Get Your Motor Runnin’ with THE WILD ANGELS (AIP 1966)

Posted on January 2, 2018 by gary loggins

Roger Corman kicked off the outlaw biker film genre with THE WILD ANGELS, setting the template for all biker flicks to come. Sure, there had been motorcycle movies before: Marlon Brando in THE WILD ONE and the low-budget MOTORCYCLE GANG spring to mind. But THE WILD ANGELS busted open box offices on the Grindhouse and Drive-In circuits, and soon an army of outlaw bikers roared into a theater near you! There was BORN LOSERS , DEVIL’S ANGELS, THE GLORY STOMPERS , REBEL ROUSERS, ANGELS FROM HELL, and dozens more straight into the mid-70’s, when the cycle cycle revved its last rev. But Corman’s saga of the freewheeling Angels was there first; as always, Rapid Roger was the leader of the pack.

Our movie begins with the classic fuzz-tone guitar sound of Davie Allen, as Angels president Heavenly Blues (Peter Fonda ) rolls down the road to pick up club…

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Cleaning Out The DVR: Neverknock (dir by Sheldon Wilson)

Posted on January 2, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Hi there! So, as you may know because I’ve been talking about it on this site all year, I have got way too much stuff on my DVR. Seriously, I currently have 190 things recorded! I’ve decided that, on January 15th, I am going to erase everything on the DVR, regardless of whether I’ve watched it or not. So, that means that I’ve now have only have a month to clean out the DVR! Will I make it? Keep checking this site to find out! I recorded NeverKnock off of the SyFy on October 16th!)

Sitting in a small town, there’s a deserted and dilapidated house. The address is 59 Oakwood Lane. In 1986, three teenagers were found dead in the house. Carved in their backs were three words: “Never never knock.” Forty years later, the murders remain unsolved but everyone has heard the legend. If you knock on the door, the Never Knock Creature comes to life and uses your own fears to kill not only you but also all of your friends…

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. “Easy solution to this problem! Don’t knock on the freaking door!”

But let’s be honest here. If I lived in that town, I probably wouldn’t knock on that door but I’d sure as Hell beg all of my friends to do it. After all, who wouldn’t want to see what would happen? When I was in college, there was a legend that one of the hallways of my dorm was haunted by Wicked Wanda. They said Wicked Wanda could kill you but I still begged my roommate to go look for her. Urban legends are like wet paint signs. You have to encourage people you know to test them.

Needless to say, that is what happens in Neverknock. Grace (Dominque Provost-Chalkley) is the new girl in town. She’s still struggling to recover from a personal tragedy. Her best friend, Leah (Jodelle Ferland), invites her to spend Halloween night with her and her friends. Grace agrees but she makes the mistake of bringing along her bratty younger sister, Jenna (Lola Flanery). Jenna dresses up like the devil for Halloween and she soon proves that it’s not a totally inappropriate costume by knocking on the door to 59 Oakwood Lane. The Never Knock Creature comes to life, Jenna promptly disappears, and Leah, Grace, and all their friends find themselves being stalked by a creature that uses their worst fears to kill them.

(So, if the Never Knock Creature came after me, I’d have to worry about heights, drowning, dogs, fire, deserted barns, dead wasps lying unseen in the carpet, odd numbers, and the wire popping out of my favorite bra and stabbing me. Good to know.)

Anyway, I liked Neverknock. As is typical of Sheldon Wilson’s SyFy film, Neverknock has a ton of atmosphere and the pace never lags. Wilson changes things up a little in this movie by having the fright scenes occur during both the day and the night. For some reason, to me, it’s even scarier when someone gets attacked by an evil creature during the middle of the day. Even with the sun out and hundreds of people around, there’s no escape from the Never Knock Creature. Admittedly, Neverknock‘s characters are not exactly the most complex group of people to show up in a horror film. For the most part, they’re just teenagers who don’t understand that importance to staying together in one group while being stalked by a demonic force. But the cast is made up of appealing performers and veteran actor Nicholas Campbell makes a welcome appearance. You don’t want to see any of them die and that’s really all that a movie like this demands.

