Tag: movies

Monday Morning Movie Review: Deathdream (1974)

The Portly Politico7 Comments

A common thread among horror aficionados is seeing some horror flick at an age that is far too young.  Maybe it was a whole movie, or maybe just snippets and scenes, but the movie terrifies and fascinates, leaving in indelible imprint on the impressionable young mind.

Often, we don’t even know the name of the film that affected us so.  If we’re lucky, we might stumble upon it years later, and go back to that time when we experienced horror for the first (or one of the first) time(s).

There were several such moments for yours portly.  Growing up with a Stephen King- and Halloween-loving mom, two that immediately come to mind are the It (1990) miniseries and the Salem’s Lot (1979) miniseries.  That little boy vampire scratching at the window still frightens me.

Another possible film is Deathdream (1974).  I’m not 100% sure if Deathdream is the movie I saw as a kid, but I remember seeing a flick as a kid that featured a deceased son who came back from the dead and was utterly soulless.  I think the film I saw was made a bit later, but Deathdream sucked me in because it seemed so familiar.  The soulless Andy—who is killed in the Vietnam War—is truly haunting.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: De Lift (1983)

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When it comes to Dutch filmmakers, I tend to think of Paul Verhoeven, the director behind RoboCop (1987), Total Recall (1990), and Starship Troopers (1997), among other classics.  If that’s all the filmmaking genius to come out of Holland, the Dutch would be doing pretty good for themselves.

Well, it turns out there’s more to Dutch cinema than Verhoeven.  They also have a little film called De Lift (The Lift, 1983), which was apparently a point of pride for our clog-wearing friends in the Lowcountry (of Europe, not of South Carolina).  The flick is currently on Shudder, along with a slew of other interesting foreign films.

The premise is absurd:  an elevator built with biomechanical chips goes on a killing spree.  Yes, you read that correctly:  the elevator is the villain.  There’s even a point in the film when the elevator’s Frankensteinian creator shoots it in its “heart,” which had me falling out of my chair with laughter (metaphorically, of course, but it was hilarious).

For all of that absurdity, it’s actually a really good movie.  That’s a credit to writer-director Dick Maas (that’s a name that’s just inviting bawdy commentary), who took a completely ridiculous premise and made it fun and enjoyable—and compelling.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

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Nine years ago, George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) hit cinemas with an explosive impact worthy of the big screen.  It is perhaps the best film of the last decade.  I remember seeing it at least twice in theaters, and being totally enthralled both times.  My niece, who is now nine, was still in my sister-in-law’s belly at this point; Barack Obama was still president; and the idea that the world would shut down due to a bad case of the flu seemed outrageous.  It was a different world.

Indeed, I remember my younger brother scolding me for seeing MM:FR with a colleague instead of him and his wife (and, I suppose, my natal niece by extension).  I think I saw it with them for my second viewing, but I cannot remember at the moment.  Regardless, that was probably the last time that the three of us could have gone to the movies together—truly the end of an era.

And MM:FR was the perfect film to end that era.  Indeed, it was something a vestige of the dying days of practical effects and crazy stunts.  Fury Road did use some CGI and digital effects, but it was largely shot practically, which is insane when one considers the dangerous stunts.  It must have been grueling to film.

What captivated me so much about Fury Road was the world in which this extended car chase occurred.  Miller dribbled in just enough information to give a sense for how this wasteland worked, but left a great deal unexplained.  That fueled hours of speculation about the locations and people in this world.  How did Immortan Joe come to power?  What happened to the Green Place?  What is going on with Max’s mental state?

After nearly a decade, Miller released Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024), which serves as a prequel to Fury Road.  The film did not answer every question, but it does a great deal to flesh out the world of Mad Max, while still allowing it to maintain some of its mystique and mystery.  It’s also an excellent film.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: The Toxic Avenger (1984)

The Portly Politico24 Comments

I watch a lot of trashy horror films, and I like a good many of them.  I don’t, however, like all of them.

When it comes to Troma Entertainment’s The Toxic Avenger (1984), I’m not sure where I stand.  It’s an extremely campy film, and a thinly-veiled, tongue-in-cheek commentary on corruption in modern life and government.  As much as I appreciate those elements, it’s also annoying.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Rest in Peace, Roger Corman (1926-2024)

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Legendary “B” movie director and producer Roger Corman passed away last Thursday, 9 May 2024, at the age of 98.  His career spanned an uncountable number of films (estimates vary wildly; even Corman didn’t know how many he’d made), and he launched hundreds of careers.

