Monday Morning Movie Review: Hell Comes to Frogtown (1988)

23 August 202120 August 2021 The Portly Politico10 Comments

Binge-watching The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs has introduced me to some obscure and forgotten flicks. Several of the films the freedom-loving Texan screens are deservedly forgotten, and even hard to watch, with only Joe Bob’s off-the-cuff rants and film history knowledge keeping me going. Others, however, are real gems—rough-cut and a little sooty, but gems nonetheless.

One such film is Hell Comes to Frogtown (1988), a post-apocalyptic sci-fi action-comedy starring wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. Piper is better known for his role in They Live (1988), the John Carpenter classic in which Piper’s character discovers a pair of sunglasses that show the world for how it truly is. They Live—with its infamous six-minute fistfight—is the better film, but Hell Comes to Frogtown is really delightful.

Monday Morning Movie Review: The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot (2018)

16 August 202115 August 2021 The Portly Politico7 Comments

This week’s Monday Morning Movie Review is by special request—sort of: Audre Myers of Nebraska Energy Observer asked me if I’d seen The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot (2018), and encouraged me to write a review of it. She’s also asked me to write a review of 1999’s Bicentennial Man, but I haven’t seen the flick since… well, 1999. I’ll get around to that one, too, eventually.

But The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot has the kind of exploitation title I love. When I first heard about the film (on RedBox), I became obsessed with seeing it. I remember making a special trip to a distant RedBox kiosk to rent the DVD.

I mean, clearly this flick had to be the greatest movie ever made, right? What kind of crazy, evil genius cooked up the concept of a man assassinating Hitler and Bigfoot?

Well, it’s not quite the greatest movie ever made—far from it—and the film is way different than what the ridiculous title implies, but it’s still quite good. Just temper your expectations.

Monday Morning Movie Review: Heathers (1989)

9 August 20211 August 2021 The Portly Politico2 Comments

Today marks the end of summertime fun and the beginning of work. Classes for the school year won’t start for another nine days, but I’ll be filling out various bits of legalese paperwork and taking the same bloodborne pathogens quiz I’ve taken every August for the paste decade.

In the spirit of beginning another year of academic rigmarole and inspirational mind-molding, I decided to review the 1989 dark comedy Heathers, starring Wynona Rider and Christian Slater as two oddball teens who declare war against the titular popular clique that rules the school.

I first watched Heathers on Hulu back in 2019 with the girl I was dating at the time. I remember it being far darker than I anticipated, and found the second half of the film unpleasant. I usually enjoy unsettling movies, but tonally it seemed “off.”

I re-watched the film a couple of weekends ago on The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs, and must substantially revise my original assessment of the film.

Lazy Sunday CXXV: More Movies VII: Movie Reviews, Part VII

8 August 20211 August 2021 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Well, tomorrow I head back to the real world—at least, as close to the real world as teaching gets—and the glorious freedom of summer ends. I’ll likely spend today playing piano at church and watching crummy movies on Shudder.

That’s kind of a metaphor for the conundrum of summer vacation: you get two months of completely unstructured time handed to you, then blow it all watching B-movies and taking naps. I do think I had a more productive summer than usual, but many of my hoped-for projects—as usual—are incomplete, even un-started.

Oh, well. It was still a good summer. I loved living like a retiree for two months.

Anyway, on to the flicks!:

“Monday Morning Movie Review: Still (2018)” – This movie is about a magical water source deep in the Appalachian Mountains that grants eternal youth to two jaded outlaws. A young woman stumbles upon it, and is drawn into their weird world.
“Monday Morning Movie Review: Suburban Gothic (2014)” – This flick is a fun, quirky comedy-horror. The protagonist is a dude who looks and dresses like a gay man, but is just an eccentric weirdo. When some Mexican contractors dig up a young girl’s grave and steal her necklace, some supernatural shenanigans start to go down. Needless to say, this movie—which is only seven years old—could not be made today.
“Monday Morning Movie Review: The Housemaid (2016)” – I very much enjoyed this Vietnamese-language film, which takes place during France’s failed attempt to hold onto its southeast Asian colony in the 1950s. A young woman takes a job at a notoriously haunted rubber plantation and begins an affair with the wounded French captain and plantation owner. The flick is all about revenge and colonialism, but don’t let that second point spoil it for you—it’s quite good.

That’s it for this Lazy Sunday, my last Sunday as a free man until June 2022.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Near Dark (1987)

2 August 202130 July 2021 The Portly Politico2 Comments

August is an odd time be writing about vampires. With the intense heat and humidity of the brutal South Carolina summer beating down upon us, it doesn’t feel like vampire weather. But the crisp autumnal nights of October are closer than we realize, even if they seem impossible right now.

That said, the Southern vampire is a particular niche of Southern gothic horror. All the mystery and romance of “moonlight and magnolias” is enhanced with these mysterious, romantic creatures stalking about crumbling old plantation houses in the night. I’ve been reading Anne Rice’s novel Interview with the Vampire (the film version of which I reviewed last fall), and the titular vampire and narrator, Louis, is from Louisiana. The exotic setting of New Orleans plays a prominent role in the first half of the book, and provides the perfect backdrop for Louis, Lestat, and Claudia’s lethal nocturnal escapades.

This week’s film, 1987’s Near Dark, isn’t exactly about Southern vampires, but Midwestern vampires. That doesn’t exactly fit into the mold of the seductive, mysterious vampire, but that’s one of the film’s strengths: these vampires are crazy Nebraskan (or Oklahoman?) low-lives, terrorizing the prairie in a aluminum-foil-covered panel van.