And finally, the Never Knock Creature is seriously creepy! When he first responds to Jenna knocking on that door … AGCK!

All in all, this was a good SyFy horror film.

Cleaning Out The DVR: Stickman (dir by Sheldon Wilson)

Posted on January 2, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Hi there! So, as you may know because I’ve been talking about it on this site all year, I have got way too much stuff on my DVR. Seriously, I currently have 191 things recorded! I’ve decided that, on January 15th, I am going to erase everything on the DVR, regardless of whether I’ve watched it or not. So, that means that I’ve now have only have a month to clean out the DVR! Will I make it? Keep checking this site to find out! I recorded Stickman off of the SyFy on October 21st!)

When she was seven years old, Emma (Hayley Law) was accused of two terrible crimes.

The authorities say that Emma murdered both her sister and her mother. She’s spent the last ten years in an institution, haunted by nightmares of the demonic monster that she claims committed the murders. According to Emma, the Stickman comes for you if you make the mistake of reading a poem aloud. The only way to keep the Stickman at bay is to draw a picture of him every night. Of course, no one believes Emma. At the institution, she has to regularly deal with smug doctors who refuse to accept that she’s being stalked by an unstoppable monster. Obviously, they’ve never watched It Follows or that HBO documentary about Slenderman.

When 17 year-old Emma is finally released from the institution, she is sent to a half-way house where she is to live with 5 other girls. They’ve all committed different crimes. One of them is an arsonist. Another one has a paranoid obsession with the dark web. Emma’s the only one to have been accused of murder. Even though Emma is assured that, as far as the other girls are concerned, “their bark is worse than their bite,” she soon finds herself targeted by Liv (Zoe De Grand Maison). Not only does Liv refuses to believe in Stickman but she also doesn’t want to live with a murderer.

(I have to admit that sounds kinda reasonable to me.)

Anyway, as you can probably guess, that poem gets read again. And, on her first night of half-way house living, Emma has a nightmare about the Stickman. However, this time, Stickman doesn’t just stay in her dreams. Instead, Stickmsn shows up in the real world and starts killing people. Emma thinks that she can find a way to stop Stickman if she returns to the hospital. Liv, meanwhile, remains convinced that Stickman is a myth and somehow, Emma is responsible for it all…

Stickman was aired as a part of SyFy’s 31 Days of Halloween. I really wish that SyFy would show more original films. Years ago, they used to show a new movie every weekend. Now, we only get original movies during Shark Week and October. (And, this October, SyFy devoted one weekend time slot to Jeepers Creepers 3, directed by convicted and admitted pedophile, Victor Salva. Seriously, what the Hell was up with that?) Original SyFy films, like Stickman, are always fun to watch and live tweet so it really does seem, to me, that SyFy is missing an opportunity by not showing more of them.

Anyway, I enjoyed Stickman. Sheldon Wilson has directed several SyFy films and he obviously know how to create and maintain a properly ominous atmosphere. Stickman is full of dark shadows and sudden jump scares and, even if he is a bit of a familiar monster, the Stickman is genuinely creepy. Though none of the characters are particularly complex, everyone goes a good job making enough of an impression that you can keep everyone straight. If I really wanted to, I could probably devote another 500 words to picking apart the plot and citing every logical inconsistency but you know what? That would be totally missing the point. This is a horror movie. It doesn’t have to always make sense, it just has to be entertaining. In the end, Stickman was a fun movie for Halloween. I wish SyFy would make more like it.

Driving While Black: Movie review/ preview

Posted on January 1, 2018 by paddiesthoughts

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Preview:

“Based on the real life experiences of writer and lead actor Dominique Purdy, this arresting new comedy explores Purdy’s real life experiences growing up as a person of color in LA and his run ins with police.

With 32 film festival wins to date, and an ever-increasing online fanbase, Driving While Black is shaping up to be one of the most anticipated comedy releases of 2018.