Readers most likely know Corman from The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), which spawned a Broadway musical and a popular film adaptation of the musical in 1986.  His influence reached even broader than that one bit of comedy horror genius, and Corman worked with some of the greatest actors in Hollywood.

Last month I reviewed A Bucket of Blood (1959), a kind of proto-Little Shop featuring a would-be Beatnik stumbling into a career as a sculptor with a rather lethal methodology.  The trope of the homely nerd staggering blindly (and often painfully) into stardom and/or super powers would be repeated time and again, including in Troma Entertainment’s The Toxic Avenger (1984)  Corman was not involved with that film, but his influence is evident nonetheless.

Corman was one of the greats.  Hey may have had a reputation as a purveyor of trash, but he never lost money on a film (with the exception of a personal art film, which ultimately did make money about twenty years after its release!).  He used every method at his disposal to cut down on budgets, even cutting films to 78 minutes so they could be mailed to theaters in four film canisters instead of five.

Rest in Peace, Roger Corman.

Monday Morning Movie Review: Late Night with the Devil (2023)

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I was born smack in the middle of the 1980s, so I missed the 1970s completely.  From what my parents have told me, it was a pretty cool time to be alive and coming of age (they were in their late teens and early twenties throughout the decade)—great music, crazy fashion, pool halls, etc.  Even though I missed the decade (and can barely claim to have “experienced” the 1980s, the greatest of all recent American decades), the 1970s were everywhere growing up.  South Carolina, like most rural States, lagged behind the pop cultural curve slightly, so the 1970s loomed large in fashion and architecture.  Plus, the 1990s saw a revival of the 1970s aesthetic, so the influence of the decade musically, culturally, and even sartorially was a big part of my early years.

Of course, the 1970s had loads of problems, too—crazy inflation; stagnant job growth; a wildly popular bamboozled out of office, followed by a clueless boob; a devastating, unpopular, unnecessary war.  It seems that I’ll never escape the Brutalist architecture of the time period, which still dominates the crumbling public buildings of offices of local, State, and national governments.  The Lamar Town Hall is a squat, ugly building, facing a squat, ugly U.S. Post Office.  While I like the earth tones of the 1970s—call me crazy, but there’s something about burnt orange, dark mustard, and drab olive-brown that I find aesthetically appealing—the decade’s aesthetic was an affront to Beauty, and probably to God Himself.  Perhaps wide lapels were the sartorial equivalent of the Tower of Babel—“our lapels will reach to touch the Face of God!”  No wonder we struggled under stagflation for so long.

For all its virtues and many, many vices, however, the 1970s possessed a distinct flair, especially when it came to the television talk show and variety show.  So when I heard there was a horror film that took place on the set of a fictional late-night talk show on Halloween of 1977, I had to watch it.  That film is Late Night with the Devil (2023).

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Southern Comfort (1981)

The Portly Politico8 Comments

Shudder serves up some strange dishes sometimes, including a good bit of non-horror fare.  For a service that is ostensibly dedicated to horror, it’s always interesting when something outside of that genre pops up.

Of course, “horror” is a pretty broad category, and there is horror in many situations.  Perhaps that is the rationale for the inclusion of Southern Comfort (1981) to its slate of films.

Southern Comfort follows the foibles of a Louisiana National Guard unit on a weekend bivouac into the swamps of Cajun country.  After a truly stupid act, the weekend warriors find themselves embroiled in a guerrilla war with murderous Cajuns.

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Day Off

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Yours portly is taking the day off from blogging.  I’m enjoying time with my girl (the human one, not Murphy; Murphy is enjoying time with my neighbors).

I was hoping to run Ponty’s response to my masterpiece review of Donnie Darko (2001) today.  You’ll hear from Ponty on a different topic later this week, but I can only assume his extended tardiness in sending along a detailed critique is a tacit indication that he has come around to my viewpoint.  Indeed, readers will readily agree that the only reasonable reason he hasn’t sent his review—surely it’s not due to busyness, or illness, or spending time with Tina—is that dear Ponty has realized I was right all along, and there’s no point in challenging me further on the issue.

So with that note of brotherly reconciliation and rhetorical dominance, I bid everyone a wonderful Monday.  I’ll be enjoying a relaxing day with my girl, basking in the knowledge that I’ve once again swayed public opinion about twenty-plus-year-old movies in a positive direction.

Cheers!

—TPP