Delayed Monday Morning Movie Review: Day of the Dead (1985)

22 July 202121 July 2021 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

After much delay, here is this week’s Monday Morning Movie Review of George A. Romero‘s 1985 zombie classic Day of the Dead (not to be confused with the festive Mexican holiday of the same name).

When I first pulled up the flick on Shudder, I was hoping for 1978’s Dawn of the Dead, the supposedly “fun” Romero Dead movie. That’s the one with survivors of a zombie apocalypse live it up in a mall, enjoying all the materialism the late 1970s could afford.

Despite my efforts, though, I can’t seem to locate that flick on any streaming service I use, so Day of the Dead it was. By now the trope of “humans are the real monsters” is familiar to viewers—and readers of virtually any Stephen King novel—but Day of the Dead delivers that trite message in a taut, unsettling way.

Monday Morning Movie Review: Creepshow (1982)

12 July 202111 July 2021 The Portly Politico4 Comments

I’ve been enjoying my Shudder membership immensely, and it’s pretty much become the main streaming service I watch when I’m viewing solo. Needless to say, I’ve consumed a lot of movies on the service already, so brace yourselves for many horror movie reviews (as if I didn’t mostly write those already).

This week, I’m looking at the horror anthology Creepshow (1982). Horror anthologies can vary in quality, with usually one very strong entry, and then some forgettable duds. Creepshow, for the most part, beats the odds.

I don’t remember when I first saw Creepshow, but I was probably far too young. What I do know is that some of its most iconic, comic-book-inspired images have stuck with me down to the present. I didn’t even know they were from Creepshow until re-watching it all these years later, but they’ve been seared into my brain.

For example, the whole plot of “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill“—which stars Stephen King in his first film role—has always stuck with me (indeed, I have an idea for a short story with a similar premise tentatively entitled “Yeast Man”): the idiot farmer slowly succumbing to the weird alien plant. Ted Danson’s submerged head in “Something to Tide You Over” is another memorable image, as is the flood of roaches entering the impossibly sanitized apartment in “They’re Creeping Up on You!”

Monday Morning Movie Review: The City of the Dead (1960)

28 June 202127 June 2021 The Portly Politico4 Comments

Regular readers know that I have a penchant for schlocky horror movies. Knowing this fact well, Audre Myers, a regular contributor at Nebraska Energy Observer and a frequent commenter on this site, e-mailed me last week with a recommendation to check out Shudder, the horror streaming service. She isn’t the first to recommend the service—a colleague of mine has been singing the service’s praises for several months, but I kept putting it off for the same reason folks are slow to subscribe to my SubscribeStar page: whenever I thought to sign up, I didn’t have the time to do so.

Regardless, Audre sent along a YouTube video by Jade The Libra, a woman dressed like a witch and talking about which stores tend to put out their Halloween decorations first. Jade is some kind of Shudder affiliate, and entering promo code “JADE” gives new subscribers a free month of the service.

With that enticement—and without the lame excuse of lacking time—I signed up for the annual membership. Since subscribing (just about five days ago), I have pretty much only watched Shudder. If I weren’t paying a mere $2.15 a month for Hulu—and sharing it with three or four family members—I’d probably drop it entirely in favor of Shudder. After all, other than Bob’s Burgers, I pretty much only watch horror and thriller films on Hulu (as well as plenty of weird sci-fi flicks).

But I digress. That cloying endorsement of Shudder is my long way of introducing the subject of this week’s Monday Morning Movie Review, which is the second flick I viewed on the service. The film is 1960’s The City of the Dead (known as Horror Hotel in the United States—I like the original title better), a story about a coven of witches who have taken over the town of Whitewood, Massachusetts.

Monday Morning Movie Review: Life Like (2019)

21 June 202119 June 2021 The Portly Politico3 Comments

Ever since watching 2012’s Robot & Frank, The Great Algorithm at Hulu has been sending more artificial intelligence and robot flicks my way. Each of these movies grapple with the ethical and moral issues surrounding artificial intelligence, chiefly the idea of how human can it really become? Can robots develop souls, emotions, etc.?

In the case of Robot & Frank, Frank largely anthropomorphized the robot, the same way many pet owners attribute human characteristics, thought processes, and motivations to their dogs and cats. Just as a dog doesn’t think in the way we do, the titular Robot did not requite the emotional bond Frank had developed with the adorable tin can.

The featured film of this week’s review, Life Like (2019), explores those ideas further. Instead of a cute, rounded robot, the androids of Life Like are, indeed, life-like: designed to resemble perfect humans, and designed to make their owners happy—whatever that might require.

Lazy Sunday CXVIII: More Movies VI: Movie Reviews, Part VI

20 June 202118 June 2021 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Another week has rolled by, so it’s time for another Lazy Sunday—one so lazy, I’m sticking to the recent movie review theme. I’m heading into a very busy week with a whopping sixteen tiny campers in Minecraft Camp, making it the largest such camp in the school’s history. I’ve also got a full slate of lessons, including two new students, so I hope you’ll excuse some additional laziness today.

That said, here are three more Monday Morning Movie Reviews for your consideration:

“Monday Morning Movie Review: Boss Level (2021)” – This flick—which features Mel Gibson as the chief villain—is a fun, action-packed romp through a quasi-video game scenario: every time the protagonist dies, he starts the whole day over.
“Monday Morning Movie Review: The Ghost Writer (2010)” – A political thriller about a thinly-veiled Tony Blair character writing his memoirs, The Ghost Writer is interesting and tense in spite of its holes.
“Monday Morning Movie Review: High-Rise (2015)” – A sci-fi parable for classism in 1970s Britain, High-Rise stars Loki (Tom Hiddleston) as a man caught in the middle—socially and physically—of a high-tech tower rapidly descending into decadence and chaos. Not a film for everyone, but it’s a good ride.