Dmitri is a pizza guy who would rather smoke weed and suffer for his art, but his mom and his girl won’t stop nagging him to get a real job. When he’s offered a gig mouthing off to tourists behind the wheel of a Hollywood “star tour” bus, it looks like everyone might get what they want. Trouble is, our man can’t seem to step out the door to get to the interview without endless complications: busted radiators, simple weed scores gone sideways and LAPD cruisers seemingly everywhere. Dmitri’s skill at going unnoticed by cops is honed by painful experiences growing up Black in L.A., but even his keen survival instincts won’t save him from the week from hell.

With a jovial swagger to its walking pace, Driving While Black is half comedy of errors and half hard-bitten realism, tucked into a sly treatise on 21st-century over-policing.”

Review:

I didn’t laugh, I didn’t cry…. but anybody that watches it will! The way Dmitri tells his story is so captivating, compelling, and funny at the same time is amazing! I went into this movie thinking it was a comedy, after watching I realized that is life. I got drawn in, literally hooked while watching!

Would I recommend this movie?

Yeah, drop your dollars as soon as you can! I mean as fast as you can see this movie! Do it!

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Trailer:

If you want to get a glimpse of this great movie before you drop your dollars you can here!

Driving While Black will be in theaters February 1st and I highly recommend you seeing it!

A Movie A Day #356: The Delta Force (1986, directed by Menahem Golan)

Posted on December 31, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Last year, at this time, I set a goal for myself.

I decided that, in 2017, I would review a movie a day and I nearly succeeded. I didn’t review a movie on the day Chris Cornell died. I missed a few days in March due to a sinus infection. Including the review that I’m posting below, I reviewed 356 movies in 2017. According to the year-end stats, my most popular reviews were for Heavy Metal Parking Lot, Slaughter, Body Chemistry 3, Body Chemistry 4, and Beatlemania.

Since tomorrow will be the start of a new year, this is going to be the end of my A Movie A Day experiment. In 2018, I’ll still be watching movies and posting reviews on this site but this is my final daily review. For my final Movie A Day, I picked the greatest movie of all time, The Delta Force!

Produced by Cannon Films, The Delta Force starts in 1980, with a helicopter exploding in the desert. America’s elite special missions force has been sent to Iran to rescue the men and women being held hostage in the embassy. The mission is a disaster with the members of Delta Force barely escaping with their lives. Captain Chuck Norris tells his commanding officer, Col. Lee Marvin, that he’s finished with letting cowardly politicians control their missions. Chuck heads to Montana while Lee spends the next few years hitting on the bartender at his local watering hole.

In 1985, terrorists led by Robert Forster hijack an airplane and divert it to Beirut. Among those being held hostage: Martin Balsam, Shelley Winters, Lainie Kazan, Susan Strasberg, Kim Delaney, and Bo Svenson. The great George Kennedy plays a priest named O’Malley who, when the Jewish passengers are moved to a separate location, declares himself to be Jewish and demands to be taken too. Jerry Lazarus is a hostage who spends the movie holding a Cabbage Patch doll that his daughter gave him for luck. Former rat packer Joey Bishop plays a passenger who says, “Beirut was beautiful then. Beautiful.” Fassbinder favorite Hanna Schygulla is the stewardess who refuses to help the terrorists because, “I am German!”

In America, General Robert Vaughn activates The Delta Force to rescue the hostages and take out the terrorists. As Lee Marvin prepares everyone (including Cannon favorite, Steve James and, in a nonspeaking role, Liam Neeson) to leave, the big question is whether Chuck Norris will come out of retirement for the mission. Of course, he does. Even better, he brings his motorcycle with him.

Anyone who has ever seen The Delta Force remembers Chuck’s motorcycle. Not only did it look incredibly cool but it was also mounted with machine guns and it could fire missiles at cowardly terrorists. It didn’t matter whether you agreed with the film’s politics were or whether you even liked the movie, everyone who watched The Delta Force wanted Chuck’s motorcycle. As the old saying goes, “You may be cool but you’ll never be Chuck Norris firing a missile from a motorcycle cool.”

