Monday Morning Movie Review: Puppet Master I-III (1989, 1990, 1991)

13 November 202312 November 2023 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Good old Shudder has been putting up some real classics of schlock lately, and that includes the first three films in the popular direct-to-video Puppet Master series. These are not good movies, but they are a fun distraction.

The brainchild (children?) of Charles Band, whose entire career seems to have been dedicated to churning out super low-budget horror films with a strong sense of self-awareness, I remember the various Puppet Master flicks being terrifying as a kid.

For context, my parents did not plop five-year old Portly down in front of Puppet Master. The early 90s were the golden age of direct-to-video flicks ending up on cable as reruns years later. Somehow, at some point, I caught a few minutes of one of the films, and was thoroughly spooked.

Consider: as a kid, the prospect of murderous, spooky-looking puppets coming to life is pretty scary. I’m sure everyone reading this blog—even my older readers, who probably got a cedar log and an orange for Christmas—had at least one weird, creepy toy, and had some vague dread that it was filled with malice intent. My mom had these creepy dolls that were supposed to be a little boy and a little girl, with heads made from some kind of 1960s-era molded plastic. Those things still give me the jeebies.

So, do they hold up years later?

Monday Morning Movie Review: Ad Hoc Halloween Edition

30 October 202329 October 2023 The Portly Politico1 Comment

It’s almost Halloween! Yours portly couldn’t be more excited for this fun holiday.

Unfortunately, yours portly has been extremely busy lately, and I simply haven’t had the time to write proper posts over the weekend. I was planning on reviewing the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock classic The Birds today (I saw it on the big screen the weekend before this past one), but I’m holding off on that for another week.

Instead, here are some films I’d recommend to get you into the Halloween mood:

Monday Morning Movie Review: Lockdown Tower (2022)

23 October 202322 October 2023 The Portly Politico6 Comments

What would happen if a multiethnic, multiracial apartment tower in the Parisian projects found itself blocked off from the outside world, surrounded by a total blackness that consumes anything that attempts to pass through it? That’s the premise to the 2022 French film Lockdown Tower, and the answer to that question isn’t pretty.

Fortunately, it makes for a riveting film, and while the world it paints is pretty bleak, it’s also unsettlingly realistic.

Monday Morning Movie Review: The Exorcist: Believer (2023)

16 October 202315 October 2023 The Portly Politico8 Comments

Last Monday I wrote about one of the best horror movies—indeed, one of the best movies—of all time, 1973’s The Exorcist. My review barely dipped into the complex religious themes of the movie, as well many of the flick’s subtle shades of implication and visual storytelling.

Today I’m reviewing what is intended to be a modern sequel/reboot of the classic, arriving fifty years later: 2023’s The Exorcist: Believer. Well, you’d better believe(r) that it doesn’t stack up to the original.

Monday Morning Movie Review: The Exorcist (1973)

9 October 20238 October 2023 The Portly Politico8 Comments

On Sunday, 1 October 2023, I had the opportunity to catch 1973’s The Exorcist on the big screen. It’s the fiftieth anniversary of the film, if you can believe it; it debuted the day of Christmas the year my Dad graduated from high school.

That was astonishing to me. I’m thirty years younger than my Dad (to the year), and was born twelve years after the film’s release. That said, it was very much a part of the Zeitgeist of the early 1990s. To be clear, I did not see the film at that tender age—thank goodness!—but it was spoken of in hushed whispers as “the scariest movie of all time.” I vividly recall my older brother telling me how he stayed up late to watch the film (he was probably a young teenager at the time) on television, and how it scared him so much, he couldn’t sleep. Powerful stuff!

I saw the film years later—I don’t recall when or how old I was—and while I found it creepy, I didn’t understand all the hubbub. Yes, it was an excellent film, but “the scariest movie of all time?” C’mon.

Then I saw it on the big screen. That experience changed my assessment of the film and its horror substantially. In the dark, in the theater, the film’s incredible cinematography and effects demanding my full attention, left an indelible mark upon my mind—and, perhaps, my soul. I get it now: The Exorcist is terrifying.

