First released in 1959 and filmed in moody, noir-ish black-and-white, The Bloody Brood tells the story of a low-level drug dealer and aspiring beatnik named Nico (Peter Falk). One night, while hanging out at the local coffeehouse and listening to decadent jazz, Nico witnesses a man drop dead of a heart attack. Intrigued by the man’s sudden death, Nico and his nervous friend, a tv director named Francis (Ron Hartmann), decide that they want to experience what it would be like to deliberately kill someone. Before you can say “Leopold and Loeb,” Nico and Francis are feeding a random stranger a hamburger laced with ground glass. That stranger, a hard-working telegram delivery man named Ricky (George Sperdakous), later dies of an intestinal hemorrhage.
Unknown to Nico and Francis, Ricky has an older brother named Cliff (Jack Betts) and Cliff doesn’t believe that his brother’s death was an accident. With the covert help of Detective McLeod (Robert Christie), Cliff starts to investigate his brother’s death. Cliff eventually meets Ellie (Barbara Lord), a disillusioned woman who has fallen in with Nico and his murderous crowd.
The Bloody Brood is an unexpected surprise, a genuinely entertaining B-movie that more than overcomes the confines of its low-budget and limited running time. While Peter Falk is the obvious center of the picture and steals every scene that he’s in with his coldly charismatic style of evil, the entire film is well cast and well acted with Hartmann and Betts both bringing unexpected nuance to their roles. However, the real star of the film is director Julian Roffman who gives the film a shadowy and threatening noir-look.
In many ways, The Bloody Brood represents everything I love about the low-budget, often sordid B-movies of the 50s and 60s. Working with limited resources and a small cast, director Julian Roffman managed to create a genuinely memorable movie. Films like The Bloody Brood continue to serve as proof that you don’t need millions of dollars to make a good film. You just need a strong creative vision and the imagination to make that vision a reality.
This trailer has been out for a while but when I saw it tonight before the Avengers, I realized that if there’s any movie that I’m truly looking forward to seeing later this year, it’s the latest offering from Pixar, Brave.
And no, it’s not just because this film is about one of my fellow flame-haired ones…
Last summer, I decided to watch and review all 50 of the films to be found in Mill Creek’s Chilling Classics box set. Mill Creek, of course, is a company that’s best known for releasing box sets that seem to primarily feature low-budget films that, for whatever reason, have now found themselves in the public domain. If you’re a fan of old school B-movies in general, then you probably know just how fun it can be to read the back of a Mill Creek boxset and discover what obscure films are waiting inside. The thing that I especially love about Mill Creek is the fact that — in the best grindhouse tradition — they describe every film that they distribute (whether it’s George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead or something like Las Vegas Bloodbath) as being a “classic.”
So, anyway, I started to watch and review the films in the Chilling Classics box set but, as 2011 drew to a close, things got rather hectic and busy here at the TSL Bunker. In between covering the Oscar season and keeping the world supplied with weekly trailer posts, I had to set aside my plans to review the entire boxset for another day.
Well, I’m happy to say that day is here! Last night, I dug out the old Chilling Classics box set and I watched a South African slasher film from 1981, The Demon.
The Demon actually tells two separate but connected stories. In the first story, a teenage girl is kidnapped from her bedroom by a masked killer. Her distraught family calls in a tormented psychic who quickly proves himself to so superfluous and useless that you’d forget all about him except he’s played by the late Cameron Mitchell.
If you’re a fan of old school grindhouse and exploitation films then you’ve undoubtedly seen a handful of films featuring Mr. Mitchell. A former “legitimate” actor who, early on in his career, appeared in things like Death of a Salesman, Mitchell eventually became better known for appearing in low-budget exploitation films. Mitchell could always be counted on to shamelessly overemote and, regardless of the film he was appearing in, he was always a lot of fun to watch. If nothing else, Mitchell always seemed to be rather amused by the films he found himself in. It’s a shame that Cameron Mitchell died before Quentin Tarantino could engineer a comeback for him.