The Delta Force is really three different films. One film, shot in the style of a disaster film, is about the hostages on the plane and their evil captors. The second film is Lee Marvin (in his final movie role) preparing his men to storm the airplane. The third movie is Chuck Norris chasing Robert Forster on his motorcycle. Put those three movies together and you have the ultimate Cannon movie. The Delta Force was even directed by Cannon’s head honcho, Menahem Golan. (Years earlier, Golan also directed Operation Thunderbolt, an Israeli film about the raid on Entebbe, which features more than a few similarities to The Delta Force. Golan received his first and only Oscar nomination when Operation Thunderbolt was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.)

The Delta Force is also the ultimate 80s movie. It opens with the Carter administration fucking everything up and it ends with the Reagan administration giving Lee Marvin and Chuck Norris the greenlight to blow up some terrorists. There is not much nuance to be found in The Delta Force but it still feels good to watch Chuck beat the bad guys. Top that off with a shameless score from Alan Silvestri and you have one of the greatest action movies of all time.

At the end of The Delta Force, as cans of Budweiser are being passed out to rescued hostages, an extra is clearly heard to shout, “Beer! America!” Then everyone sings America The Beautiful.

That says it all.

What Lisa Watched Last Night #172: Web Cam Girls (dir by Doug Campbell)

Posted on December 31, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I watched one of the final Lifetime movies of 2017, Web Cam Girls!

Why Was I Watching It?

Well, the obvious answer is that I was watching it because it was on Lifetime and our regular readers know how much I love Lifetime!

However, from the minute that I saw the first commercial for Web Cam Girls, I grew convinced that it would be better than the average 2017 Lifetime film. The commercials were just so melodramatic and wonderfully sordid. If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that the best Lifetime films always seem to be about capitalizing on people’s fear of the dark web. (Then again, people probably should be scared of the dark web…)

Finally, I knew that I was going to have to review this film just because of the title. Now, whenever someone does a search for “web cam girls,” there’s a good chance they’ll end up on this site. They’ll probably get mad once they arrive here but a click is a click.

What Was It About?

Carolyn (Lorynn York) needs money so she becomes a web cam girl. Her cousin, Alex (Sedona Legge), says it’s a bad and dangerous idea but Carolyn claims that it’s actually the safest way to make money. She never meets the men who watch her. All she has to do is undress a little on camera and, pretty soon, she’ll be able to get an apartment in New York and make all of her dreams come true.

But then, one night, Carolyn gives in to temptation to agrees to meet one of her admirers in a sleazy motel. She promptly vanishes, leaving Alex and their friend Shawn (Liam McKanna) to try to figure out what happened. Was she kidnapped and, if so, by whom? There are suspects all around and it’s starting to look like the only way Alex is going to find her is by going on camera herself.

What Worked?

Oh my God, Lifetime really did save the best for last! After a year that left many longtime Lifetime viewers feeling somewhat disappointed, Lifetime finally gave us the type of movie that made us fall in love with the network in the first place. Web Cam Girls is wonderfully melodramatic, over the top, and incredibly entertaining. The houses are beautiful, the villain is perhaps one of the most evil characters to ever appear in a Lifetime film, and the whole thing is full of details that will reward the observant viewer.

For instance, Carolyn, Alex, and Shawn discuss watching Sunrise in film class. Sunrise, of course, is a film about an innocent who is tempted by the sinful city, much in the same way that Carolyn and Alex are tempted by the sinful internet. Later, another teacher tells Alex that he was impressed with her essay about H.P. Lovecraft. References to both Lovecraft and F.W. Murnau in a Lifetime movie? How can’t you love that?

It was also well-acted. Stephen Graybill and Joe Hackett were memorable as two sinister teachers. I liked both Jon Bridell as Carolyn’s drunk but ultimately heroic father and John Dinan as his best friend. In the role of Carolyn’s mentor, Nikki, Tonya Kay made such a strong impression that a lot of us on twitter were demanding that Nikki get a spin-off film of her own. Down to the smallest part, everyone made their character interesting.

What Did Not Work?

It all worked.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

When I was in high school, I also used to dress in black and write essays about H.P. Lovecraft.

Lessons Learned

Beware the dark web!