Monday Morning Movie Review: The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)

11 September 202310 September 2023 The Portly Politico4 Comments

It’s been a big moviegoing summer for yours portly, and I’ve availed myself of the offerings at my local cinema quite frequently. While I was still on summer vacation I managed to slip into a 4 PM showing of The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023), a film about the doomed ship that carried Count Dracula to England in the original Bram Stoker novel.

I was hoping for a delightfully blood-soaked (and blood-thirsty) romp on the high seas, blending the manliness of stoic sailors in the waning days of the Age of Sail with the Gothic horror of old-school Dracula. Instead, I got a disappointingly plodding film and a stomach ache from eating too much popcorn, albeit with a pretty terrifying depiction of the dreaded Count.

Monday Morning Movie Review: Death Game (1977)

21 August 202331 July 2023 The Portly Politico3 Comments

Yours portly has, admittedly, pretty trashy tastes in movies. Thanks to a subscription to Shudder, I’ve watched some pretty gnarly horror and suspense films over the last couple of years, not to mention plenty of sleazy exploitation flicks.

Even yours portly has his limits, and recently endured one insufferable exploitation flick from 1977, Death Game.

Monday Morning Movie Review: Calvaire (2004)

19 June 202318 June 2023 The Portly Politico2 Comments

When I was young ~~I thought that life was so wonderful~~ that foreign films were snooty, arthouse affairs, the kinds of flicks pretentious people only pretended to like in order to look sophisticated. That’s probably true of some foreign films (and most modern art in general), but I’ve found that the opposite is frequently the case. Some of the best movies I’ve watched lately were foreign films.

Koreans and Spaniards (of various derivations) make some of the best films. Much to my surprise and delight, the French make some excellent films, too.

To be clear, some of the crappier stuff I’ve seen have been pretentious French flicks. My beloved Shudder has a whole collection of French films that are, let’s say, experimental garbage.

But the frogs do get some things right now and then. One of those is 2004’s Calvaire (alternatively Calvary or The Ordeal).

Monday Morning Movie Review: An American Werewolf in London (1981)

12 June 202310 June 2023 The Portly Politico4 Comments

Horror streaming service Shudder is on a werewolf kick this month, flooding the platform with lycanthropic treats. Werewolves don’t get the same love as vampires, but they’re an interesting creature. Watching various werewolf flicks over the past week or so has demonstrated that the “rules” governing them are as versatile as those that govern the bloodsuckers.

Perhaps the best modern werewolf film is 1981’s An American Werewolf in London. The brainchild of writer and director John Landis—the man behind the “Thriller” music video—it takes the established mythology of the werewolf and expands upon it. The film even references the classic Universal Studios film The Wolf Man (1941), drawing upon that film’s contribution to the modern werewolf mythology (it doubtlessly helped that An American Werewolf in London was also a Universal Studios production, giving Landis full access to earlier Universal properties).

Monday Morning Movie Review: Two Mexican Horror Films

15 May 202314 May 2023 The Portly Politico1 Comment

Last Friday Americans got blitzed celebrating the short-lived victory of Mexican forces against the invading French army on 5 May 1862 at the First Battle of Puebla. Cinco de Mayo enjoys greater observance here in the United States than in Mexico due to a.) the strong ties between the United States and Mexico dating back to the nineteenth-century (ties that are increasingly fraying as Mexico becomes a failed state) and b.) major marketing campaigns by American alcohol manufacturers. Now we invoke the spirit of the Puebla and General Ignacio Zaragoza with tequila and tacos, a sort of Mex-American Independence Day.

To commemorate the occasion, streaming service Shudder has uploaded some Mexican horror films to their lineup, and I managed to squeeze a couple of them in over the weekend between The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023; review coming soon), a second screening of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. III (2023; I enjoyed it more the second time), Mother’s Day, and recovering from last week.

I’d never heard of the two films before, but both were enjoyable. The first was Darker than Night (1975; sometimes “Blacker than Night” or “Blacker Than the Night“; Más Negro que la Noche in Mexico); the second—my favorite of the two was Poison for the Fairies (1984; Veneno para las hadas in Mexico).

The Portly Politico

One Southerner's unique, erudite, conservative perspective in a hectic world

Tag: horror