In The Demon, Cameron Mitchell spends most of his limited screen time standing on a rocky cliff while staring down at the ocean below and having psychic visions that don’t really seem to have much to do with anything else happening in the film. Actually, visions is the wrong word. As Mitchell says, “Sometimes…I get these feelings. Vibes, as the kids would say.”
And the kids are in a lot of trouble because our nameless killer has moved on to the city where he spends his time hanging around outside of a place called Boobs Disco and stalking two teachers named Mary (Jennifer Holmes) and Jo (Zoli Markey). This is the film’s second storyline and it mostly consists of Mary spotting the killer out of the corner of her eye and Jo pursuing a relationship with the most boring man on the planet.
Like quite a few films that seem to pop up in various Mill Creek box sets, The Demon is technically a pretty bad film but, once you accept that fact, it’s also an occasionally entertaining mess that delivers a handful of effectively creepy moment.
The scenes featuring Cameron Mitchell are entertaining for exactly the reason that you think they are. These scenes are such obvious filler and were so obviously added as an excuse to get a “name” actor to join the cast that it’s impossible not to admire the nerve of the filmmakers. They weren’t going to let a silly thing like narrative cohesion get in the way of producing a 90 minute film. Playing the world’s worst psychic, Cameron Mitchell delivers his lines with such a truly unfocused intensity that I actually spent the first half of the movie convinced that he was the murderer. The final fate of Mitchell’s character is truly shocking (if just because it kind of comes out of nowhere) and Mitchell plays his final scene as if he’s starring in a dinner theater production of some lost Shakespearean play.
If the scenes featuring Mitchell are mostly entertaining for being so bad, the scenes in which the nameless killer stalks Mary and Jo are actually pretty well done and the final confrontation between the final girl and the killer is handled surprisingly well (though I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the fact that the film contrives to have the final girl fight for her life while topless). The killer’s lack of personality makes him all the more intimidating and both Jennifer Holmes and Zoli Markey are likable and believable in the roles of Mary and Jo. If nothing else, The Demon proves that even a really poorly produced horror film can be partially redeemed (if not saved) by a likable cast of potential victims.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, The Demon — like many forgotten exploitation flicks — serves as a valuable time capsule of the society that produced it. To offer up just one example:
Mark Hayes is a comedian, a DJ, a writer, and, as you can probably guess from the book’s title, he’s also an Irish guy who has found himself living in one of the most uniquely American cities around, Los Angeles. In RanDumb-er, we follow Mark as he looks at American culture with occasionally hungover eyes and an often biting (but never cruel) wit. Whether he’s dealing with a B-list celebrity who is busy predicting the end of the world, bravely trying to survive a date with a girl who insists on howling like a wildebeest, or experiencing a fake snowfall at the Grove, Hayes is never less than entertaining and sometimes even rather poignant.
He also realizes, early on, that all American girls love an Irish accent. And it’s true! Whenever I hear an Irish accent, I get all girly and giggly and one of the things that I loved about RanDumb-er is that, even though it takes place in Los Angeles, it is ultimately an Irish story. I think that the Irish have a special ability to appreciate the small absurdities of existence (and I’m not just saying that because I’m a fourth Irish myself!) and that’s what truly makes RanDumb-er stand out as a work of non-fiction comedic literature. Any writer can capture the obvious weirdness of living day-to-day. What makes Hayes so special as writer is that he picks up on the small oddities of life that we don’t always notice and he makes us consider them in a new light.
Consider the moment, early on in the book, in which Hayes has a panic attack when he realizes that he managed to accidentally leave his scissors behind in Ireland when he left for L.A. In just a few pages, Hayes manages to perfectly capture the anxiety that comes with travelling. Once you get over the initial excitement, you suddenly realize that you’re somewhere new and that you can no longer claim to be able to completely control your surroundings. It’s at moments like these that you truly realize how vulnerable you are and just how false your assumption of control is in environments both new and old. Hayes captures all of this without ever failing to make us laugh as we recognize our own individual neurosis in his story.
