spain's eyes are the best special effect in the movie.

The bad? The audio - dubbing, sound effects, music - is pretty awful most of the time, and seemingly mixed all at the same volume. The action sequences are incredibly clumsy. The story is flimsy nonsense with little internal consistency. The wardrobe and sets waver between spectacular and silly. The envisioning of both ancient Greece and Atlantis is pretty uninspired. The cinematography wavers between impressive and pedestrian.

The trash? Reg Park does this one-armed swimming technique which just blows my mind thinking about it.

Is it horror? No, but there's definitely some little twinges of horror that the film never thinks to exploit.

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Hercules in the Haunted World (1961) dir. Mario Bava - BluRay

What is it? Reg Park's second - and final - foray as the demigod hero.  But this one's directed by Mario Bava, and Christopher Lee co-stars.  Maintaining no continuity from the prior film (in which Hercules had a wife and son), here he must go on a quest to retrieve a specific stone in order to cure the madness of his lover.  The stone's destination? Hell!

Why watch?  Bava, of course.

The good? This is a visual feast of nonsense.  I watched it twice.  Bava's innovative craftsmanship and colour sense is so damn impressive.  The visual effects, in many instances, seem so surreal, as if they shouldn't exist.  The big finale features the raising of the dead which is a sequence that would have for sure scared the crap out of me as a kid (but is both fun and silly as an adult watching on a hi definition TV)

The bad? The story is utterly nonsensical.  The Kino blu-ray features an audio commentary from a Bava scholar who identifies that there was obviously a completely different shooting script at one time and that few pains were taken to marry the original story with what they wound up with.

The trash? Very little trash in this one.  It's a really stunning watch.  I guess, the biggest trash is that they dubbed over Christopher Lee's performance. Blasphemy!

Is it horror? No, but it does swerve that way for the climax for a bit, providing a sense of Bava's chops in the genre.

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*Demonoid: Messenger of Death (1981) dir. Alfredo Zacarias - Tubi

What is it? A Mexican (but English) horror film about a demonic hand which possesses people to kill. Samantha Eggar stars as the wife of the mining honcho who releases the hand.  It seems to be fixated on trying to get her specifically as it goes from possessing person to person and murdering along the way.

Why watch?  It was a Tarantino/Avery recommendation.

The good? Honestly, it has a pretty solid sense of its own history and the evil forces at play.  It does better than many horror films in that aspect. The acting is surprisingly decent for such a off the beaten path production.

The bad? But make no mistake, this is some cheesy-crust crazy-bread stuff.  The special effects are that special blend of late-70's/early-80's waxy gore with stark red corn syrup blood. I have to wonder if the makers of this took any of it seriously or if they knew it would eventually be considered campy fun.

The trash? They really liked to work their gross visual effects, and we've come so far in making that shit so gross that it's really quaint what they used to be able to get away with.  Oh and gratuitous nudity tied to violence in the first five minutes (seen in one of the trailers even)

Is it horror? Yeah. It's that special type of 80's low-budg horror.

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*Blind Rage (1976) dir. Efren C Pinon - YouTube

What is it? The war in Viet Nam has decimated the markets in the Asian Pacific, so the world bank (I guess?) has decided to invest 15 million dollars into the region, to be held at a bank in Manila before dispersing. A man on the inside is recruited by a Black L.A. mobster to pull off a heist of said 15mil, but he's going to do it with ... 5 blind guys!  Because who would ever suspect blind guys of robbing a bank. 

Why watch? Another Tarantino/Avery recommendation.

The good? Umm, this movie real bad, but so bad that I enjoy telling people about how bad it is. It ends with a cameo by Fred Williamson in a bright blue butterfly collared deep-V-neck jumpsuit chomping on a cigar, looking great and being a total badass.  And the line: "It's all going down right now at the International House of Pancakes".  

The bad? There's no protagonist to this film.  There's nobody we follow all throughout the movie.  Is there anyone to really care about if they succeed or fail? No, there is not.  

The trash? This movie is part Blaxploitation, part kung-fu, and part crime thriller, none of which is done particularly well.  Is "Blindsploitation" a genre?

Is it horror? No, nor is it trying to be, though people do be getting shot, tho.  And the script is a nightmare, lol.

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*Welcome to Blood City (1977) dir. Peter Sasdy - YouTube

What is it? A group of strangers find themselves in the desert with no memory of who they are, and a note each found on their person telling them that they were a killer.  Kier Dullea (2001: A Space Odyssey) doesn't believe a thing.  They're escorted to Blood City by the sheriff (Jack Palance) who doesn't really want to tell them much about how the town operates, but it's basically a place where anything goes, including slavery and murder.  In fact, the more you murder, the greater your status.  But who are the people in a control booth watching all this, and why? 

Why watch? Though Avery and Tarantino didn't necessarily love this, they were generally intrigued by the premise, and cited it as one of the Westworld knock-offs of the era, which intrigued me.