A Movie A Day #355: F.I.S.T. (1978, directed by Norman Jewison)

Posted on December 30, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Sylvester Stallone is Jimmy Hoffa!

Actually, Stallone plays Johnny Kovak, a laborer who becomes a union organizer in 1939. Working with him is his best friend, Abe Belkin (David Huffman). In the fight for the working man, Abe refuses to compromise to either the bosses or the gangsters who want a piece of union. Johnny is more pragmatic and willing to make deals with ruthless mobsters like Vince Doyle (Kevin Conway) and Babe Milano (Tony Lo Bianco). Over thirty years, both Johnny and Abe marry and start families. Both become powerful in the union. When Johnny discovers that union official Max Graham (Peter Boyle) is embezzling funds, Johnny challenges him for the presidency. When a powerful U.S. senator (Rod Steiger) launches an investigation into F.I.S.T. corruption, both Johnny and Abe end up marked for death.

Obviously based on the life and mysterious disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, F.I.S.T. was one of two films that Stallone made immediately after the surprise success of Rocky. (The other was Paradise Alley.) F.I.S.T. features Stallone in one of his most serious roles and the results are mixed. In the film’s quieter scenes, especially during the first half, Stallone is surprisingly convincing as the idealistic and morally conflicted Kovak. Stallone is less convincing when Kovak has to give speeches. If F.I.S.T. were made today, Stallone could probably pull off the scenes of the aged, compromised Johnny but in 1978, he was not yet strong enough as an actor. Far better is the rest of the cast, especially Conway, Lo Bianco, and Boyle. If you do see F.I.S.T., keep an eye on the actor playing Johnny’s son. Though he was credited as Cole Dammett, he grew up to be Anthony Keidis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The box office failures of both F.I.S.T. and Paradise Alley led Stallone back to his most famous role with Rocky II. And the rest is history.

Catching Up With The Films of 2017: A Woman, A Part (dir by Elisabeth Subrin)

Posted on December 29, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

There’s a great montage during the first half of A Woman, A Part.

An actress named Anna (Maggie Siff) wanders around her home, reading scripts for tv shows and movies. In between shots of her snorting cocaine, we listen as she reads dialogue aloud. One of the scripts features her as a dying mother who, with her last words, asks her children to look after their father. Another script is obviously from a Lifetime film and again, the role that Maggie reads is for a mother. In another script, she’s a love interest. And, in another, she’s just a bitchy authority figure. As becomes obvious from the dialogue, none of the scripts offer her the chance to play a leading or even a fully developed character. In each script, she’s either a plot device or a part of the scenery. She reads a script, she does a line. As she finishes each script, she tosses it into her pool until soon, the water is full of shallow characters and clichéd dialogue. Soon, Anna is floating in the pool, surrounded by the debris of her career.

Anna moved to Los Angeles from New York. In New York, she was all about theater and seeking truth through acting. In Los Angeles, she has a role on a sitcom and a certain amount of fame. People stare at her in restaurants. Some ask for autographs. Anna is exhausted, frustrated, and very aware that Hollywood has little to offer an actress in her 40s.

Anna escapes Los Angeles, heading back to New York. She hopes to reunite with her former friends but, when she arrives, she discovers that some have moved on and some have not. Her former acting partner, Kate (Cara Seymour), no longer considers herself to be an actress and resents Anna for having left their show to go to Los Angeles. Playwright Isaac (John Ortiz) has written a play, one that centers around a flawed character who Anna immediately recognizes as being based on herself.

A Woman, A Part is the first full-length feature film to be directed by the video artist, Elisabeth Subrin. It’s a flawed but promising debut. For every moment that runs the risk of falling into cliché, there’s a sequence like that pool scene or the scenes where Kate and Anna deal with their fractured friendship. It’s in those scenes between Maggie Siff and Cara Seymour that the film really comes alive. When a fan approaches Anna while she’s talking to Kate and Anna responds by saying that everyone should be asking for Kate’s autograph, Kate rightly calls Anna out for her condescending attempt at kindness. At the same time, the film is also honest enough in its characterizations to admit that much of Kate’s reaction is due to her own resentment that Anna found the success that Kate didn’t. This is a film that realizes that friendships are often the most complex of relationships. Maggie Siff and Cara Seymour both give honest and poignant performances.