(I have to admit that one reason why I related to Hayes’ panic over his scissors was because, when I was in 17, I went with my family to Hawaii and it wasn’t until we were all walking along the beautiful beaches of Honolulu that I realized that I had left my St. Vitus medal back in Texas and I proceeded, under the most brilliant blue sky and surrounded by beautiful people frolicking half-undressed on the beach, to have one of the biggest panic attacks ever. Eventually, I recovered but trust me — not a day went by that I didn’t think about that medal.)
As a writer, Hayes has a very interesting and compulsively readable style, one that goes beyond the fact that he happens to be a very funny guy. Hayes writes in a stream-of-consciousness type of style and the end result is that, after a few pages, you feel that you truly are inside of his head and you are experiencing Los Angeles — and all the weirdness that goes with it — with him. If you cross James Joyce with Jack Kerouac and then add in a little Terry Southern and Tom Wolfe with a slightly less drug addled Hunter Thompson, you’ll have Mark Hayes.
Hola and happy Cinco De Mayo! I’m not sure if Cinco De Mayo is as big a deal up north as it is down here in the Southwest but today is going to be one of the few Saturdays that I don’t go to the movies. Instead, I will be observing this day with friends, family (I am a fourth Spanish), and cerveza. But first, here’s the latest edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Trailers…
(Be warned: Some of these trailers are a tad bit more explicit than some of the other trailers that I’ve featured as a part of this series. Watch with caution.)
1) Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971)
This is one of the first of the great Spanish horror films.
2) Return of the Evil Dead (1973)
The Blind Dead returned in this gory and violent sequel. One of my prize possessions is my Blind Dead box set, which was released (in the shape of a coffin, no less) by Blue Underground.
3) Vampyros Lesbos (1971)
This is the German trailer for Vampyros Lesbos, directed by the infamous Jess Franco. Just try to guess what this film is about…
4) Oasis of the Living Dead (1981)
In a career that has spanned over 500 films, Jess Franco has dealt with not only lesbian vampires but zombies as well…
5) Night of the Bloody Apes (1969)
From Rene Cardona comes this surprisingly bloody films about what happens when an ape’s heart is transplanted into a normal human being. Fortunately, there’s a wrestler around to save the day…
6) The Werewolf Vs. The Vampire Woman (1970)
Finally, let’s end things with a Paul Naschy film, shall we?
Okay, yes, it is May Day and apparently, that’s a big deal to a certain class of political activist. But, let’s be honest — political causes are forgotten from decade to decade. However, a great film lives forever.
And, for me, today is all about one of the greatest films ever made.
71 years ago today, on May 1st, 1941, Orson Welles’s masterpiece Citizen Kane was first released to a movie-going public that wasn’t quite ready for it. And that was their loss because Citizen Kane has proven itself to be one of those rare films that remains just as entertaining and fascinating the 100th time you watch it as it was the first time.
One of my fondest memories is of the first time I saw Citizen Kane in film class. As I sat there listening to our professor drone on about the historical importance of what we were about to see, I was fully prepared to watch Citizen Kane and dismiss it — as I had so many other critically beloved films — as just being another overrated, academically-embraced movie.
“After all,” I thought as the movie started, “I already know Rosebud is a sled* and I haven’t even seen the freaking film. What’s the point?”
And as the film played out in the darkened auditorium, I soon discovered exactly what the point was. The point was that Citizen Kane is one of the greatest and most watchable films ever made. It’s that rare “important” film that’s actually fun to watch. It didn’t matter that I already knew what Rosebud was. In fact, I didn’t even think about it. I was too busy enjoying Joseph Cotten’s sly turn as Jedadiah Leland and the sleazy, pragmatic villainy of Ray Collins as “Boss” Jim Gettys. I was too busy cringing in a combination of sympathy and embarrassment as poor Susan Kane (Dorothy Comingore) made her disastrous operatic debut. I sat there and I was transfixed by a flawless cast that brought a vibrant life to even the smallest of roles. (My personal favorite was Paul Stewart’s wonderfully cynical performance as Raymond the Butler.) But most of all, I sat there in awe of the talent of Orson Welles. At that time, I knew little about Welles’ subsequent career troubles. I just knew that I was watching a masterpiece.