The good? The premise was really, really intriguing.  A group of people with a secret past, possibly filled with murder, but without their memories, are they still the same murderers?  Just one of many questions the film poses, but never answers.  It's rather rife with ideas that don't get explored well enough, and has a mysterious backdrop that gets slowly revealed in a pleasant way (possibly cribbed by Cabin in the Woods) but ultimately doesn't pay off.  And hey, more Samantha Eggar

The bad? The film is either shot terribly, with the active actor partially or fully out of frame most of the time, or else its transfer to video/digital went horribly wrong.  It's actually pretty funny how awful it looks.

The trash? The one female "murderer" is the helpless object of affection and treated like a non-entity by everyone (content warning: off screen rape).

Is it horror? No, but it's certainly playing with dystopian themes which can be scary to some.

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*The Keep (1983) dir. Michael Mann - Criterion

What is it? The infamous/forgotten Michael Mann disaster that finds Nazi soldiers in 1941 taking over an old Romanian Citadel only to unleash a terrible, murderous being from its cage.  The being uses Jewish scholar Ian McKellen to try and get set free upon the Earth, by tempting him with revenge upon all Nazis.  Scott Glenn plays an otherworldly savior type who's arrived on earth to stop it, but not before sexing up Alberta Watson, McKellen's daughter. 

Why watch? I caught this film years and years ago on a late night TV airing, and have long been wanting to revisit it.  It's a moody piece with haunting Tangerine Dream synths, that probably was even moodier in Mann's lost original 210minute cut.  This 98 minute hack job by the studios leaves the film feeling disjointed and frequently confusing.

The good?  I love all the strange lighting, the sets, the evil creature, Mann's style is all over this, even in it's chopped up form.

The bad? I have to think that a 210minute version of this would be better as a cohesive story, but still potentially direly boring.  But then again, there are some intriguing character reveals and dynamics that I think may have played out so much better in a longer form.

The trash? Scott Glenn meets Alberta Watson for less then a minute before they start boning.  Does he have Starfox's powers?

Is it horror? I think it's trying to be.  

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Leviathan (1989) dir. George P. Cosmatos - AmazonPrime

What is it? The other, lower-budget undersea movie of 1989 (next to the Abyss), it's basically Alien (with a dash of Carpenter's The Thing) in a sealab.  Starring Robocop, a Ghostbuster, Flash's girlfriend, and Evil-Lyn, so it's 80's to the core.

Why watch? It's been on my "to watch" list since I first spied its tape cover at a video store.  It always looked like something that would be in my wheelhouse.

The good? There's some really great sets and some nice underwater sequences.  It does manage to build a decent amount of attention, but...

The bad? ...you can basically watch as the film's budget starts shrinking the longer it goes on. They try to edit around the budget limitations, but they become painfully obvious.  The budget limitations can't capitalize upon the film's buildup and it's a real wet fart of an ending.

The trash?  The creature, and not in an "oh, it's so gross" kind of way but more in a "really? That's what you're going with?" kind of way.  It's a pretty corny looking beast, and the film does an incredibly poor job with devising any sort of mythology or backstory behind it.  It's basically a perfunctory creature with little to no intrigue behind it.  It's a terrible let down to an otherwise acceptably entertaining picture.

Is it horror? It probably was at some point during production.

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Nightmare Alley (2020) dir. Guillermo del Toro - Crave

What is it? The saga of down-on-his-luck crumbum Bradley Cooper who winds up helping out at 1920's-era carnival/freakshow, learning the tricks of the trade.  He effectively steals one man's mentallist act then starts performing for New York High society, pushing the boundaries of good taste and kayfabe.  Psychologist Cate Blanchette starts working with him, if only to ultimately use him for her own purposes, then destroy him for fun.

Why watch? Generally intrigued by del Toro's films, and I share his fascination with carnivals of old.  Oh yeah, and Sid worked on it!

The good? It looks great.  It's a phenomenal looking film in every aspect.  The attention to detail in every scene -- the sets, lighting, costuming, makeup, props - all just eye catching and really attractive.  I also liked how it exposed the sham of mentallists (if only it had more fun with it)

The bad? The film is tedious. It's a long 150 minutes of watching a not great person do not great things. You never really connect with Bradley Cooper, nor with any of his relationships. There's nothing there. You know he's bad news from the beginning, and that sense of distrust never abates. It makes it very, very hard to invest in him. Were he, maybe, more charming, or perhaps if we had some insight into what his goals were, what he's actually working towards, or, mayhaps if he were even a semblance of a good person we could follow him, hoping for his success even as he makes the wrong choices and finds himself unable to stop from going deeper into the darkness. But we know he's shit from the beginning, Del Toro wants us to know that being easy on the eyes will get him far, but for this story, it's not enough. We're rooting for him to fail (and hoping, at least, that he doesn't take others undeservedly down with him)..

The trash?  The last 30 minutes finally pick up the pace but they're kind of the worst moments of the film. Just waiting for Cooper to get his comeuppance, little of which is satisfying, moreover, it all seemed kinda overblown and carny...I mean corny.

Is it horror? Meh, its toes creep over the edge of the deck, but it never really tests the waters, nevermind jumps right in.