As I said, A Woman, A Part is not without its flaws. To be honest, the character of Isaac never interested me as much as Anna and Kate. There are a few scenes which are just a little bit too on the nose. It’s not a perfect film but it is a promising one and I look forward to seeing what Elisabeth Subrin does next.

A Movie A Day #354: Lolly-Madonna XXX (1973, directed by Richard C. Sarafian)

Posted on December 29, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

In the backwoods of Hicksville, USA, two families are feuding. Laban Feather (Rod Steiger, bellowing even more than usual) and Pap Gutshall (Robert Ryan) were once friends but now they are committed rivals. They claim that the fight started when Pap bought land that once belonged to Laban but it actually goes back farther than that. Laban and Pap both have a handful of children, all of whom have names like Thrush and Zeb and Ludie and who are all as obsessed with the feud as their parents. When the Gutshall boys decide to pull a prank on the Feather boys, it leads to the Feathers kidnapping the innocent Roonie (Season Hubley) from a bus stop. They believe that Roonie is Lolly Madonna, the fictional fiancée of Ludie Gutshall (Kiel Martin). Zack Feather (Jeff Bridges), who comes the closest of any Feather to actually having common sense, is ordered to watch her while the two families prepare for all-out war. Zack and Roonie fall in love, though they do not know that another Feather brother has also fallen in love with Gutshall daughter. It all leads to death, destruction, and freeze frames.

Lolly-Madonna XXX is a strange film. It starts out as a typical hicksploitation flick before briefly becoming a backwoods Romeo and Juliet and finally ending up as a heavy-handed metaphor for both the Vietnam War and the social upheaval at home. Along with all the backwoods drama, there is a fantasy sequence where Hawk Feather (Ed Lauter) briefly imagines himself as an Elvis-style performer. (Hawk also dresses up in Roonie’s underwear.) Probably the most interesting thing about Lolly-Madonna XXX is the collection of actors who show up playing Feathers and Gutshalls. Along with Steiger, Ryan, Martin, Bridges, and Lauter, everyone from Randy Quaid to Paul Koslo to Scott Wilson to Gary Busey has a role to play in the feud. Lolly-Madonna XXX is too uneven and disjointed to really be considered a good movie but I can say that I have never seen anything else like it.

One final note: Lolly-Madonna XXX was directed by Richard Sarafian, who is best known for another early 70s cult classic, Vanishing Point.

A Movie A Day #353: The Public Eye (1992, directed by Howard Franklin)

Posted on December 28, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

New York in the 1940s. Leon “Bernzy” Bernstein (Joe Pesci) is nearly a legend in the city, a freelance news photographer with a police radio in his car and a darkroom in his trunk. Bernzy is a solitary man who lives for his work, the type who has many acquaintances but few friends. He gets the pictures that no one else can get but his dream of seeing a book published of his photographs seems to be unattainable. As more than one snobbish publisher tells him, tabloid photographs are not art.

Bernzy is invited to a meeting with Kay Levitz (Barbara Hershey). Kay is the widow of one of Bernzy’s few friends. She has inherited a nightclub but now a mysterious man is claiming to be a former partner of her husband and says that he owns half of the club. She asks Bernzy to discover who the man is. Bernzy agrees and soon finds himself a suspect in a murder. Even as Bernzy tries to clear his name, he never stop looking for the perfect shot.

Joe Pesci made this neo noir shortly after winning an Oscar for Goodfellas. The Public Eye was an attempt to elevate Pesci from being a character actor to a leading man. It may not have accomplished that but it is still one of the better neo noirs of the 90s. Howard Franklin does such a good job of recreating the style of film noir that the movie seems like it’s in black-and-white even though it’s in color and Barbara Hershey is perfectly cast as a sultry femme fatale. The tough but eccentric Bernzy turns out to be a perfect role for Joe Pesci, who gives one of his best performances. This overlooked film is one to watch for.