I wish I could write more (because there’s so much more to say about this film) but now’s my time to curl up on the couch in front of the TV and watch one of the greatest films ever made…
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* And don’t you even think of going, “How about a spoiler warning!?” about that whole Rosebud comment. Seriously, if you didn’t already know that Rosebud was a sled then I have nothing to say to you.
On the last day of each month, we ask you which films you’re most looking forward to seeing in the months ahead. According to our last poll, for most of you, the month of May will be all about seeing The Avengers and Moonrise Kingdom. Thank you to everyone who voted.
So, which films are you most excited about seeing in June? As usual, you can vote for up to four films.
Hi! I apologize for being a day late with this week’s edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film trailers. In the future, I may just start regularly posting these on Sunday morning as opposed to Saturday. But that’s something that can be decided in the future. For the present, the trailers are the only thing that matters…
1) Witchboard (1986)
This trailer is short but effective. The guy with the beard scares me every time.
2) Jennifer (1978)
Guess which earlier movie inspired this one?
3) Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965)
When you’ve got a named like Dr. Terror, you might as well get a house of horrors.
4) The Hand (1981)
Continuing on a theme that was introduced in the previous trailer, this film is apparently about a disembodied hand creating mayhem. It was directed by Oliver Stone who later gave the world Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps.
5) Death Smiles At Murder (1973)
This film is from the infamous Joe D’Amato and apparently, it features a cameo from Klaus Kinski. That’s how you know it’s good. Plus, I love the title.
6) Evil Toons (1990)
Wow, this looks terrible, doesn’t it? Still, I have to include it because it’s just such a purely grindhouse trailer, featuring everything from a gimmick to a somewhat reputable actor who obviously was having trouble paying his rent back in 1990.
The Raven, a largely disappointing thriller that just opened this weekend, takes place in 1849 in Baltimore, Maryland. A mysterious killer is terrorizing the city and, as Inspector Fields (Luke Evans) quickly deduces, he’s patterning his murders after the works of an alcoholic and disreputable writer named Edgar Allan Poe (played here, in the style of Robert Downey, Jr., by John Cusack). Fields recruits Poe to help catch the killer but the killer has other plans. He kidnaps Edgar’s fiancée Emily(Alice Eve*) and then challenges Edgar to a game. The killer will continue to commit random murders and, with each murder, he’ll include a clue to finding Emily. However, Edgar also has to write a story inspired by the killer’s crimes. Desperate to save Emily, Edgar agrees…
I wouldn’t necessarily say that I had high hopes for The Raven but, on the basis of the trailer, I was hoping that it would at least be an entertaining and self-aware genre piece. Unfortunately, The Raven isn’t even that. Instead, it’s a slowly paced, predictable film that’s not even awful enough to be fun. John Cusack has a few enjoyably over-the-top moments as Edgar Allan Poe and Brendan Gleeson is always fun when he’s being all blustery but the rest of the cast barely seems to be awake. (In particular, poor Luke Evans struggles to look like he’s interested in anything that’s happening on-screen.) Director James McTeigue comes up with a lot of striking images but the film is so oddly edited that the scenes never seem to flow together and the end result is a film that feels oddly static and listless.
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*Alice Eve has heterochromia, just like me! Yay for both of us!
Recently, I spent the night watching a bunch of commercials for Everest College that had been recorded onto my DVR. Occasionally, the Everest commercials were interrupted by 1994′s made-for-tv movie Saved By The Bell: Wedding in Las Vegas.
Why Was I Watching It?
Back when I was like 10, I used to always watch Saved By The Bell: The New Class every Saturday morning. Even at that age, I knew that show was kinda stupid and that Dustin Diamond’s Screech Powers was one of the most annoying television characters of all time. But I still watched it and occasionally, I would catch a rerun of the Old Class as well. (Quite honestly, up until a few years ago, there was never a time that reruns of Saved By The Bell weren’t being broadcast somewhere.) By the time I was in high school, I appreciated Saved By The Bell as being almost a type of performance art.
As of late, it’s been difficult to find Saved By The Bell reruns on television and that made me a little bit sad because I felt like my childhood was disappearing and that I might be turning into an adult. So, imagine how happy I was when I discovered that MTV2 now shows a two hour-block of Saved By The Bell every afternoon and, thanks to the wonderful thing that is the DVR, I can watch them without having to quit my job to do so. Yay!
Two weeks ago, MTV2 showed the final Saved By The Bell movie, 1994′s Wedding in Las Vegas. Though I knew, of course, that Zack (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) and Kelly (Tiffani Amber Thiessen) had gotten married at the end of the original series, I had never actually seen the wedding. And I have to admit that I really didn’t have much desire to see the wedding until it suddenly showed up on my DVR…
What Was It About?
This is one of those rare cases where the film’s title truly tells you everything you need to know. Zack and Kelly get married in Las Vegas while their friends Screech, Slater (Mario Lopez), and Lisa (Lark Voorhees) have wacky adventures of their own. Zack has $1,200 dollars to try to put on his dream wedding but, as often happens in the world of Saved By The Bell, there are countless complications that are largely the result of Zack being a sociopathic pathological liar. Zack loses all of his money but, instead of telling Kelly the truth, he attempts to win the money by becoming a male escort. Meanwhile, Slater falls in love with a girl who is being pursued by the Mafia and Lisa (Hey, I just noticed that we have the same name! Yay!) ends up flirting with a hot guy who has a pony tail and who, fortunately, happens to be as rich as everyone else that she went to high school with.
What Worked And What Did Not Work?
Normally, I separate this into two separate questions but that’s kind of pointless when you’re dealing with something like Saved By The Bell: Wedding Las Vegas. The main thing that works about a show like Saved By The Bell is that absolutely nothing really works. It’s all very silly, shallow, predictable, dated, occasionally cringe-worthy, and, in its way, very calming. Despite the film’s many flaws, it’s difficult to really justify criticizing it too harshly because you know what you’re getting into when you decide to watch something called Saved By The Bell: Wedding In Las Vegas in the first place.
Almost everyone in the cast is really cute in a 90s kinda way and even the usually horrible Dustin Diamond (who I hated even when I was ten years old and watching him on the New Class) is tolerable in Las Vegas. Though the film – much like the series — is focused on Mark-Paul Gosselaar as Zack, I’ve always felt that Zack was overrated. Mario Lopez, with his confident smile and perfectly chiseled body, was (and still is) the hot one. Whereas Zack always seemed to have an off-putting air of entitlement, Slater knew what he wanted and he took it. That trend continues in Wedding In Las Vegas where Slater won’t even let the Mafia stand in the way of getting a date.
This film is technically a comedy though you don’t so much laugh with it as you laugh at it. However, there was one moment that made me genuinely laugh out loud and that was the scene where “the gang” visits a 24-hour wedding chapel and director Jeff Melman gives us a quick tracking shot of the long line of couples waiting to get married. Along with the expected Elvis impersonators, there’s also a very pregnant girl standing next to a scared-looking boy who has an old man pointing a shotgun at him. That made me laugh.
This is yet another one of the shows where every single problem could have been avoided by the characters just not acting like idiots. Seriously, I don’t know what’s worse — that Zack felt that it would be better to become a male escort as opposed to just telling Kelly the truth or that Kelly so quickly forgave him. (Me, I would have been so mad at him but it doesn’t seem to bother Kelly that her future husband lied to her on the night before their wedding.)
As I stated before, there’s a lot that technically doesn’t work about Wedding in Las Vegas but it is Saved By The Bell, after all.
“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments
If ever get married in Las Vegas, I imagine it’ll be quite a bit like Saved By The Bell: Wedding in Las Vegas, in that I fully expect that 1) I’ll stay at a nice hotel, 2) I’ll get a mani/pedi with my best girlfriend, and 3) the Mafia will somehow be involved.
That said, Dustin Diamond will not be invited to my wedding.
Lessons Learned
Nothing can stand in the way of true love. Especially when you’re rich and white.
